City Honors Teacher for French Exchange Program

students have become ambassadors for the city, state and country, thanks to a student exchange program with France.

Monday night, Council honored Saline Area Schools French teacher Jamie Aumend for coordinating the program. At the outset of the meeting, Mayor Gretchen Driskell presented Aumend with the seal of Curbans, a community in southeast France with a population of 390. Exchange students from Curbans presented the seal to Driskell during a visit a couple years ago.

Driskell said the exchange program has enriched the lives of Saline students.

“It’s a little like our sister city relationships with Brecon, Wales or Lindenberg, Germany,” said Driskell. “The City of Saline wants to recognize you for facilitating this exchange program.”
Aumend expressed gratitude for all of the support the program has received from the city, from parents, from the schools and from the business community. She thanked the fire department, police department and city hall staff for the tours. Most of all, she thanked the city for flying the French flag at the four corners.

“When we come into the Saline, for those French to see those four flags hanging at the street corner, they feel instantly welcomed into this community,” Aumend said.

She said what she enjoyed most about the program is the way the community collaborates to make it happen.  The middle school students, she said, are ambassadors for the city, the state and America. Their parents help by allowing their children to go to France and be ambassadors, and to by opening their homes to French children. Aumend thanked several businesses, including Benny’s Bakery, Busch’s and The Drowsy Parrot.

“The business community in Saline is amazing,” she said.

In the schools, she said the program is helped by everyone from teachers who open their classrooms to French students, to people in the bus garage, who transport the kids around town.

“What I think is exceptional about the program is the collaborative effort it takes,” Aumend said.

Since the program began in 2005, 120 Saline families have participated. She said the benefits are many.

“Students have the opportunity to experience the global community they are a part of and they get to make friends in another country, and to experience the culture by living in it, in a day-to-day perspective, not just from a tourist’s stance,” Aumend said.

Since 2005, six French classes have visited Saline. They’ve come from communities as big as the world-famous metropolis of Paris, to communities like Curbans, which is just one-third the size of the middle school. Most recently, .

For more on the program, there is an informational meeting at 3:45 p.m., May 31, in room C345 at Saline High School. See the attached flyer for more information.