News & Weekly Letters

I naturally must begin by wishing you a wonderful 2025, full of the things and people you love. The new year started with a cold snap but also with a double victory for the Falcons in their first basketball games of the season. We are so proud of them and are looking forward to seeing them play in Madison Square Garden on Monday. I consider their victory an excellent omen for The École to kickstart what will be a busy year for us with the move on the horizon.

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.

A few years ago, one of our departing teachers–the legendary Vincent, who taught 1st Grade, for those who knew him–made a few touching comments during his exit interview that have stayed with me since (classic, selfless Vincent–turning a moment that should have been about him into a conversation about others!) Among other things, he told me that I was at my most discerning when I managed to see things from a child’s perspective.