“Teaching is an instinctual art.”
-A. Bartlett Giamatti, former Yale University President

Why I teach is an easy question to answer: I love it. It is more than passion; it is instinct. What I love, I wish to share. This is simply my nature.

Ever since my own experience acquiring French, love for the French language and curiosity about the language learning process have fed my teaching and scholarship, which in turn feed each other – I pursue research in second language acquisition to enrich my understanding of the language learning process, and I bring that knowledge plus my own enthusiasm to the classroom each semester. I love what I do both as a teacher and as an academic, and this is what drives my approach to teaching.

The qualities I value most in my teaching are my energy, knowledge, caring, and approachability. It is important to me that my students feel comfortable with me and with each other, that they see that I love and am good at what I do, and that they know that I am invested in their success. Every semester I am rewarded by comments and evaluations from students that reflect the effectiveness of these qualities in my teaching, and much more.

I see my role as an instructor as that of a facilitator or guide to the language learning process, and I see my students’ role as that of little linguists or problem-solvers to be engaged in their own learning. For example, I present grammar inductively and invite students to think about the patterns they see, encouraging them to deduce each rule themselves. While I recognize that not every first- or second-year student is there to become fluent in French, my goal is nonetheless to facilitate actual learning instead of rote memorization and to have some fun in the process. And although I know I cannot win them all, I still strive to inspire my students to enjoy what they learn and perhaps continue with French even once their degree requirements are satisfied.

To keep both students and myself stimulated, I enjoy developing creative and personalized activities and projects and integrating current events and popular culture in large and small ways. This may be as simple as playing a music video while students arrive at the start of class or as grand as incorporating a recent film as an ongoing project for the semester. For example, my supervisor and I worked together to create a series of conversational activities around Paris, je t’aime, culminating in a collection of short films written, acted, and shot by our third-year students called Bloomington, je t’aime. I often draw from my theatre and writing background for inspiration as well, using in-class activites like “The Trial of Goldilocks” to practice passé composé and imparfait or creating a story starter like “C’est un mystère” to guide a formal composition. Using French in a way that is spontaneous, personalized, creative, and fun is much more rewarding and meaningful to students, and it engages and challenges them in a way they can enjoy.

As a teacher, I live for this kind of day-to-day reward of seeing students find success with French. I am just as motivated by those little light-bulb moments and smiles as I am by the effects of my teaching that take longer to be realized, such as a student’s decision to major or minor in French or to study or work abroad.

I have been fortunate to experience a wide range of teaching situations, each of which has contributed to my ongoing growth as an instructor. My favorite teaching experiences have come from classes full of energetic, motivated students, such as F250 in the spring of 2007 or F315 the following fall; however, sometimes it has been another type of class altogether that has pushed me the most to grow. For example, teaching F492, the French reading knowledge course for graduate students, demanded a very different approach than our usual undergraduate classes, and the mistakes I made as an inexperienced AI taught me about teaching presence, audience awareness, and course organization. Teaching English in France made me appreciate the importance of stimulating realia and multimedia as tools for language learning, and teaching French for the IU Honors Program has affirmed my belief in an all-French classroom. I can most clearly see my evolution as an instructor in the confidence and naturalness that has come to define my teaching presence, and I envision firmness of policy and novelty in materials development as directions in which I hope to continue to grow.

That I love what I do and strive to be my best at it are evident in my classroom every day. I am at home as a teacher of French, which in turn makes my students at home as learners of French. The comfortable atmosphere I establish and the energy with which I infuse it, together with standards of excellence for both students and myself, have become the hallmarks of my teaching, which themselves stem from a teaching philosophy that embraces passion for French as its driving force. I can be proud of what I have done so far, and look eagerly forward to what I can still do.