Clair 2014: Create to teach, learn by creating

Relive the main lines of the conference given by Jean-Yves Fréchette, an educator with a galloping imagination, at the 2014 Clair conference.

At the Clair International Colloquium 2014, participants had the chance to attend a total of seven exceptional conferences, the content of which was very varied. Here is a short summary of one of them, given by Jean-Yves Fréchette, retired literature professor at Cégep François Xavier-Garneau and founding member of Institute of Comparative Twitterature.

From the outset, Mr. Fréchette said he was very happy to present his career to Clair, since for the past four years he has himself been a very enthusiastic participant in the Symposium. After announcing the central idea of his words, which is the pleasure of teaching and innovating, it is with fervor that he exposed his experiences, each as creative and surprising as the next in the conference. Create to teach, learn by creating.

In his 35-year career, the evolution of his teaching has taken him on a variety of grounds and has literally allowed him to take classes out of school. Through his unbridled imagination, his listening to students and his desire to make learning fun, this visionary teacher was certainly one of the forerunners of the creative use of technology in a school setting.

Innovating, according to him, goes through the senses. There is no doubt that the 10,000 elementary and secondary students of the Beauce-Etchemin CS, who participated in the writing of the 160 km strip of text deployed in their village in 1984, still remember this experience! The route of the text, discussed in the conference, is an example of what the career of this passionate man was and continues to be.

Twitter is another field for this poet and creator to express. His character Pierre-Paul Pleau, whose poems can be read on his account, and Tweet Rebel, his collection of poetic prose, testify to the vivacity of a man who knew how to carry the audience, for a moment, in a movement of shared pleasure.

It is difficult to summarize such an inspired flight. Luckily, this conference (as well as all the others presented during the Colloquium) can be viewed online on the Clair website. All that remains is to hope that Mr. Fréchette increases his presence in Quebec schools in order to inspire teachers and instill in them the desire to innovate in the fun.