Two French teachers from Neepawa become published authors

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Published on Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Nora Heschuk (left) displays her book “Mon échange scolaire,” and Sylvie Tomoniko (right) with her book “Après la maison de briques."

By Kira Paterson

The Neepawa Press/Neepawa Banner

Nora Heschuk and Sylvie Tomoniko are two French teachers in the Beautiful Plains School Division who have recently published stories aimed at helping students learn French. Heschuk teaches classes from Grades 6 to 12 at Neepawa Area Collegiate and Tomoniko teaches Grade 5 at Hazel M. Kellington School.

Both teachers use a program called Accelerative Integrated Methodology (AIM), which is a curriculum that uses stories, plays and songs to help immerse students in the language. It uses simple vocabulary and sentences at first to get students used to hearing and using French, then gets more complex each year, adding new grammar structures and vocabulary to build students’ fluency.

Tomoniko said that Wendy Maxwell, the creator of AIM, approached several teachers using the program across Canada. They were asked to write stories in French that could be used with the AIM program and in French classes that aren’t necessarily using AIM. Tomoniko and Heschuk were a part of this select group of teachers.

The Grade 5 AIM course includes the story of the Three Little Pigs, so Tomoniko decided to do a sequel to the story called After the Brick House. She said in her story, the Big Bad Wolf goes to Pig School to learn how to think like a pig so he can finally catch them. While in Pig School, however, he makes a friend and changes his mind about eating pigs. Tomoniko wrote it for Grades 5 to 7 students learning French as a second language. She started her book about a year and a half ago, and it was published about six months later, in 2014.

Heschuk explained that her story was about students doing a school exchange to Quebec. She has done multiple exchanges with Quebec schools in her years teaching French and continues to do them as often as possible with her classes. She said she used pictures and experiences from previous exchanges she has done in her book. She incorporated different cultural and historical elements about Canada that they often encounter while touring Manitoba and Quebec, because Maxwell had initially asked her if she would be interested in doing a cultural piece. Her story is at a level for Grade 9 to 12 students learning French and is called My School Exchange. She said that she plans to use it in her classes to prepare students for what to expect in their upcoming exchange. Heschuk began writing last October and it was published in the summer of 2015.

Both teachers stressed that reading and writing are very important when learning a second language. They hope that the stories they have written will encourage students to read more. They wanted to write stories that would interest their students but also be at the level where the students can understand and learn from them.

Heschuk said she enjoyed the experience; she got to watch her characters develop as she wrote. She said she would like to write more if the inspiration for a story hit her.

Tomoniko said she would consider writing a sequel to her story if the opportunity arose. She enjoyed working with the illustrator and figuring out details that she wouldn’t have thought of, but were needed to make accurate drawings.

Heschuk and Tomoniko hope that their names on these books might inspire their students. They want their students to believe that if their schoolteachers from Neepawa can do it, so can they.