Bastien Beaufort, the director of Guyapi Paris and specialist in fair trade and indigenous plants, explains the history of the slow food movement and the organization’s efforts to bring indigenous knowledge and plant-based nutrients to French consumers. This past summer, French students traveled to France and Belgium for a sustainability-focused Archer Abroad trip June 3-10. Photo by Travis Nesbitt.

Twenty-one French students left Los Angeles June 3 for France and Belgium on an eight-day experiential learning trip with the Archer Abroad program. Students from French 3, 4 and Advanced Study: French Language and Culture courses learned about Europe’s sustainable practices and experienced French culture firsthand through guided tours and sightseeing.

Archer Abroad offers trips related to language courses and service to immerse students in unique learning opportunities. In the language course-related Archer Abroad trips, world language students travel to a Spanish, French or Chinese-speaking country, taking their learning into the real world. Director for the Archer Abroad programs and Chinese teacher Pei-Ying Gosselin worked alongside World Language Department Chair Travis Nesbitt to organize the trip since the beginning of 2023.

As the trip focused on sustainability, students traveled to various eco-friendly sites focused on sustainable food production, urban planning and environmental policymaking. At Science Po Paris, the school of political science in Paris, students met Archer alumna Chloe Hallinan (’15) and a friend of hers to discuss their immersion in the French language and Parisian culture, as well as their work in the environmental sector.

From businesses like La Recyclerie — a cafe where people can fix damaged household appliances for reuse — to traveling to a humane dairy farm in Normandy, Archer Abroad students observed solutions to the environmental issues taught in their French classes.

Junior Echo Meadows has studied French for five years at Archer and said she hopes to move to France someday. Meadows said the trip gave her newfound enthusiasm to continue learning the language.

“There’s a big difference between ‘French’ French and academic French. In France, even though my French may not be perfect, if I know just a few keywords, I can get around, whereas academic French [is] really just more focused on the grammar side of things and perfecting it,” Meadows said. “Speaking generally and knowing how to build a sentence — the two are very different.”

French teacher Laurence Clerfeuille lived in France until she was 21 and was a teacher chaperone alongside Nesbitt and French teacher Natalie Kang. Clerfeuille said, as a previous teacher of some students on the trip, she was proud to see them learn about her country and practice French in real-world scenarios.

“It made me so happy because they wanted to do it. When you want to do it, even if you’re a little scared, even if you make a tiny mistake, people [are] still going to understand, right?” Clerfeuille said. “They can try to speak in French in places, especially smaller places like Rouen or Lille, which is not that small but less used to tourists. Even if they hear that you’re American, they’ll go with French because that’s the language … I was blessed to witness that so that they [the students] know it is not just a language that doesn’t exist or that we speak in the classroom — it’s [used in] the real world, in real life.”

Throughout the trip, students documented their experiences on a blog, including pictures of sightseeing adventures, environmentally-friendly businesses, unique architecture and several group photos. This blog became the groundwork for a presentation Archer Abroad students shared with the upper school at the beginning of the school year.

In this presentation, the students who went abroad explained their new knowledge of France and Belgium’s sustainable practices and encouraged other students to participate in future Archer Abroad trips. Upper school students can participate in two new Archer Abroad trips to Kenya and the American South in the spring and summer of 2024. Nesbitt said all students are encouraged to apply, including those who receive Flexible Tuition.

“These opportunities are rare and unique, and [I would encourage students] to take advantage of them. I also really appreciate that as an institution, we want to make these courses accessible to all students and students who are part of the flexible tuition program,” Nesbitt said. “My piece of advice is don’t let the price tag deter you from applying because you don’t know until you’ve been accepted to participate and when you’re given the final total of how much it’s going cost you and if it is feasible … Don’t close the doors now because of cost because, who knows, maybe it is actually accessible to your family.”

Even though students and teachers are starting to think about future Archer Abroad trips, Meadows said the students who traveled to France and Belgium continue to recall their “amazing” experiences from the trip.

Outside of the trip’s itinerary, students had the opportunity to explore and engage with the culture on their own. They interacted with street artists, tried local specialties and observed the city’s architecture. Meadows said her favorite moments of the trip were the quiet moments the group experienced in the city.

“I think just all the quiet moments like when we would all go off as a group. There was this one day in Lille, where we had three hours to just go and do whatever. And then around 30 minutes when everyone’s supposed to start wrapping up, everyone in the group migrated towards this one grassy patch by their own volition, and we all just sat everywhere,” Meadows said. “It was nice, looking around and being in a new country, but also seeing a lot of familiar faces and just the general contentment that was there.”