News & Weekly Letters

This week, I am writing to you from Toronto–I know I’m the envy of you all with these exotic trips to cold, rainy/snowy climes–where Sophie and I are attending the annual AEFE (the Agency for French Education Abroad) seminar. It’s a highly institutional but necessary gathering, which reaffirms The École’s place in a network of more than 600 schools around the world.

I’m writing to you this week from San Francisco, where I’m attending a conference with heads and coordinators from French-American and French-Canadian schools. During the workshop sessions, I had the pleasure of presenting the way we do things at The École–an exercise that is always fascinating, allowing, as it does, for feedback on our practices from external perspectives.

I say it often, but one of the most fascinating and challenging aspects of our work at The École is navigating intercultural issues. My international career helped prepare me somewhat–after seven years working in a French-British-German school in Taiwan, constantly having to bridge the gap when it came to understanding others and being understood, I thought that things would be simpler in a French-American school in New York.

It’s my favorite season. The trees and streets of the West Village are covered in multicolored leaves, the stoops are lined with pumpkins, it’s chilly out, and the sky is blue as an orange, as Éluard would describe it. It’s the time of year for dressing up–for anyone who was wondering, last night I was channeling Bob Harris in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Last year, I wrote about the importance of play at school, and I was delighted to see the playfulness of our parents on display at the Halloween for Grown-Ups event–starting with Philippe and Laurence, who were magnificent as Mary Poppins and Bert the chimney sweep.

I almost didn’t write to you this week as I was giving serious consideration to a radical career change following my debut last week as an Instagram starlet. Andria managed to make me see reason and talked me out of it. So I’m picking up my pen again this week on the eve of the October break to write a letter in praise of the girls of The École who have made their presence well and truly felt since the start of the school year.