Have you been studying French? Question Response

Dear Ashley                                                                                          24 April 2024 

     You asked me via text last summer about whether I had followed up on my earlier expressed interest in French.  I believe that you, like your mother, are relatively strong in your innate intuitive powers. Accordingly, it was a delight to me when you texted me that you had honed in on that one option and asked the question, "Have you had time to study French?"
     I evinced your love, having concern that I do follow up on something I earlier, some months before, had texted you, mixed in with several other things. I had texted that seeking teacher certification in French was something I was considering, among other options for teaching and career directions at this point in my life.
     Something I said about the French option must have stood out in your mind vis-a-vis other things I may have said or done in the past.  For you selected the one option among all the others that may well be dearest to my heart. I believe you sensed that I was "on cue,"  or hitting on a valid vein when I mused about possibly seeking an NC teaching license in French. 
     Among the various fields of interest for me, which I may have shared with you over time, you seem to have sensed my enduring love of the French language (French Literature:), even despite my relative inattention given to the study and practice of French over these recent decades; I have not read a French book since the mid-1980s.  All I have done has been some DuoLingo here and there, though I have enjoyed with clear delight the Duolingo French Podcasts.   

     Only one high school that I know of has posted a need for a French teacher, Millbrook High.  I applied for that, but got no response.  Other high schools in this area have French as a part of their program, but I would guess that the teachers are so satisfied that they do not quit until retirement altogether, and then only with hesitation and delay, working well past retirement age, as did Ruth Thomas and my mother, Mary Permelia Long (at Alexander Central High). 
     I imagine that I would be the same as my mother (not willing to retire until I just had to) if I the Lord were to provide me with a position teaching high school French.  I would make a French club and take students to France every summer for several weeks of study and cultural immersion, in view of getting them some AP college credit.

Fighting Cougars: 
     Other options for teaching in the public school system are as follows, and I feel I need to keep my vision open to them, for who knows which way the Lord will lead me?  He opened up this long term math substitute position that I am reveling in at the moment here at Wake Forest High, home of the Fighting Cougars!  I love each of my students dearly, and they know it. Not one can say that I do not love him and will not go the extra mile to help him learn math and overcome any particular difficulties he is having to grasp the concepts and be able to fluently work them into his practical application with the classwork problems.

A. Math:  Could be done as an "add-on" licensure.  I have four or five college level courses in math on record.  Math is always in demand, for people with math majors can earn a lot more money in business.  
B. Business and Marketing: I 
C. ESL:  tightly controlled.  You cannot create your own texts, study materials.  The curriculum is federally controlled (not even under the governance of NC education department. 
D. English:  Very political.    

As Love Leads: 
    Indeed, I have always enjoyed French. To that, I can say that more often than not, I seem to have come to love a subject or activity in large part due to a key human relationship that coincided with that even/activity, or that developed or grew in concert with it. This is somewhat of a revelation to me, though I must have known it all along, but never to my memory directly considered it.  

    Juggling:  I got deeply involved in juggling because of my relationship with Tommy Gabriel.  Without that friendship, I would not have pushed ahead to go to higher levels of team club passing. Tom's life in Boone was marked by an uncanny attention to honesty.   

     Math:  Ruth Rufty was the same.  She taught me three Math courses in high school. Ruth was a member of our church, and always very honest.   

     Writing:  John Singleton, Scott Everhardt, Will Bedard, and Timothy Austin, among others in Boone, NC, through the 80s and early 90s, were dear friends, mutually bonded in our love of writing and love of the abject honesty we found within each other, particularly regarding quality of writing and discussions revolving around quality of writers.     

     Running:  Michael Bumgarner loved me and inspired me to run well. He always took 1st place in the half-mile run, the mile run, and the 2-mile run for our conference when I was a Freshman, and I took second place (to him). Also, Michael was always very honest. Some things he said inspired me to a love of running, which has never been effaced. I would enjoy coaching cross country again if the occasion arose, meaning if my family could do without me in the afternoons, and some school where I was working came to feel they needed me to coach. 
    A few years after Michael graduated from high school, he was studying to become a pastor when someone shot and killed him about 3 a.m. in what was judged a case of mistaken identity. I was working as an orderly when they brought his body in the next day. 

     French:  I loved the mileux from my high school French experience. Ruth Thomas was my teacher and she dearly loved me and all the other students.  She taught me four French classes, and used a broad cultural approach. We learned a little bit of everything about France and French culture.  Ruth was unfailingly honest...something that could make it difficult for her to survive in current public school systems, despite the fact that students need that as much as anything.  

A Preeminence of Honesty: 
    All of these people were linked by their unswerving attention to honesty. The thing about honesty is that when people fall into habits of being dishonest, it always shows later, for virtually everyone around them. No one can hide a dishonest bent.  And, such a disposition grows over time.  As Shakespeare wrote, "The Truth will out." 

     Some fields of inquiry (or scholarship) build more directly upon fiction at the core of their most basic presuppositions or foundational theories: psychology, social work, and a good many of the recent esoteric subfields infecting literary theory, such as "wokeism," "Marxism," "anti-racism," "social justice," and thus and such.  These affectations with pretensions to scholarship share the characteristic of being ephemeral, fleeting, and therein change with the seasons, replacing themselves  and morphing into other expressions. 

     They cannot build a long-term consistency which would make them a recognizable field because they move so quickly, accepting such extremes of thought and suggestion that they soon reveal themselves as inherently contradictory, built upon a desperate quest to destroy and supplant some existing aspects or standards of theory within a field. So they regularly fall as victims of their own passion, lacking in self-reflection, unable to assess the relative merits of their thoughts within the greater body of scholarship in general, and within a select field or two upon which they may have hoped to piggy back to fame and fortune, or to infect and destroy, as say, a virulent virus.        

Richest Prize for Children's Literature:  Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

Shakespeare: Truth will out:

   “Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son: give me your blessing: truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son may, but at the length truth will out.“
(The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 2)

     Followers of Christ tend to grow in their inclination towards and appreciation of honesty throughout their lives. In fact, you might even say that the believer's lifelong growth in honesty can serve as something like unto a general litmus test of his overall progress in sanctification.