Donnez-moi un jeton!
Grace and I were enrolled in the early immersion program at our elementary school. This is an education stream in Ontario that enables students to learn 100% of their curriculum in French (except for English class, which was — you guessed it — taught in English) — and it slowly moved towards 50% French curriculum once we’re finished school.
For those who do not know what immersion is, according to the Canadian film “French Immersion” written by Jefferson Lewis and Kevin Tierney — “French immersion is a form of bilingual education in which students, who do not speak French as first language will receive instruction in most subjects such as history, music, geography, math, art, physical education and science in French. Most school boards in Ontario offer French Immersion starting in grade one and others start as early as senior kindergarten.”
Yup — sounds about right. We started learning French in kindergarten. Thank gawd the silent act of “sharing” is a universal language and I passed without losing a single jeton.
Wait?! What on earth is a jeton?
Jetons were these little little orange wooden sticks disguised as monetary-like tokens, about the size of a Popeye cigarette and more valuable than your afternoon Fruit Rollup. They were introduced as an incentive for students to conversationally speak French in class and not just during les lessons. Each week you were given a handful of jetons from your teacher to hold onto for dear life. If you were caught speaking English by a classmate, they could ask you for a jeton.
At the end of the week, you counted out how many jetons you had left — and you got a gold star for each next to your name on the leader board
Sounds pretty straightforward, eh? Not so much.
You had to look out for the narcs. These were classmates that would deliberately eavesdrop on your super private conversation with your desk mate just waiting to pounce on an opportunity to steal one of your jetons. Not to mention embarrass the socks off you by yelling the ear piercing “DONNEZ-MOI UN JETON!” so that everyone knew you were slacking on your vocabulary.
To protect yourself from this, you needed to have allies. As an unwritten best practice one needed to make an alliance with the desk duo behind you and next to you. This is critical for your survival. Now, if I leaned over to my desk mate and spoke English it was safe. Like cone of silence safe. But we had to speak softly because if someone else on the outskirts of our “safe zone” heard us speak English, they would yell “Donnez-moi un JETON!” and we would have to give up one of our glorious orange gems simply for asking to borrow a pencil.
And we can’t forget strategy. With the leader board in plain view for everyone to see, you can tell right away who are the hunters and who were the hunted. If you saw that Frankie was out of jetons every week, you might just sharpen your pencil a little slower by his desk for the chance to overhear the hunted slip up so you could advance yourself that little bit.
Some kids didn’t even care and handed over their stack of jetons with the intention of never speaking French at all. Where as others were so competitive that they’d challenge you on enunciating words like patience, omelet or menu because you said English words in your English accent instead of pronouncing them in your French accent because they’re French words as well. Ooooh…. a loop hole.
But what did jetons teach me?
Well my 42 year old self is proud to say she usually wins the “clothes pin game” at a baby shower because of her years training with jetons. Do not say the word “baby”, whatever you do… and it’s harder than you think!
But in all honesty, it taught me to not look for the easy way out and to respect the rules. All I had to do was practice my French speaking to keep my jetons and it’s really simple to avoid doing what’s needed of us to learn and grow. And subliminal jetons exist everywhere in life… they’re dressed-up as demerit points for bad driving, as groundings from parents for breaking the rules or even fines for not wearing a mask.
So, to stop people taking your “jetons”… Do the work. Own your efforts and the outcome. And allow yourself to stretch when you’re young so you’re comfortable with growth when you’re older. French is hard, but that’s okay. Everything worth fighting for is worth having.
Love,
Patricia
