Presenters

Axelle Castro

Axelle is originally from France and has been living in the US for close to 20 years. Her son, Liam, 10 years old is currently in 4^th grade French dual-immersion program. Since her entire family is still living in France it was important for her that her son could communicate with that side of his family. Liam was diagnosed with ASD when he was about 3 years old, so he has an IEP at school and has no problem with following up the dual language curriculum.

Monique Clifford, M.Ed.

Monique Clifford was born and raised in San Diego where she began her French study in high school. She studied a year in Tours, France, hosted lovingly by two families and began her love of living life in French. At SDSU she obtained a BA in International Commerce emphasizing French Language and Culture. While living in Alaska, Germany, and North Dakota, she earned a M.Ed. focused on the Adult Learner in Higher Education from University of Oklahoma in Europe. Monique discovered French Immersion Education in Manitoba, Canada, found her calling to raise her two sons bilingually, and enrolled them in The Language Academy, a public French Immersion program in San Diego founded in 1995.

After many years of being involved as a parent, Monique earned her Multiple Subjects credential and Bilingual Authorization in French. She has been teaching Kindergarten at Language Academy for 9 years. She is gratefully Project GLAD trained. In 2019, she was honored to collaborate on Dr. Val Sun’s Dream Team of San Diego and Los Angeles-area French Immersion teachers to begin a CA Curriculum Map, thanks to the funding by the FACE Dual Language Fund Initiative.

Monique's continued efforts working with amazing colleagues and the French Consulate of Los Angeles are to increase prospects for continuing French proficiency through university for our students leaving K-8 programs each year, while advocating a new pathway for high school and higher education French World Language programs to meet the growing demand for Future Immersion Teachers and multilingual professionals, so that all our kids can reach their dreams and add, “Et en plus, je parle français!”

Rachèle DeMeo

Over the last 15+ years, Rachele DeMeo had experience teaching K-2, 6-12 and College (MiraCosta College (8 years) & Palomar College). She specializes in teaching predominantly French (all levels) but has also taught Italian (beginner’s) and English (as a Second Language). She founded Belle Terre Academy in 2019, offering online language courses. She currently teaches, does weekly YouTube videos, writes books (3 have been published so far) and speaks at a variety of workshops and conferences.

She is on the executive board of the American Association of Teachers of French (San Diego Chapter), as president. She genuinely enjoys helping others--from students, professors to other members in the community. She also serves as president for FLAM San Diego which provides French classes for French-speaking children in the San Diego region.

Rachele is married, has two children (she’s raising bilingual) and many pets.

Kelly Ibanez, M.S., CCC-SLP

Kelly Ibanez is a bilingual speech language pathologist in Los Angeles who serves students in dual language Spanish-English and bilingual Korean-English programs from Kindergarten-5th grade at Charles H. Kim Elementary school. She has presented seminars at national conferences on providing evidence-based speech and language assessment and treatment for monolingual clinicians who serve bilingual students. She also creates and disseminates bilingual language acquisition resources on her blog, The Hola Blog (www.theholablog.com). Kelly completed her speech language pathology internship at UCLA Medical Center in the Neuropsychiatric Institute Early Child Partial Hospitalization Program, and has worked at Kaiser Permanente Panorama City Medical Center, in private practice, and for LAUSD as a bilingual speech language pathologist.

Cristina Ladas

Maria Cristina is the Director of World Language Programs in Cave Creek Unified School District in Arizona (north side of Phoenix). She has helped build language pathways in Spanish, Chinese and now French immersion K-12, although French immersion is only up through 4th grade at this point. Cristina is on the ACTFL Board of Directors as well as for her state organization, the AZ Language Association. She coordinates the AZ DLI Network, is involved in legislative advocacy for DLI and has had her own three children participate successfully in the 17-year old Spanish immersion program in her district.

Olivier Ngo

Olivier Ngo is the Higher Education and French Language Attaché at the French Consulate in Los Angeles (@FranceinLA) where he works to promote French language and to develop academic partnerships between the United States and France.

The mission of the French Embassy’s Cultural Services (@SpeakFrenchinLA) is to strengthen the presence of the French language in American primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools and to support research projects in Humanities and Social Sciences departments.

Valerie Sun, Ed.D.

Valerie Sun (@MlleValsunshine) is a dual-immersion and edtech consultant at EmpowerED Consulting. As a progressive, techy educator of thirteen years in private and public schools across elementary and post-secondary education, she developed a tech-infused French dual-immersion curriculum in Glendale Unified School District. She is a certified TV5MONDE trainer, a certified DELF-DALF examiner/corrector, a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, a Google Certified Educator - Level 1 & 2, and an Apple Teacher.

Valerie's dissertation titled Dueling Complexities: Experiences of Dual-Lang Immersion Teachers, focused on dual-immersion teacher experiences. Her goal is to support immersion teachers in their craft as language and culture ambassadors.