Minilinguists’ Consulting Services
QUALIFICATIONS
Our Senior Consultant is Kaaren S. Agnez, the Director and Owner of Petit Centre Francophone and Minilinguists.com. She has an M.Ed. in Special Education from American University, a B.A. in Theatre from Smith College with a minor in Elementary Education (and student teaching), and has passed the D.A.L.F., the most advanced French language competency exam used by their government and university system to determine fluency. She also has had professional theatre training at Eugene O’Neill Theatre Centre in New London, Connecticut, mime training at Celebration Mime Theatre in New Hampshire with Tony Montenarro
Her professional experience has included teaching at Chesnut Lodge to middle school and high school students, and working as a consultant in several local private elementary and high schools. Her curriculum has been used, in Spanish, at the Montessori International Children’s House in Annapolis for over ten years, and she recently worked with the new Spanish teacher to further improve the implementation of the program. The Francophone method can be applied to any language.
Her theatre experience includes six years of cooperating with local organizations, including Adventure Theatre, to produce six plays written and directed by her. Local actors acted with her. Her last production was offered in 2004, her own adaptation of the tales by Jean de la Fontaine, including “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse”, “The Lion and the Mouse” and “The Crow and the Fox.”
Kaaren Agnez spoke recently at the NOVA Home Education Conference in Virginia, July, 2007. She has spoken in other foreign language workshops designed for professional teachers and parents. Her topic most requested is the use of theatre to teach foreign language. Her other areas of expertise are classroom management techniques and theatre in any context in the classroom.
Ms. Agnez is responsible for after-school French programs at Beauvoir, Stoddert Elementary School (also for Spanish at this school), and Horace Mann School, all in Washington, DC. She has also designed and taught extra-curricular French programs for all levels and ages in her own school for twenty years. Her method is one of using the arts and activities to guide children through the development of comprehension and competency in vocabulary and spoken grammar. She has also taught the C.N.E.D., a French home schooling academic program in all subjects. Knowledgeable of both the French and American school systems, she blends the best of techniques and material from both to promote the development of strong second language skills in her students. She is talented in getting children to speak the target language quickly, in fun activities. 100% participation is the goal for all Minilinguists’ classes.
The Francophone and Minilinguists’ method has been proven over the years to be very efficient. An example of the results would be a family whose children, ages 5, 7, and 8, achieved basic fluency in four years. They attended an hour and ten minutes a week in group classes for one year, culminating in three weeks’ of the Francophone Theatre Immersion program The second year, they studied twice a week for an hour and ten minutes each, and again attending the camp for two weeks. The third year, they started to study three hours a week privately, rather than attending mother/child group classes, as they had for the first two years. That year they studied the French textbooks for the CP (first grade). The fourth year, they followed the first half of the complete academic program for CE1 (second grade). By the end of that year, studying three hours a week privately, and doing homework, they were basically fluent, able to speak with all of the tenses with a strong fundamental vocabulary. In 2003, an administrator for a local public immersion program visited these children and stated that they spoke “better than children in immersion classes of the same ages”.
OTHER CONSULTANTS
Various consultants are available for jobs requiring other expertise. The Centre has a rapport with consultants with skills which compliment the director’s skills. For large jobs, we work in a team. As an example: we trained a Washington Post journalist to speak French before leaving to Africa, the Ivory Coast. Ms. Agnez taught him his grammar and basic pronunciation and spoken grammar skills, as well as teaching survival French to his spouse. A team of Africans then taught him about manners, basic history and politics of the region, and those things he needs to know about functioning as a journalist in the Ivory Coast. We individualize our team and teaching according to the client’s needs.
MATERIALS
Ms. Agnez has also written original songs, and is working on a patent-pending method to provide study aids for teachers of both foreign languages and any other school subject. It helps teachers to present classical materials in a way that will address groups of children using all learning styles, to attain maximum participation and class success. These will soon be available to the public.