On October 25, the Manitoba Association of Teachers of French (MATF) presented Niverville Middle School teacher Carling Comte with the esteemed 2019 Greg Sametz Award. The award was created by MATF to honour excellence in teaching French communication and culture in Manitoba schools.
The $500 award was presented to Comte during the annual Manitoba Teachers Society professional development day, along with a complimentary day of French cultural workshops with Greg Sametz. The MATF event was held at the Archwood School in Winnipeg.
“It felt like an honour to go up there and for them to say [positive] things about you,” says Comte. “You do your work because you love it and because you love the kids, but it’s kind of nice to be recognized. I was honoured.”
Comte was nominated for the award by colleague Kate Hildebrand.
“Immediately upon her arrival [at the middle school], Carling worked very hard to reverse the stigma associated with learning French by integrating fun and engaging practices into each of her French classes,” Hildebrand said in her nomination letter to MATF. “Not only did her students benefit but teachers benefited as well as she was willing to share any and all resources with both school staff and divisional staff.”
The letter went on to note Comte’s many initiatives within the school, including a weekly French club and an annual French Is Fun festival with carnival-style games for the entire school. As well, Comte has proved to be a significant resource person for the MATF through her participation in their teacher mentorship programs and through presentations made to rural French teachers.
Comte came to the Niverville school in 2014, but her career got started ten years earlier in Quebec where she taught English at an all-French high school. Eventually she moved to Manitoba and took a job as a French specialist for Grades Six to Nine in Blumenort.
Currently, she teaches Grades Seven and Eight French, ELA and Social Studies at the middle school.
“I’ve come up with this way of teaching French because, when I first went to Blumenort, it was a bit tough,” Comte says. “The people weren’t very receptive to it, so I was trying to figure out how to do it so it was enjoyable and fun, [hoping] that the [students] would actually retain some vocabulary… I find if you make it fun, engaging, and hands on, they enjoy coming to class and they’re more likely to retain the words.”
Getting them to retain French vocabulary is tough, she adds, when the language doesn’t infiltrate their lives outside of the classroom. In the end, her hope is to instill a love of the language in her students in order to equip them to enter French post-secondary studies with confidence or just use their conversational skills as they travel abroad later in life.
Comte grew up in Fort Frances, Ontario where she attended French Immersion from Kindergarten to Grade 12.
“It was always something that my parents wanted for their children,” says Comte, adding that her mother felt like she’d missed out on learning a second language as a child.
Now Comte says French has become her favourite subject to teach.
Greg Sametz, for whom the award is credited, began his career as a French language teacher more than four decades ago. Now retired, his long career included working as a French language specialist, the Director of Language Programs at Seven Oaks, and serving as the Manitoba representative on a number of national boards for second languages.
The MATF’s goal has long been to provide culturally and linguistically enriched opportunities for teachers and their students of French as a second language.