In 1985, after my younger daughter began pre-school, I resumed teaching French to Middle schoolers in a small private school in Philadelphia.
In 1991, my teaching expanded to full-time French FLES (Foreign Language Elementary School) to students, grades One through Eight.
From June through August,1993, I spent the summer in Paris and Lyon, France as an NEH Foreign Language Fellow researching childen's Francophone music.
Since September 1993, I have been a full-time teacher of French at the Episcopal Academy, Merion, Pennsylvania. In the first few years I taught French at levels one, three and five (an Honors Fifth year Culture Francaise course).
By the Spring of 1994, thanks to the enlightened Technology Department here at EA, I began surfing the Net for Internet resources to enrich my classes. In keeping with the National Standards for FL Teaching, I was determined to find materials adaptable to all my classes, from my Middle School beginners to my Grade Twelve 5th year Culture/Sociology course in French. It was my intent also to cluster together only those sites useful for specific themes. By 1996, after tortuous and often dead-end forays into cyberspace with litle useful Web content to show, more resoures began to come on line. My first Web-related class projects made use of online headlines. I printed class copies or often cut up topics for class news broadcasts. I also found many French-language geography sites, many of which were disconnected by afternoon local Philadelphia time, so I had to rush about in the AM! as I surfed I came across useful sites which I clustered for colleagues in Spanish, Italian and German.
Today at the end of 1998, I continue to work regularly on my site which is now made up of two overall parts: the first, thematically arranged sites with activities (further sub-divided into French, Spanish, German and Italian) and the second, an Online Technology Course for Foreign Language teachers, composed of six sessions.
The Online Technology course is intended to allow FL teachers the opportunity to work together with colleagues to find out the following: what minimal mechanicals are needed; what's out there (using my Web site); what interactive goals and projects might I set up using the Internet as a tool; what sorts of projects, activities and learning scenarios for all levels are there; what next for FL teachers seeking to integrate technology into their teaching goals.
Since 1995, I have given Internet Workshops for mixed FL and specific FL audiences. In addition to more than ten regional Conferences, where I offer 3 hour hands-on Workshops, I have most recently presented at the National AATF Congres in Montreal in 1998; at the ACTFL Conference in Nashville, 1998; at the Institut Francaise Summer Workshop of the l Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, June, 1998; at the regional AATF Fall Conference (October 14, 1998) and at the Pa. PSMLA Conference in State College, PA (October 24, 1998).
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