Day 4 Tuesday 4 May: meeting with Dr. Tommie Smith!

What if your dream of meeting with your idol came true? Not just any idol, such as an entertainer or a sportsperson whom you meet one day and forget about the next. No. A spiritual icon who has a story to tell, who has a charisma that goes beyond their mere presence in a room, a living legend who has a legacy for the youth and who is an endless source of inspiration for every generation.

Our hopes and dream of meeting with such a person were answered when Tommie Smith confirmed that he and his wife would be travelling from Atlanta to Boston to give a master class at Boston Arts Academy and get to meet with “his” students in person.

This meeting came as the culmination of our whole project, ever since last year, when we started to study the way African American people organized the Civil Rights movement to fight against the discrimination and abuse they were subjected to.

How do you learn to stand up for what you believe in? How do you turn from being a bystander into becoming an upstander? How do you manage to overcome the worst predicaments and injustices and still stand upright?

Tommie Smith was only 23 years old in 1968 when he decided he had a mission of letting the world know that the time to end all kinds of discriminations all across the globe had come. At the time, he was the only track runner in the world history to own 11 world records at the same time. Nobody had ever achieved this before and nobody has as of today. He was promised to an outstanding career and his days of hard toil seemed about to belong to the past.

Instead, he and his team mate John Carlos chose to risk their newly acquired fame and used the tribune of the Olympics to stir up consciences and denounce ignorance and injustice. Their silent gesture, a black-gloved fist raised up in the air, was a peaceful, yet firm protest against the obnoxious treatment of black people across the United States, and also against any forms of injustice across the globe, such as the way Mexican students had been severely repressed during a demonstration for human rights just a few days before the Olympics took place.

The absence of shoes on their feet was a way to denounce the poverty which affected millions of people around the world. The white button on their chests bore the words: “Olympic Project for Human Rights”. This project had been set up with the idea of using the Olympics as a tribune to support human rights all over the world.

The only other time the Olympics had been used as a political tribune was in 1936 when Hitler had hoped to show the superiority of the Aryan race, and African American athlete Jesse Owens had won the gold medal, causing Hitler to storm out of the Olympic stadium.

Peter Norman, the Australian athlete who received the silver medal in 1968, also chose to wear the badge of the Human Rights Project to denounce the policies of white Australia.

Around his neck, Tommie Smith wore a black scarf to symbolize and denounce the practice of lynching which was plaguing the nation. In his left hand, he was holding a box with an olive branch, symbol of peace.

This stand was not understood by the American nation which mostly saw it as a violent insult to the flag. Tommie Smith and John Carlos's "stand for victory", as Tommie calls it, not only caused them to be banned from the Olympic village, but also to be terribly ostracized when they returned to their homeland, as did Peter Norman for wearing the Olympic Project for Human Rights button.

Today, Dr. Tommie Smith is involved with the "Tommie Smith Youth Athletics" and coaches youth from underserved areas.

Day 4 of the field trip to Boston, you had the great honor of meeting with him and ask him about his stand and perseverance.

You displayed the posters that you had created against discrimination...


... and patiently waited for Dr. Tommie Smith's arrival at the Boston Arts Academy




And there he was:

A living legend true to himself and his stand, a generous, charismatic man full of love and empathy for the younger generations

... with Patric

... with Nephtalie

Dr. Smith told us that he had always refused to return to Mexico city ever since he was banned from the Olympic village in 1968, and that he always thought he would never set a foot there again. But he showed us a brilliant documentary about his and John Carlos's return to Mexico in 2008 for the first time since their silent gesture.

We learned about the dismal years that followed the victory stand: back home, both Tommie and John Carlos received death threats, and could not find any job to pursue their running careers. The ugly strain on their respective married lives caused Tommie's wife to divorce him, and John Carlos's to commit suicide...

After the documentary, we started the Q&A (=questions and answers). When asked what his emotions were on the podium, Tommie Smith explained that they were completely off the chart (= extremely intense) because the Olympic Project for Human Rights had started off two years earlier when Tommie was only 21, and now the culmination of the project was the victory stand. He went on to explain that it was the first time in the history of the Olympics that men, African American men, chose to stand for a cause, and this cause was equality. (See bonus video 1 below)

What is most remarkable about hearing Dr. Tommie Smith speak is that he loves young people deeply and has a legacy for them. On being asked whether he would do the silent gesture again, he replies by stressing that he has only changed because of his gray hair, but that his "thoughts have turned only much stronger, that small gesture turned so much history into vision"; at the time, he was "a 23 year-old man with a vision, like Dr. Martin Luther King".
"Faith without work is dead", he continues, "Work on your faith to make it reality. Young folks understand that". (See bonus video 2 below)

And indeed, this is something Tommie Smith insists on whenever he addresses young people: education. He was always very industrious at school, and understood the importance of keeping on studying.

And he made it very clear:

"You have to work, you have to get your education. If you don't, you're going to not only hurt yourself, but hurt a legacy."

Bonus 1


Bonus 2


Bonus 3
Last but not least: Mamadou is taller than Tommie!! Even Tommie Smith couldn't believe it and asked to be photographed with Mamadou:

Day 3, Monday 3 May, Big day!

You started off the school year with a mission:
Teach teenagers from the only public high school for the arts in Massachusetts, the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), French, as well as Francophone culture, with a highlight on your background cultures, since France is rich with multicuturalism and diversity. You happily agreed to take the responsibility of teaching them, and you wilfully endorsed the role of Ambassadors for your school and country. BAA students, in turn, endorsed the same responsibility of teaching you English as well as American culture which is a melting pot of many other cultures from all over the globe.

This translated into a regular email correspondence where you alternately wrote each other in French and English to be able to teach and learn at the same time: you did an amazing job at teaching my BAA students about the French schooling system, the French Revolution, the abolition of the Death Penalty in France, the meaning of the Armistice in France, the freedom fighters who fought for Liberty and Equality (such as Guy Moquet, jean Moulin, Aimé Césaire, Toussaint Louverture, Josephine Baker...), the French trends in fashion, music, art, etc.

My BAA students taught you about their favorite Holiday (= in US English, a Holiday is "jour férié" and not "vacances"): Halloween, Kwanzaa (a weeklong African American celebration which honors universal African heritage and culture), Thanksgiving, etc. They told you what the background story of Thanksgiving was and shared with you what they thought about it; they also told you what kind of food they eat then. For Black History Month, they told you about who their black personality was and what they did (Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, the Little Rock Nine, Emmett Till, W.E.B. Dubois, Malcolm X, Tommie Smith,...). They created identity projects to introduce themselves and tell you about their school, their family, their tastes in music and arts (you have a few samples in this blog).

You, Manet students, did an outstanding job with Mrs. Tazi at gathering all these pieces of information to turn them into an Anglophone newspaper so as to share your learning with the rest of the school, and fund raise money in order to pay for the expenses of the trip: because you knew from the start that the idea was for you to turn these virtual exchanges into live interaction.

And you did it! Now, day 3 of the program was a landmark (=major step) in the trip, because you were going to eventually meet with your pen pals.

I cannot find the words to tell you how eager and excited they were at your coming to BAA.


Ms. Torres, BAA's co-Headmaster, Ms. O'Halloran who did an oustanding job at preparing your visit at BAA, and BAA's academic Dean, Ms. Clark, who is in charge of implementing the academic curriculum (=programme scolaire) of the school, were expecting you, together with seven government students (= délégués du lycée).


From left to right: Leica, Xavier, Ashard, Roobvia, Najah, Darisel and Wilne

You met your pen pals from the first and second semesters (all of you had at least two pen pals for each semester because French class is taught along semesters, five days a week, one hour and a half for each class, which corresponds to a year of world language class in France), and you were paired with a pen pal with whom you shadowed: in BAA language, a shadow (=ombre) is a pen pal who stays with you in class all day long.








After greeting each other, you followed your pen pal to class and spent your first day ever in an American high school.

A typical day at BAA is either from 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. if you’re a dance or a VA (Visual Arts) major, or from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. if you’re a theater or a music major.











Your first class was... French, and you got to teach French to your American friends. You all took your mission very seriously and were very proud to tutor your pen pals. They were also really excited to get to put into practice the things they had learned in French and show you how much they knew already.

Then, after a very productive class, we went to Advisory. Advisory takes place twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Advisory is like our “Vie de classe”. Each advisory is lead by an Advisor (a teacher), who has about twelve advisees (students) from the same major (either dance, music, theater or VA). The advisees stay in the same advisory throughout their high school years, so that the newly-arrived Freshmen replace the leaving Seniors and can be guided and tutored by the older ones. Whenever a student has a problem, he/she may report to his/her advisor, who would be like a head teacher in a French school.


Here, you can see one of my favourite colleagues, Mr. McLaughlin, the dance teacher with whom I share the advisory (mostly to get an idea of how an advisory works, because most of the times, the advisee is me and not the students… :p).

And then, we went to the school cafeteria and perfectly merged into American teenage school life. It was hard to tell the French students from the American ones.







And you got an idea of what school food tastes like. When there was no pizza left, we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches… New experience.

School lunch is only 25 minutes at BAA, so we had to quickly get back to class.


Some got to see a hum class (or humanities: histoire-géo)


Others got to take a biology class

Or a science class


... a maths class


... a music class


... or even a dance class

You had a lot of exciting things to say about the school. We would very much like to post some on the blog, so be sure to email me with your notes please.

At the end of the school day, some of you left the school and went back home with their pen pals to get a full immersion into a typical American household.

Bonus: French class

Bonuses for day 2 (May, 2)

Bonus 1

Dean conversing with an American



Bonus 2

Outdoor clubbing: Something unique here...



Bonus 3

Rayan and Mamadou dancing samba

Day 2 Sunday 2 May 2010

Sunday morning, lie-in (=grasse matinée)...
Meeting time was 9:00 instead of 8:30... But actually, every one was up and ready at 7:30!! Wow!

You were already all set when Ms. Tazi and I got to the hostel: breakfast eaten, sandwiches made and kitchen cleaned up. I have to confess I was impressed and couldn't believe my eyes. If any one still doubted your eagerness and dedication, their doubts were brushed off instantly.

Program for the day: Visit at the MIT museum and Harvard Square.

Both sites are set in the city of Cambridge, which is separated from Boston by the Charles River. This river gives great charm to both cities, and people love to take out the sailing boats whenever the weather is clement.


We walked across the bridge and got a beautiful view of the sky line.

Then, we got to MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the most famous college in the US in terms of technological research and achievements. But the college also has a wide range of other departments, such as economics, political science or linguistics. Noam Chomsky is even Professor Emeritus there...


We took a seat on the steps of the Institute and suddenly got big dreams of great accomplishments growing in our heads.


To get an idea of the kind of technological accomplishments they do at the MIT, we entered the museum which hosts all kinds of prototypes created by MIT students and alumni (=former students). We saw the current exhibitions about the robots that were created at MIT and which can articulate their limbs or express emotions the same way humans do.

Every one was fully focused, and it was just the beginning. Things were soon going to become even more gripping (=captivant)!

In the department of holography, we met with amazing surprises...


This tiger's head looked peaceful, but as we walked past it, it suddenly transformed into ...

... a woman's face! No need to say we all jumped when it appeared out of nowhere.


Can you see this hologram city which Brayan is excited to discover?

After seeing a whole lot of amazing creations, we went to the upper floor where a hands-on workshop with MIT students was taking place.


This guy with his computer was amazing. He took a picture of Sarah on his laptop, printed a paper covered with crooked black lines, then printed a transparent with the same kind of lines on it, and once you put the transparent on top of the sheet, here is what you could see:

Can you see well? Yes, it is Sarah's face! Amazing, right?

While some were engaged in trying to understand the secret for this wonder, someone else was completely absorbed into solving a tricky puzzle:


Dean had decided he would succeed in making an infra red light reflect into mirrors across the whole puzzle.

It was somewhat of a challenge because the piece was not stable, but what we know about Dean is that he has a tenacious mind. So of course he did make it. Congratulations to him!!

I think it was probably the first time it took us so long to have students leave a museum... :D

And on we went to Harvard Square. Right as we entered the Harvard area, we met with an impressive lady: she had a most surprising music instrument made of glasses vertically piled over water. When you spinned the wheel of the iron arm along which the glasses were piled up from the largest to the smallest, music could be heard when you put a wet finger on a glass, as if on a piano or a harp. The lady explained that Benjamin Franklin invented this instrument and called it a "Glass Armonica" after the Italian word for harmony.


To show us how the instrument worked, the lady started to play the "Marseillaise". And there we were, gathered around her, Rayan spinning the wheel and joining in, Mamadou with his hand on his heart over his tee shirt bearing "Senegal" on its front, all of us united as one, singing our national anthem: what a sight!

If anyone doubted that France could be so multicultural, we gave them a little cultural education.

If anyone questioned our French identity, we proved them wrong for good.

If anyone was expecting to see another negative cliché about the French banlieues, we are very happy to disappoint them...

Of course, the lady also played and sang the American national anthem, and even the Moroccan one because we're proud of our background cultures ;D

She thanked us a lot for our interest, and we gave her praise for her great performance, and then we walked on to Harvard College campus where we took a nice, cosy lunch break:






Harvard College, founded in 1636, is the oldest and most renowned college across the United States, if not the world. As you know, Barack Obama got his law degree there, before becoming a civil rights attorney in Chicago. When at Harvard, he also became the first African American President of the Harvard Law Review (= le journal de l'université de droit).

Now, that day, there was a fair all across Harvard Square, so we split in two groups to take a tour of the neighborhood.

Ms. Saumet and Ms. Laplane managed to enter Harvard College with twelve of you. You even got into a classroom, and all of a sudden, Ms Saumet was a law teacher while you students had turned into under-graduates (=jeunes étudiants non encore diplômés)! [I need to add a photo here to show how realistic it looked: hopefully one day, who knows...]

In the meantime, the other group enjoyed the different outdoor attractions.


Bringing some more colors to the colorful streets


Enjoying a reggae concert


Deciding which chalk artwork was our favorite one


Shopping of course...


And outdoor clubbing!! (=boîte en plein air)

Now look at all these delightful faces. Music makes the world go round!





And then, we took the bus...


... back to the hostel where Rayan, Mélissa and Sara practised on the piano and Mélissa played a beautiful song:


It was a nice way to end this rich and colorful day as we were all feeling anxious for the next day to come because it was going to be the day when we would eventually meet with our American pen pals, and get to visit their school!!!