Aurélie Bertin is a current student in LTS who has followed her MA in French at UO with an MA in Language Teaching.

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

Hello everyone! I’m Aurélie and I am from France, from a little town called Montélimar – well known for its nougat – and I came to Eugene 4 years ago. I arrived as an exchange student at UO during my senior year and decided to stay to do a French master’s and now to do the LTS program!

I have lived in Eugene for a little bit now, but this year is going to be my first summer here. I am excited to see how Eugene and Oregon transform, but I also know I’m going to miss home. The summer in south of France is my favorite, I love dry heat, the sound of cicadas and the smell of the air (smells a lot like lavender in July).

What inspired you to focus on French language to begin with and language education more generally?

I first knew in high school that I wanted to become a teacher, before knowing that I wanted to focus on French language. I followed the scientific section in high school in France, and during my senior year my projects shifted from going to a prep school to become a vet, to become a science teacher to eventually become an English teacher. I had always been in love with languages, I was passionate about English and thanks to my English teacher Mme. Horard, I made the choice to follow this path!

I began my college studies as an English major and during my second year of college I did an internship called Étudiant Apprenti Professeur (Student Apprentice Teacher) where I followed a high school English teacher for a year. I would observe her and other teachers and that is when I discovered FLE classes (French Foreign Language). The experience of sharing my own language and culture was completely different from teaching English. In France it is common for teachers of FLE to teach another main topic and combine it with FLE, that’s when I started to consider being an English and FLE teacher.

This experience stayed with me, and I left the next year to the University of Oregon for my exchange program during my senior year. Then Winter term I think, I had a class with Professor Moore, and she told me about the French master’s and the possibility to become a GE and teach the First-Year French classes. It’s this first master’s and my first experiences as a French teacher that inspired me to continue my studies in language education. So many things inspired me and many more are inspiring right now like the LTS program, my students, and my growth as a teacher.

You and the other French GEs have started a wonderful French cinema night at the Yamada Language Center. What inspired you to get this started and what are your goals with it?

Yes! My colleague Rhone Geha and I started the French cinema club this term, we had three screenings so far and I am very excited for the two next ones. Rhone and I are passionate about films, I don’t remember exactly when and how we decided to do it, but it came up naturally when we heard it had been done a few years before.

One of our first motivations was to add to the Francophone circles and create another French space on campus. We wanted to gather the French-speakers community on campus and have another opportunity to be reunited. That would be our main goal, as well as engage with Francophone culture through films and have a space for discussions after each screening, where people coming from different cultures, backgrounds, can exchange on their screening experience.

How have you been managing the shifts between remote and in-person teaching over the past 2 years as a GE? What has seemed most important to focus on during this time to support students?

It’s a time I want to forget as a teacher and as a student, but also a time where I learned the most with different challenges to overcome. Two main things had to be addressed: first to make the class accessible to every student and make sure each of them had the space and a reliable internet connection to attend class. Then, it was essential to think of other ways to create a community online, to connect with one another, to humanize the class and create this classroom feeling online.

Coming back to in-person was a breath of fresh air, it also marked the beginning of the LTS program, so I was extra motivated to be reunited with my students and be able to engage with them and do all different kinds of activities we couldn’t do online. But more importantly, it was heartwarming to finally see my students connect with each other, to have the chance to meet in person, to bond and connect outside the class.

However, this time online also gave me another perspective of how to use technology and media in my language classes and how it can be beneficial for students’ learning. I’m glad this is over (hopefully) but I also appreciate what it taught me on how to adapt and explore as a teacher.

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

Everyone who knows me a little bit knows that music is my first passion. Three things animate me the most in life and it’s music, animals and teaching (and also cooking and baking). Actually the list is long now that I think about it, but any day I could spend hours playing, singing, writing music, hours with animals and hours thinking about new activities, preparing for my classes.