Favorite color: Blue

Favorite books: Les travailleurs de la mer, L’amant, Les fleurs du mal

Favorite playwrights: Jean-Luc Lagarce, Ariane Mnouchkine, Wadji Mouawad

Favorite food: Seafood

Hobbies, sports: Sailing and climbing

As this school year begins, please welcome Mme Anne Leflot, one of the fantastic new French teachers at WIS. She comes to us this year bringing her great knowledge of French culture, literature and language.

Mme Leflot hasn’t been in the United States for very long. She spent a year in Annapolis before coming to DC three years ago. Before moving here, she had lived in cities all over France. She spent her childhood in the region of Bretagne, and later on, she went to live in other places around the country. When asked what she loved the most about France, she said, “I love the French culture, I love French food”. Her favorite French dish would be anything that involves seafood.

Having lived in the US for a while, she notes that she finds people here to be a lot more extroverted than the people back home. “Americans are a lot more at ease orally, more natural”, she says, “the French are a lot more introverted.”

As a French teacher, Mme Leflot is particularly interested in french language and literature. With her students, she says, “I love to explore how the use of the french language evolves in relation to cultures, countries and time periods.” Literature is very important to her, as she likes the idea that “students can travel within [her] class” because of it. She is also very interested in finding out how literary analysis can help students to learn more about themselves as well as about the thought process of others.

Other than the French language, the ocean is one of Mme Leflot’s greatest interests. When she was younger, she experienced two oil spills back in Bretagne. “I saw the effect that it had on the birds, on the coastline, on the jobs of the fishermen who could no longer fish”, she says, “It’s a cause I feel very connected to.” She thinks that if she hadn’t become a teacher, she would have liked to study the ocean and the environment.

Mme Leflot is very excited to become a part of an international community at WIS. She can’t wait to get to know her new students, learn about them and help them in their learning of French language and literature.

By Alya Al-Kibbi