The French Club has been restarted at the school for the first time in three years. They held their first meeting on Oct. 9 and plan to meet at least once a month to discuss how they will move forward throughout the year. The club plans to hold multiple events including a fondue party for French class students to learn how to make authentic fondue for all the students to try.

French teacher Denise Smith is no stranger to creating organizations for French. In the past, Smith has created successful French Clubs at her previous schools. She aims to bring her department together and grow the school’s knowledge of the French language.

“One of the main activities we will do is the fondue party in December, which was always a huge hit at my old schools and that’s where my students will get to learn how to make real French fondue, both the dessert form and the actual kind of meal form,” Smith said.

“And then we will open it up for members of the school, and they can walk through for a couple of bucks and have a plate of fondue and experience what the true French fondue is.”

Smith encourages current and previous French students to join the French Club as a place for students of all grades and experience levels to share together for their love of the language.

“We can still explore and be around the French culture, the language and also learn activities and kind of act out those activities through cultural events that correspond to the month or just various food festivals that take place and just learning more about and even just watching like videos in French or having conversation time with natives.” 

Many students are excited about the new opportunities that the French club will offer. Sophomore Kady Coulibaly is specifically looking forward to cooking French dishes and meeting new people. 

“I feel like it would be very interesting. And from that, we can make friends friends that can last for a life. So you just never know,” Coulibaly said. “It’s just overall, the beginning of something new and I’m excited to be a part of it.”

Senior Cora Jones is looking forward to serving the French community in Kansas and connecting with native speakers. Jones aims to participate in more French cultural experiences. 

“I want to do as much as possible with French club, the things, the events that we talked about, seemed interesting, even with French NHS, just like the service opportunities,” Jones said. “[Madame Smith] talked about how we might be able to do things with [native speakers], and I think that’s probably going to be the most exciting thing for me as a fluent speaker, just to get that practice is going to be cool and fun.”

Smith overall hopes to bring awareness to the magnitude of the French community in Kansas as well as the world.  

“Some other activities we’re going to do is we’re going to enlighten the community as to how big the French language is, how many countries it is used in the world, and how many people speak French in the world. And so that’ll be more of like an exploratory, kind of an open your eyes to the French language and culture that is out there.”