Reducing educational and cultural inequalities

Dear difteurs,

This is the conviction of Marie Dômont, headmistress of the Jules Verne school in Le Mans, shared by all those involved in the Espérance banlieues network.

School is above all a place for opening up to the world, for curiosity and deployment, because that's how tomorrow's dreams and projects are built.

Thanks to 3 types of initiatives that complement academic learning:

A big thank you to you, dear difteurs, for your invaluable support and difts!

A record start to the new school year for Espérance Banlieues! 🎓
Espérance Banlieues is proud to welcome more than 1140 students, including 330 newcomers walking through the doors of our schools.
Encouraging results for the future : ✨
With +13% growth in our enrolments, Espérance Banlieues confirms its commitment to quality education for all.
A shared commitment to education : 🤝
Together, we are working to offer every child the keys to success and the means to achieve their full potential. Thanks to the commitment of our teaching teams and the support of our partners, we are building a better future for young people. 
 
Espérance Banlieues thanks all those who support our students and teachers! 👩🏼‍🏫 

👏🏻 How proud our 3rd graders are to have passed this year's brevet des collèges. 97% pass rate, including 76% with honors!
✌🏻 And 100% pass rate for the brevet général (without continuous assessment, compared with 90.3% nationally)
👨🏻‍🏫 Academic excellence, an alliance with families and student involvement encouraged by our teachers: this is the winning formula for success in the heart of priority areas.
The academic and professional future is being written for these young people with the support of the Espérance banlieue network. Proud of who they are, confident in their abilities, sure of their worth, they can look forward to a positive future. Onwards and upwards! 

The third edition of the OLYMPIADES Espérances banlieues took place on Thursday, May 23, 2024. A unique event bringing together over 400 students around a competition prepared throughout the year! Students also took part in a cultural quiz (history, geography, arts). The day brought together all those involved in the project: teachers, educators, volunteers and partners, and enabled our students to: 

 

On the same day, the STADE FRANCAIS invited our schoolchildren to an exclusive event at the Jean Bouin stadium, celebrating rugby in this Olympic year 2024. The day was a unique opportunity for our middle-schoolers to discover the practice of this team sport!

130 schoolchildren from Espérance banlieues took part in a rugby tournament with the club's young hopefuls. Modesty, courage and respect are values conveyed by this sport, and which the teams develop on a daily basis with their pupils. 

This year, during the Vendredis APPRENDRE AUTREMENT, it's an immersion in the premises of the Fondation Bocuse with workshops on the culinary professions that are offered to our middle school students! The schoolchildren have the chance to take part in workshops on a variety of themes: the art of the table, cooking recipes, making non-alcoholic cocktails, etc. 

Overflowing with enthusiasm, they brilliantly rise to the challenges alongside Bruno Sonnery, a retired chef de rang with a passion for the culinary arts, who has passed on to them the values cherished by Paul Bocuse, a true legend of French gastronomy. What an enriching experience, combining pleasure, discovery and transmission!

 

Pedagogical innovation: the modeling of a ATELIERS PHILOSOPHIE program starting in 6th grade! This year, two of our network teachers have been working on a proposal for "Ateliers philo", offered to middle school students as early as 6th grade. The aim of these workshops: to help them develop their critical thinking skills by learning to think for themselves, while reflecting on questions at the heart of their adolescence. 

These Ateliers philos, tried out over the past 2 years, will be rolled out to all Espérance banlieues middle schools from next year. 

We hope this insight can be shared beyond our schools! 

Who doesn't know Asterix the Gaul and his menhir-breeding friend Obelix? Gaston Lagaffe's espadrilles or the name of Lucky Lucke's horse? Comic strips are an integral part of our Francophone cultural heritage.
In our 17 schools, discovering the treasures of the French language, even in this form, is an integral part of our educational project.
Pupils at the Espérance banlieues school not far from Angoulême couldn't miss a visit to the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême! The opportunity to take part in two workshops to boost their creativity and spark a few budding cartoonist vocations.
- In the first workshop, they created comic strip boxes by adding details thanks to the presence of live models.

- In the second workshop, they explored optical illusion with the creation of thaumatropes, small toys that explore the phenomenon of retinal persistence.
Festival de Cinéma:

140 schoolchildren were welcomed to the cinema to attend the screening of the film "De toutes mes forces", which recounts the challenge taken up by a father challenged by his quadriplegic son to compete in the Nice IronMan. This was followed by a meeting with the film's director, to whom our schoolchildren from Sartrouville, Asnières and Argenteuil were able to put all their questions: "Why did you make this film? How did you choose the actors? What are the production stages of a film? Does the synopsis relate to your personal story? This first-of-its-kind meeting for middle-schoolers, prepared with teachers over the past few weeks, provided an opportunity to:
- Discover the world of cinema and learn how to analyze a film, build an argued opinion
- Dialog with a film director
- Deepen themes around sports (the Olympics are approaching!), inclusion and disability
- Work on the notion of surpassing oneself, the meaning of effort and perseverance
 

The question is often asked. Three 2023 bacheliers who passed through the benches of one of the 17 schools in the Espérance banlieues network tell us!"

➡ Maëlly from Espérance banlieues, Cours Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Asnières, is studying at Sorbonne Université and dreams of becoming an engineer in forensics.

➡ Tony and Aboubakar, very chummy in life, from Cours La Cordée - Espérance Banlieues in Roubaix have chosen to follow courses in project management and event management.

Video just below! 
 

Friday September 29, 2023, Elisabeth Borne received in her office the 4th and 3rd grade students from the Espérance banlieues school in Argenteuil who were visiting the Hôtel Matignon as part of their school program. Madame Prime Minister spontaneously took part in a question-and-answer session with the curious and attentive children. A very warm and informal moment of exchange.

This visit to Matignon will remain engraved in the memories of our students, who came away with renewed motivation and a better understanding of the importance of civic and political commitment. 

 
How can we calm the violence experienced in certain priority neighborhoods?
How can we respond to the educational emergency in fractured and isolated territories? Is it possible to reconcile, to remake society?
Publication of the Tribune: the educational response provided by Espérance banlieues! 

On the occasion of the association's 10th anniversary, 122 students were on stage for the performance of the Musical Comedy "Dans tes rêves"! The curtain opened on the children's choir, who took the audience on a journey through the Paris of yesterday and today, through an anthology of French songs. An unforgettable highlight that allowed everyone to discover their talents, to measure the sense of effort, the strength of the collective, the finesse and precision of the performance, to offer a show of great quality, staged as part of the association's 10th anniversary. Performing arts have been at the heart of the school's pedagogy for several years, so that the personalities and self-confidence of each student can blossom to the full!"
To mark the 80th anniversary of Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, written in April 1943 in New York, our schools organized a major writing competition with the Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry Foundation. Over 600 Espérance banlieues students worked on the idea of an eighth planet that had slipped into history. Writer Michel Bussi, president of the jury, presented the writing prize to 6 of our students at the Editions Gallimard offices!

Thanks to your support, the Espérance banlieues network is welcoming over 1,000 students this year to its 17 schools from Marseille to Roubaix. An 18th school will open next September in Bordeaux. Each of the network's schools is rooted in its local area, and its mission is to provide a concrete and innovative response to educational inequalities, illiteracy and school dropout, and to contribute to the integration of young people from sensitive neighborhoods.

In the implementation of its educational project, Espérance banlieues claims a singularity: combining, day after day, within a genuine community of adults and children, French teaching, education and attachment to culture. It is the coherence of actions under these three pillars that comes to provide children with the energy, serenity and security necessary for their growth. The school's director is the guarantor of this coherence, a trademark at the heart of the Espérance banlieues project.

Espérance banlieues scrupulously applies the National Education programs, through a pragmatic pedagogy, based on experience and experimentation. The pedagogical experience is inspired by the great names in education who have devoted themselves first and foremost to disadvantaged children, such as Don Bosco, Maria Montessori and Pierre Faure. This year, Espérance banlieues celebrated its tenth anniversary! To mark the occasion, numerous events are being organized in each of our 17 schools, and you're all welcome to come and meet our students!