A Swiss tradition came to the Lake Champlain Waldorf School as students in the grade school celebrated Fête de l’Escalade.
“The Escalade celebrates the night of Dec. 11 in 1602 when Geneva was saved from French rule by the quick-thinking mother of 14 and her pot of soup,” French teacher Veronica Bernicke said.
It was Bernicke who introduced students to the celebration. “This is a wonderful celebration from the area I grew up in Switzerland and where my sister and her family still live. It is near and dear to me. It celebrates a historically significant event with a female heroine and is non-religious, which is different at this time of year,” she said.
The Fête de L’Escalade is something that is still celebrated by schoolchildren in the canton of Geneva. “In the Canton of Geneva every grade-school child remembers this heroine with a half day of school, a community pot of soup, songs and poems, and the cracking open of a large chocolate cauldron filled with special treats by the eldest sixth grader and the youngest first grader,” Bernicke said. The LCWS celebration on Friday followed along similar lines.
First- through seventh-graders were first introduced to the festival when the school had visitors from Geneva in October. “They learned the history behind the celebration and how it the event is recognized today. The sixth-graders took the study further and refined a script to reenact the events for the rest of the school. They created props and wrote a letter to families assigning a vegetable for each class to bring in to make the soup for the festival,” Bernicke said.
LCWS seventh-graders prepared the soup and created two chocolate cauldrons, which, Bernicke said, helped to bring the Fête de L’Escalade to the school with all its flavor. “With their hard work, the sixth graders have brought the celebration and story to life,” she said. First- through fifth-grade songs and games were woven into the presentation.
“The fifth-graders have adorned homemade wooden swords as props for their verse about ‘chevalier’ (knights) and the first- through fourth-graders have learned a song or a verse,” Bernicke said.
The celebration was part of a deeper exploration of French. “While seemingly a final product, this work is only just part of our verb study in sixth grade and will kick start our storytelling in French class for the whole rest of the year. The goal is to start from the whole and then look at the parts with language that is comprehensive, tangible, visible, alive, and useable. They are off to a great start!” Bernicke said.
From the Shelburne News, written by Heather McKim on December 7, 2016.
