a Monterey-based educator and translator who promotes the French language and Francophone cultures through teaching and research.

Teaching Philosophy

French/Russian/English

Having been taught as a student through the grammar-translation method, I first became familiar with communicative approaches to language learning when I started teaching English in Russia in 2002. It was quite challenging since I had no models to follow from my own schooling. I persevered but ended up feeling only partially successful because my students continued to rely heavily on their native language. I was able to fully embrace communicative techniques and target language immersion when I started teaching French as a TA at UW-Milwaukee. Ever since those two and a half years, I have actively pursued professional development in the area of pedagogy in order to continue to perfect my teaching methodology. To that aim, I have also remained highly responsive to and serious about feedback from my students and colleagues.

As a teacher, I am attentive, engaged, enthusiastic, and passionate about French and Francophone studies in language, literature, and culture. During my lessons, I stay energetic and positive. A staunch advocate of the student-centered classroom, I structure much of class time as pair and group work, circulating to listen to student conversations, to answer questions, and to provide feedback when helpful. I follow ACTFL guidelines and ensure that every lesson, whether it is facilitated through technology or classroom settings, is “standard-based, instructor-designed, learner-centered, and aims at developing a proficiency in the target language through interactive, meaningful, and cognitively engaging learning experiences” (ACTFL 2017 a). Every class period I provide my students with multiple opportunities to speak and I commit to finding ways to teach exclusively in the target language. My students say that I have “unique and creative ways of getting the class to interact more and work together throughout [and that]  the class  helped [their] speaking quite a bit by challenging to speak about complicated topics” (from evaluations).

Another essential pillar in my teaching is the use of a wide variety of culturally authentic materials to support language and cultural learning, including realia, images, art, jokes, idioms, songs, movie clips, documents, literature, and non-fiction. Culture undergirds every lesson I teach. I make sure to bring in physical items as much as possible in order to take advantage of all of the senses in learning, but I also take full advantage of technology to provide my students with quick and easy access to digital resources across the Francophone world. For me, technology is a pedagogical tool, the use of which is informed by the needs of students, and helps modify and redefine teaching tasks, thus augmenting learners’ experience.

I believe that it is an increasingly important role for us as teachers to curate such materials for our students and to individualize instruction whenever possible. For example, my favorite way to teach the usage of the passé composé and the imparfait is via true stories. We might read letters from soldiers to their loved ones in World War I or I might share how my grandparents met, illustrating their story with family photos and anecdotes. Later, when I ask my students to also share something about their past, they feel comfortable doing it, having learned something about me.

My lessons are personable and personalized. Students not only feel valued in this way, but they also see me both as a human and a learner like them. I find that they then tend to respond in a more natural way, too. These connections with students are not simply highly gratifying – I believe that they are essential in meeting learning objectives in the classroom. When I stepped into my first classroom in the U.S., I felt a strong connection to my students and I soon came to understand that teaching a language as diverse as French and Francophone cultures is my vocation. I am on the right path and I look forward to growing as an educator, just as I hope to always grow as a learner.

Sample lesson novice learners (French)

Sample lesson plan for low intermediate learners, grades 6-8 (French)

Teaching sample for intermediate students (4th semester French LSU)

Handwriting workbook tutorial videos of Russian letters (Russian)

Research

Dissertation

My dissertation “If they don't tell you, the hair will”:  Hair Narrative in Contemporary Women’s Writing focuses on literary texts by French, Francophone, and Anglophone women writers of African descent: Fabienne Kanor (French of Martinican origin), Gisèle Pineau (Guadeloupean), Toni Morrison (African-American), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigerian), and Rokhaya Diallo (French). In close readings of their novels informed by historical and cultural contexts, I am the first to argue that hair narrative, a literary device that uses hair to uncover deeper social and political issues bound up in identity politics, gives us crucial insights into the life experiences of women. At the same time, hair narrative invites a critical investigation of colonial and racial oppression. In the introduction to my dissertation I study representations of women’s hair in canonical French literature, including Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Charles Baudelaire, and George Sand.

For dissertation abstract click here

Upcoming presentations:

Past presentations:

Presentation: “Twisted narratives in Tony Morrison Beloved” The American Comparative Literature Association's 2020 Annual Meeting in Chicago, March 19th-22nd, 2020.

Seminar: In the thick of it: a study of hair and its intersections with identity, politics, and culture (organizer) Presentation: “Hair as Colonial Product in Fabienne Kanor's D'eaux Douces and Gisèle Pineau's Fleur De Barbarie” The American Comparative Literature Association's 2019 Annual Meeting, Georgetown University in Washington, DC, March 7th-10th, 2019.