Démographie
Serviced by the DeKalb County School System, Avondale High School is a small school (644 enrolled in 2010) nestled in the city of Avondale Estates, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. The demographics of the school are in sharp contrast to those of the city in which it is located. While the school has a large number of African American students in attendance, according to the 2010 US Census only 14.3% of the residents of Avondale Estates are black or African American. 7 Hence, the majority of students who attend are bussed in from surrounding areas, resulting in an egregious lack of parental support and presence in the school. The opportunities to meet with students before or after school are very limited due to this same phenomenon. On the days designated for tutorial, very few students are able to stay after hours to obtain the extra help they may need. Lastly, the use of detentions which has served as an excellent deterrent for inappropriate classroom behavior in previous schools where I've taught is rendered virtually obsolete at Avondale High School.
The Georgia Department of Education reports that the 2009-2010 student body of Avondale High School was comprised of 92% black, 4% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% White, and 1% Multiracial. With a high percentage of students from low-income families, Avondale is a Title I School in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. During the 2009-2010 school year, 97% of the student body was eligible for free or reduced meals – another statistic which diverges momentously from the residents of the city's surrounding Tudor style homes and buildings, where the average household income was $62,766 in 2010. 8 Other unfortunate realities among this population of socioeconomically disadvantaged students include but are not limited to alarming pregnancy and truancy rates, and students coming to school under the influence of drugs or alcohol. One practice that is very telling of the behavioral vortex that is Avondale's culture: When a student is absent his classmates are prone to suspect that he's been arrested, and they peruse the DeKalb County Mugshots website (www.dekalbmugs.com) to see if their friend's face appears among those who have most recently been admitted to the DeKalb County Detention Center. Sadly, I lost at least one student due to his arrest for theft, and a second spent some time in jail for a lesser crime. This past year our entire student body was banned from the nearby Wall Mart due to the number of students skipping class and causing various disturbances in the store. Most of my students come from broken homes, and an overwhelming number of them are being raised by grand-parents in lieu of their parents, if they are lucky enough not to live in a group home. Still others have recounted stories about engaging in various illegal activities with their parents; usually only one is present in their lives, if at all. In short, this is an extremely challenging group of youngsters to work with by any educator's definition. Yet these are the students I am determined to inspire, and in whom I wish to foster not only an interest in studying French as a second language, but a life-long curiosity and thirst for knowledge about the world we live in.
Being that we are on a 4x4 block schedule at Avondale High School, AP French students will likely be in Modern Languages level IV, although some may have started their French studies in middle school and would consequently be in level V as described by the Georgia Department of Education. For the purposes of this unit, level IV standards will be addressed since the majority of my students would be in their fourth semester of French. See Appendix 1: http://mademoiselle-mauti.wikispaces.com/Foreign+Language+Standards+Level+IV for a list of the Georgia standards that pertain to this curriculum unit. Level V standards may be accessed at GeorgiaStandards.Org.
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