By Adama Kone, Teacher Project Manager

Students in Mali often struggle with something most US students don’t need to worry about: language. School is taught in French, but most children speak local languages at home. If they fall behind in learning French, every other subject suffers. That’s where Mali Rising’s FLIP campaign comes in — it aims to help incoming 7th graders jumpstart their French skills for middle school.

After a successful pilot of FLIP last year, this year we are implementing the campaign in six schools. I recently visited with students in one FLIP school — Ross and Marilou Moser Middle School — to see how the FLIP classes were going. Lassine D. is a 7th grader at the school and he shared the following thoughts:

“I am incredibly excited to be taking these French classes this year. I really like French, but I often have trouble understanding what my teachers say in classroom, even though I'd love to be like one of them in the future because I see how hard they work to improve things in my school. I'm also very envious of my French teacher because he's always well dressed and he always encourages me to speak French with him and some of my classmates at school!

Since we started the courses, I've enjoyed learning through the use of flashcards. I love that exercise the most, because I like to challenge my classmates with flashcards and we all laugh while doing that . I also like to be in front of my classmates and hold up the flashcards asking them the meaning. Most of time, my classmates do not get the right meaning then I or my French teacher have to help and get the right meaning. 

I generally find the right meanings of the words when someone asks me to tell, but my neighbor in the classroom, Ousmane doesn't get many words correct. Today, I asked him to use flashcards with me then we stood up in front of the classmates and held up flashcards to each other trying to tell the correct meanings. In the end I was able to get the meanings of four words correct but Ousmane was stuck and he only got two correct meanings. We really enjoyed that exercise and I hope I will do more like that.

I am going to seriously participate in these courses because I know I will improve my French skills and feel more confident to speak French by the end of the sessions.

I am also grateful to the generous donors of Mali Rising Foundation for allowing me to participate in the these extra French classes; I believe with hard work these classes can really help me.”