For Ithaca High School’s esteemed French teacher Madame Janet Bowman, teaching a world language is about more than grammar and vocabulary. It’s about deeply appreciating a culture and forming profound bonds with others along the way. Walk into her colorful, poster-covered room at any given time, and you’re likely to hear a lively conversation between Bowman and an entire class about topics ranging from soulmates to nonconformism to weekend plans—all in French, of course.
The depth of Bowman’s experience is evident from her lessons, which are enriched by her anecdotes about comedic language mishaps and intriguing cultural differences between countries. She decided to become a teacher after finishing high school, noting wryly, “When I was growing up, there were basically three vocations for females: teacher, nurse, secretary.” While visiting her friend—a student from Chile who was fluent in several languages—she was inspired to explore the possibilities that came with truly and deeply learning a language.
Majoring in French at Eastern Illinois University, Bowman spent a year in Paris during her junior year. She believes that opportunities to study abroad and interact with native speakers are extremely valuable parts of learning a world language. “To use your language,” she said, “you just have to delve into where you can get the information and then carry it through and try to complete the process and see what happens. It’s important that you find a way to connect, and that takes a lot of courage, but I think it really pays off.”
After teaching in Illinois for two years, Bowman received a Masters in French at the University of Kansas. A year later, she received a scholarship to teach English at an École de Commerce, or a French business school. Exploring American and French culture with her students, they bonded over the students’ interests and their conversations about the differences and similarities between the two cultures. She even invited an acquaintance, an American professional basketball player, to speak to her French students and introduce to them an aspect of American culture.
For Bowman, the value of speaking a language is that it allows us to form real connections and truly get to know people from all over the world. She tries to emphasize this to her students at IHS today. While in college, she “did a really crazy thing” with several friends and traveled through Austria and France for a month, seeing the sights and staying in youth hostels. “I think the most important thing was meeting certain people, learning about their lives, their ordinary lives, what they do during the day, what makes them who they are,” Bowman said. By just interacting with them, she found out the “values that they held, the hopes that they had for themselves, and how they considered themselves really to be French and what that meant in regards to traditions, food, the importance of having vacations!” For Bowman, the “coolest thing” about world travel is finding out that many of those concepts and values are very different from our own. Laughingly, she added, “Besides learning all sorts of new words and expressions and all sorts of slang, which is totally useful for a while, and then absolutely useless after about six months.”
Today, Bowman is passionate about the connections that language can create with her students. To her, being a French teacher means really being with her students. She feels honored to teach the same students for often three to four years, giving her the time to get to know all of her students on a more personal level. “Many students are more open than others and so it takes longer to know some of the lovely little aspects of each of my students,” she said. “And I don’t always get to know all of them, but I do get to know them much better because I have those four years. To hear about their dog, to hear about what they’d like to do on the weekend, to know that for instance ballet is important to them, to know that their family is one of their principal guiding lights that helps them through a lot of their turmoil or that their friends give them so much support or fun times with their crazy things that they do together. And so for me, that’s the important part.”
Bowman’s appreciation for the bonds that language can create is evident in her teaching. At all levels, her French courses strongly emphasize the oral portion or the speaking of the language. Although it is difficult and frightening at times, only through speaking with others can we truly grow closer to and learn about the people around us. Her philosophy for teaching is encouraging speaking above all else. “I have to come up with as many ways as I can to get you guys to speak as often and about as many different things as we can,” she said. “That is a constant activity that I have to think, create, redo, and then try again.” Creating a solid foundation in speaking improves other skills, like listening. Alongside other work in reading and writing, “you can also talk about all of those different perspectives and values that come through in books, novels, films,” she added. “That’s where the power comes from.”
Bowman also enjoys the smaller details of teaching French. “I do believe the language itself has a certain melody to it, which I find is very appealing to me,” she said. “The beauty of them, the words themselves. I enjoy just picking apart an expression like un pot de vin.” She loves being able to explore the different cultures of Francophone countries, their art and cuisine, especially the spicy dishes of Morocco. “I’m not so crazy about it,” she said laughingly of poutine, a Quebecois dish of fries topped with cheese curds and gravy, “but all of those things make it a pretty cool thing to know and to be able to speak in French.”
Although Bowman has already retired, she is still currently teaching at IHS. She does not plan to return next year; instead, she is looking forward to traveling to Alsace-Lorraine, exploring bilingual programs in Ottawa, and pursuing her other interests. She enjoys being around plants and trees and hopes to visit redwood forests in California.
