Mathilde is a current student in the LTS program who is also completing an MA in French in the Romance Languages Department

Hello Mathilde! Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

Bonjour! I am Mathilde, and I come from Bordeaux, in the southwest of France (the wine city!). After completing my undergraduate studies in psychology in France, I decided to spend some time away from school and travel to the US to improve my English and make new connections. I worked as an Aupair in New Jersey, as a French teacher and cultural program coordinator in Oregon and Colorado, and I am now back at school, finishing my MA in Romance Languages and LTS. In my free time, I love eating new food, cooking and traveling along the Oregon coast! I also love photography and yoga.

You are a concurrent degree student in both French (in the department of Romance Languages) and in LTS (department of Linguistics). How are these two degrees informing each other for your goals?

After starting my MA in Romance Languages, I decided that I wanted to supplement it with some pedagogy courses, since I have a background in teaching French and I was teaching for the French department. That’s when I discovered the LTS program! By joining LTS, I truly shaped my curriculum and my MA the way that I intended. I have also been very fortunate to be able to make my two Masters interconnect, in a way. My focus in RL is on the feminist decolonial literature of the Antilles (the French Caribbeans), and my focus in LTS is to create teaching material and resources for introductory courses at the University level in order to decolonize the French curriculum. I aim to move away from a France-centered curriculum and from simplistic representations of the francophone world (as it is often illustrated in textbooks) by using some of the texts that I have been studying in my RL MA.

What specifically are you working on for your LTS project?

I believe that the diversity of the francophone world is what makes the language so beautiful and fascinating. In a world more connected now than ever, every teacher should diversify their curriculum. For that reason, I am creating a teaching portfolio to help teachers of French move away from a France-centered curriculum. France is often over-represented in French textbooks. Of course, the language comes from France and the culture is very attractive to most learners, but the reality is that French is the only language along with English that is spoken on every continent. The reasons are historical and I believe that understanding the history of colonization is important to learn the language. Rather than just acknowledging the francophone world and « othering » it, like most textbooks do, I aim to create resources that will integrate different francophone dialects and cultures into the French curriculum, starting at a beginner level.

What do you think you might do next after graduating with two MA degrees?

My plan is to stay in Oregon for now, and I would love to teach French using resources and methodologies that I created during the program! I would love to continue working on curriculums and ways to apply my teaching philosophy to the classroom. I would also be very interested in collaborating with other teachers or stakeholders to create curriculum designs. Let me know if you hear of any open position! I am interested in public schools as well as language schools.

You have also been a GE teaching French these past 2 years. What is most rewarding for you about teaching language? What is most challenging?

Yes, and I love it! Although it is challenging to teach a class while being in grad school, it has been very rewarding. I really enjoy taking time to create my lessons and incorporating methodologies that I learned in my LT courses. I can definitely see that I am a better teacher now that I started the LTS program! I am now teaching the 200-level sequence, which includes a lot more discussions than the 100-level sequence. One happy moment that I had recently was seeing that two of my students chose to prepare their oral presentation on a female writer from Guadeloupe that I decided to talk about in class one day because I am working on her novels in my MA. It is so great to be able to include my passion for francophone literature in my lesson plans, and it is even greater to realize that students are receptive to it. The main constraint for me however is that I can’t fully commit to the courses I teach since I have to focus on my schoolwork. I wish that I could participate in designing the syllabi, creating the assignments, choosing the content, etc. I also wish that I had more time to dedicate with my students, especially these past two terms with the return in-person, a lot of them need extra support that I can’t always offer due to lack of time.

What is a fun fact about yourself that others may not know?

As a child, I lived in New Caledonia for six years! Could it influence my dedication to teach the francophone world?… maybe 🙂