When Tia LeBrun was 13, her great grandmother lost the ability to speak English, entering a phase of life the Francophone world calls la deuxieme enfance — a “second childhood.” She reverted to French, LeBrun says.
A Terrebonne Parish native, LeBrun grew up in a community of French speakers, but didn’t learn the language herself until that critical moment shortly before her great grandmother died.
“A heartbreak that came with not being able to communicate with her or know how to help her was what led me to learn French,” says LeBrun. “I didn’t want that to ever happen again to any of the people I love.”
So LeBrun studied to become a French teacher. When she graduated in 2004, there were no French Immersion programs close to home. Instead, she packed up her young family and moved to Lake Charles, where she found work at one of the state’s few French Immersion schools.
“When I graduated from LSU with my education degree, I chose to work only in places that had French immersion available for my children,” says LeBrun. “And those places are very limited. It was either New Orleans, Baton Rouge or Lake Charles. … Four of my six children speak French as a result of all of my dedication as a parent to having them learn.”
Now, two decades later, Terrebonne Parish has its own French Immersion school with École Pointe-au-Chien, which opened in 2023. It’s part of a surge in popularity of French Immersion programs, even among students whose parents have no personal background in the French language besides their cultural ties to Acadiana. In 2009, the state had just over 3,000 students enrolled in French Immersion programs. Now, that number has jumped to more than 5,000.
It was a completely different story for Clélie Ancelet, a French Immersion teacher in Lafayette Parish, who learned the language at a very young age from her parents and at school while growing up in Ossun.
A product of French immersion programs, Ancelet has taught in French for more than a decade, and she says it’s a valuable way to preserve a part of Acadiana’s cultural heritage that has been neglected in the past.
“For some people, it’s so important to them because their parents lost it; they knew [their] parents are from the lost generation and/or their grandparents are from the lost generation,” says Ancelet.
Through most of the 20th century, South Louisiana’s French cultural heritage suffered decades of antagonism. Louisiana’s 1921 constitution required all public schools to teach in English, causing generations of students to lose their connection to French until the state reversed course with the creation of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) in 1968 and the passage of a new constitution in 1974 under French-speaking Gov. Edwin Edwards.
That set the stage for a fierce cultural revival. Louisiana French folkways enjoyed a new popularity and supportive institutions. In 1983, the Louisiana Department of Education authorized the teaching of French as a second language in elementary and secondary schools. Lake Charles’ public school district was the first to offer French Immersion instruction in 1986. Lafayette followed with its program in 1992.
Early instruction was done by immigrants from French-speaking countries, recruited by CODOFIL. Today many programs are run by Louisiana natives.
In its five-plus decades, CODOFIL has promoted French language education around the state, and immersion programs are one of the strongest tools it has supported in order to revive the language here. Executive Director Peggy Feehan, a longtime French Immersion teacher who moved here from Canada more than two decades ago, says she has seen the state reap the rewards of its long-term investments in the programs.
As the demand for French Immersion programs in Louisiana has increased, teachers who once were immersion students themselves have returned to the classroom to continue the language’s revival. Feehan says some of her own former students have gone on to become the French Immersion teachers that she now oversees, a testament to the success of the programs and the value they bring to the state’s Francophone heritage.
“I see my students that I was teaching in middle school, they have their own students in French,” says Feehan. “So that’s fun to see how they can converse in French at home. That’s something that didn’t exist 30 years ago.”
Lindsay Smythe, a Cameron Parish native, is now the principal at École Saint Landry, a French immersion school that opened in Sunset in 2021. Smythe learned French in her thirties after attending an immersion program in Nova Scotia. Learning French as an adult opened doors for her in her career and helped her feel more connected to her heritage.
“It wasn’t until I learned French that I really understood who I was,” says Smythe. “I think that if we can give this opportunity to the students from the beginning, and if we don’t take away those opportunities, they’re going to be more well-rounded citizens.”
Smythe says there has always been an interest in French immersion education, but there are more people now doing the hard work to open and promote the programs.
For Smythe, promoting immersion education is more than just a quirky facet of Louisiana schools. The benefits of a student learning a second language go beyond the classroom, equipping students as they leave school and enter into job searches and adult life, she says.
“For me, we kind of feel like in the immersion world we really need to make sure that we’re not just grabbing on to our history so tight that we forget that we have to evolve as a culture to get people continually interested in what we have to offer,” says Smythe.