Germain Choffart: Cultivating Climate and Sustainability Consciousness in Elementary Language Courses: An Idea for Course Redesign

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Discussing climate and sustainability issues in an elementary language class is possible! With the support of my colleagues in the 2024-2025 CAST fellowship, I embarked on the journey of redesigning my French 101 course with several goals: engage students with French through the lens of climate and sustainability, embrace experiential learning, and connect our classroom to the Durham community. 

At the elementary level, conversations about everyday tasks are often drawn from students’ personal lives and play an essential role in developing communication skills in the target language. While those are relevant and important, I also wanted to broaden the class topics by incorporating my students’ existing knowledge of climate and sustainability issues. The goal was to create engagement through content that may be familiar to them, while introducing new cultural and linguistic perspectives to enrich our discussions.

In crafting this redesign, I focused on three core directions to guide the course’s progression, moving from the self to the societal:

1. Mon identité (my identity), where we built the fundamental blocks of the French language around the students’ personalities and identities.
2. Mon environnement (my surroundings), where we explored elements of students’ social and professional circles.
3. Notre société (our society), where we connected students’ interests with current cultural and societal issues, with the aim to expand both their linguistic and critical thinking skills.

Moving Beyond Textbook Constraints

Although the course historically relied on a textbook, these new overarching themes allowed a shift away from the rigidity of textbook-imposed topics and activities. They enabled me to elaborate creative lessons based on climate and sustainability topics that were directly relevant to students’ lives. 

Unit themes ranged from simple, “me”-focused discussions to more complex, “us”-based explorations. Examples included easy ways to reduce waste in a student’s daily life on campus, comparing transportation choices, and broader issues such as the fast-fashion industry and food production.  

Community-Based Learning and Field Engagement

To bring these topics to life, I incorporated elements of experiential and community-based learning in the course redesign. Thankfully, Durham and Duke offer a wealth of institutions and non-profit organizations that allow students to concretely engage with climate and sustainability. With the support of Duke Service Learning, I was able to integrate three field trips into the syllabus:

• to TROSA, a non-profit organization similar to a French counterpart studied in class (Emmaüs), which operates social enterprises, including a thrift store, and provides social reintegration support to people with addiction. After a guided tour of the facility with a member of TROSA’s team, students completed a creative activity in French in the thrift store. 

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• to the Nasher museum where students analyzed artworks related to the Anthropocene, including pieces by Francophone artists. They practiced describing and interpreting the pieces in French, putting in action their critical observation skills and newly acquired language structures.

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• to the Duke Campus Farm where students learned about sustainable farming practices and the impact of food production on land and communities. The visit was conducted entirely in French by the Farm’s director, Dr. Saskia Cornes. Students completed an activity based on the 5 senses and their personal memories related to plants and food, a phenomenon often associated in French culture with the “madeleine de Proust.” 

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The class excursions sparked meaningful conversations about fashion and consumerism, food systems, and environmental justice. With appropriate scaffolding to build vocabulary and grammar, students were able to use their elementary French skills throughout the visits and on-site activities. The excursions helped bring a more concrete dimension to sometimes abstract topics. They highlighted how language and culture can nuance understandings of climate and sustainability. Finally, they encouraged and emphasized the importance of active, community-based learning. 

As the nature of those topics can feel heavy in the classroom, I chose to place the emphasis on solutions rather than problems. While acknowledging the challenges of topics related to climate and sustainability, I encouraged students to consider the roles they can play in their communities as individuals and future professionals. Concrete, and often simple, steps exist at the student level, and once discussed, they can generate a palpable sense of empowerment. Integrating these discussions into my language classes not only made the learning more meaningful, but it also gave me confidence that such topics belong in my French 101 course. A highlight of this redesign was when I later learned that a group of students decided to return to TROSA to volunteer and donate their time to support the organization. 

Sustainability as a Pedagogical Imperative