ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION New school taps into French-Canadian culture BY GLORIA-JEAN MASCIAROTTE

In 1763, French-Canadians cried, "La Survivance" ("Survival"), to the conquering British, successfully challenging the precept that to the victor goes cultural dominance. This fall, in Woonsocket, a new public charter high school, The Beacon School, again cries, "La Survivance," promising to challenge the traditional wisdom of public education and arts instruction. Aimed primarily at students from northern Rhode Island, The Beacon School echoes the region’s strong French-Canadian identity as a practical part of its radical programming.

Director Jack Lawhead and his staff work ethnicity into an interdisciplinary arts curriculum so that a social studies class might learn oral history by interviewing and videotaping members of Woonsocket’s older generation — who still cook dishes like paté à la viande (meat pie), or know about local resistance to church assimilation policies during the 1924 Sentinelle Affair.

These mixed media and intergenerational principles underscore the Beacon’s main innovation, integrating arts and business education in a micro-enterprising model that strives also for urban redevelopment. Unlike most art programs that teach "l’art pour l’art," isolating art from the real world of getting and spending, Beacon’s students will create art and art products. For example, if students choose a major in culinary arts, they will take a standard high school program and a multi-year culinary arts program. The students will also take business courses emphasizing the entrepreneurial aspect of the specialty.

Throughout the high school years, they will participate in hands-on team business projects related to culinary arts, culminating in a senior project showcasing their integration of arts and entrepreneurial training. Perhaps the most practical part is that each student will earn from the labor for their course work — 60 percent as scholarship money and 40 percent in endowment funds for the school.

Lawhead says the source for Beacon’s innovation is "simply 30 years of teaching in the trenches" of public education and "years of working with kids, seeing what they need and learning what excites them." The faculty believes that applying a "Let’s-put-on-a-play!" team spirit in all areas — using classroom skills on practical projects — can engage even the most recalcitrant child. And small classroom sizes achieved through an open, but limited enrollment of 256, will make it easier to monitor their progress.

The registered National Historic 1926 Deco Stadium building that houses the school symbolizes Beacon’s broad concept of placing students squarely on Woonsocket’s Main Street. While other inner city schools often remain islands amidst the urban traffic, Beacon educators want to make their building part of the downtown traffic, narrowing the school world/real word split that frustrates so many secondary school educators. The bottom floor of Deco will welcome the public to the student-run La Petite Masion, a restaurant emphasizing French-Canadian cuisine, and a general store featuring other student works. Beacon School’s mixed-use building manifests the ideas of urban sociologists who suggest maximizing informal contact between urbanites enriches not only a city, but the lives of all its people.

Using this unusual synergy, Beacon School officials hope that each student will graduate a skilled artist, a savvy art producer, and a locally committed citizen. Perhaps The Beacon School should replace the hardscrabble motto, "La Survivance" with the phoenix-like statement, "Se Survivre" ("Renewal.")