Andrea Haddad

• French teacher
• Folklorist
• Musician
• Creator of Rigodon
• Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario Women Writer’s Award (2001)
  

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“Madame, are you going to tell us the stories about the flying canoe and the girl who danced after midnight at Mardi Gras?”

“Madame, are we going to make taffy this year?”

“Can I be in the arm wrestling competition for the voyageur festival?”

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These are some of the questions that greet me every September in my elementary Core French classes. Even when I taught high school, my students enjoyed and appreciated the traditional stories, foods, and activities of North American French culture. It is clear that even in this age of technology, students are enchanted by the experience of the folk arts in the classroom. Francophone students and teachers also enjoy this voyage into the past as a means of preserving their culture and of course, just for the fun of it!

Before entering Toronto’s Faculty of Education, I spent two years in Switzerland and France where I learned an appreciation for traditional music and realized the potential teaching tool of the responsorial French folk song. I also became enamoured with, and eventually bought a vielle à roue, the French hurdy gurdy, which is a traditional folk instrument played in central France. I returned to Toronto to teach not just the French language, but hopefully, to pass on to my students the thrill of the village festival, dancing the bourrée until dawn in the town square beneath the walls of some ancient château. Well, I may not teach the bourrée but almost every year I do run an enthusiastic French Canadian dance troupe, and no one passes French without learning to dance la gigue and play the spoons!

For several years I performed around Toronto playing French, Breton and Celtic music for adults in a group called Celtique. While doing concerts and teacher workshops through Mariposa In The Schools, I realized that there was a lack of information for teachers in this area, and that there was a need to widen students’ and teachers’ knowledge of French North America. The influence of the French presence upon our lives is all around us: in family names, geography, architecture, music and celebrations.

Now, through the Rigodon series, I am able to share with other teachers my enthusiasm for the contribution of Francophone culture to North America. Rigodon allows the celebration and participation in the French heritage within the walls of the classroom and an awareness and appreciation of it on the outside. Have fun!

For more information, contact the author.