Presenters

mathieu Ausseil

Mathieu Ausseil est attaché de coopération éducative à l’Ambassade de France à Washington DC. Il administre à ce titre le French Dual Language Fund et, en partenariat avec les attachés en charge de la coopération éducative dans les consulats, définit le plan de soutien de l’Ambassade à l’enseignement bilingue francophone aux Etats-Unis. Il intervient également dans le suivi des programmes d’assistants de langue et dans la promotion de l’enseignement du français dans le K12 et dans le supérieur.

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!”

Victoria Creux-Laroche

Victoria Creux-Laroche is the Program Officer of French Dual Language and Immersion at the French Embassy in the United States.

Megan Diercks, M.A.

Megan Diercks (@mmediercks) is the executive director of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF). Previously, she was the AATF National Bulletin Editor, the AATF Region IX (Northwest) Representative, and the Assistant National French Contest Director. Megan has taught at both the high school and post-secondary levels, most recently at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO.

"Emma" Amrein Franks

Emmanuelle Franks (@CaliFrenchLife) is the Executive Director of Alliance Française de Pasadena, a DELF-DALF examiner trainer and a teacher trainer certified by TV5MONDE. She is the founder of Califrenchlife, specialized in French teachers training;  she’s a TCF examiner and she’s currently a student in multimedia journalism at the University of Toronto. 

She has over a decade of experience teaching English, French and Spanish. Students varied from beginner to Masters level, at companies and in colleges. She has been a sports journalist for SwimSwam, an American magazine specialized in swimming. She has written articles about French culture in Le Mag’ Fr@ncophone and she has a blog specialized in French culture and French language: https://califrenchlife.com/

Juliette Hanauer

Juliette Hanauer is an Education and Youth Project Officer at the French NOC. The French NOC developp projects and tools to increase sport and Olympic culture.

Benoît Labat

Benoît Labat is Attaché for Higher Education and French language at the French Consulate in Los Angeles (@FranceinLA). He previously worked for several years in Paris in the central administration : first at the Ministry of Education, where he participated in the management of the network of private schools and then at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. He was there first interested in European policies before working on bilateral internationalization strategies and programs, as deputy head of the cooperation programs department. Prior to joining Los Angeles in 2021, Benoît Labat served as a university attaché at the French Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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.

Rebekah Lugo

Rebekah Lugo is a French Immersion educator with 17 years experience teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade social studies (in French) and recently, AP French. She is focused on creating as many opportunities for students to interact and use their French in fun and meaningful ways, especially how technology can be leveraged to boost their learning. Rebekah also mentors teachers who are new to the profession, excited to show them the joy of teaching and all the different ways they can reach their students. She is also a parent to two daughters in French Immersion education and has brought that new perspective to her teaching. 

Emilie Nolf

Emilie Nolf is the founder and CEO of Agate formation - a training center for French teachers teaching in a multilingual context. 

In addition to a broad 20-year teaching experience (from pre-K to 12th grade), she's also accumulated more than 10 years of experience as a professional coach and education consultant for teachers, international schools and international schools associations.  

She has recently received the Academic Palms (a.k.a Palmes Académiques), awarding her expertise in bilingualism.

Valerie Sun, Ed.D.

Valerie Sun (@MlleValsunshine) is a dual-immersion and edtech consultant at EmpowerED Consulting. As a progressive, techy educator since 2005 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 - Levels 1 & 2 and Trainer, and an Apple Teacher. 

Valerie is a published author of Navigating Dual Immersion: A Teacher's Companion for the School Year and Beyond where she guides teachers throughout their first years of dual immersion teaching. Her 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. 

Benjamin Tinsley, M.A.

A teacher of 14 years and a lifelong student, Ben has dedicated his professional and personal life to the pursuit of substantive diversity, equity, and belonging in education. In the classroom, he has had the opportunity to work with teachers and schools around the world to develop curricula that center Black Indigenous Communities of Color and other historically marginalized peoples.

Ben’s recent work has focused primarily on leveraging language acquisition and language education toward developing global literacy and 21st-Century competencies.