Madame Kelleher hands back work to her language students.
“Madame is incredibly know-ledgeable about the French language and culture, considering she lived in France for many years, but she also had a very effective way of imparting that knowledge on to her students”
C’est la Vie de Madame Kelleher
French Force of the Foreign Language Department
By Laura Durham - 09/11
s I walked into room B-316 the first day of freshman year, I was immediately intimidated and slightly terrified. We filed into the classroom only to find our French teacher, Mrs. Angela Kelleher, to epitomize a true Parisian —great clothes, sophisticated, and with a certain je ne sais quoi. However, as soon as she opened her mouth to speak, we knew that something was different. As she continued to speak and welcome us we figured it out—she had an authentic French accent. It sounded so foreign to us, despite our three previous years of middle school French classes, which unfortunately did not help us to begin to decode what Madame was saying to us.
Between vocabulary quizzes and writing assignments during my school years with Madame, I have heard snippets, in French of course, of her fascinating life as a cultured linguist—amazingly, she speaks four languages.
Mrs. Kelleher was born in Italy, but moved to New York City with her family when she was five. Her parents enrolled her in school, where she was forced to learn English, “I had no other choice!” Kelleher said.
As her English improved and Mrs. Kelleher progressed through school, she chose to take up French as her foreign language, and perfect a third spoken language. She enjoyed the language so much that after her undergraduate studies at Columbia University, she continued on there to study 19th Century French Literature in graduate school. At that time, there were only five women in Columbia’s graduate school at compared to thousands of men—talk about determination and intelligence.
While still in grad school Mrs. Kelleher was teaching in the Rye School System in Westchester County, New York. After four years of teaching French there, she moved to France and occasionally substituted at an American School, but mostly traveled extensively throughout Europe and took pastry classes in Paris. “Once you’re in Europe, it is so easy to hop on the train and end up in a different country in a couple of hours,” Kelleher said. She and her husband frequently vacationed to an island off the coast of Spain, where she began to pick up Spanish, her fourth language. After three years in Europe, Mr. and Mrs. Kelleher returned to the United States, but moved to our neighboring town, New Canaan.
When she returned, the Rye School system snatched her up again, and she worked there for 33 years. After they learned of her travels to Spain, Rye High School encouraged Kelleher to take Spanish classes and get certified to teach that language. However, in 2006, my freshman year, she made the wise decision to work at Darien High School. “I love it here—the people are great,” Madame said.
Her colleagues are equally complimentary about her; also a French and Spanish teacher, Mrs. Susan Mason enjoys working with Kelleher, “While every teacher has his or her own unique style of teaching, she and I often collaborate and share a similar view of the teaching of a foreign language,” Mrs. Mason said.
Although all French students are introduced to the culture of French speaking countries, Madame Kelleher took it a little bit farther. We watched French made movies that exposed us to the history and culture of the particular time periods, and we read French literature that enhanced our knowledge of the language. And of course Madame shared her own stories of travels and trips to France, which we all looked forward to. “Madame is incredibly knowledgeable about the French language and culture, considering she lived in France for many years, but she also had a very effective way of imparting that knowledge on to her students,” Lexy Crouse said.
Last year in French 4 Honors, I was in a class of seven students. While actively practicing our French skills, Madame took it a step further and involved us in discussions about the world and philosophical subjects. "I have had Madam twice now, and I learned a lot of French from her, but I also learned a lot of valuable life lessons," senior Alex Leinroth said. Each day, the class would watch an online French News Channel, that brought global issues to life in French. “She makes the material interesting and relatable to our lives in ways such as showing the French News, which not only helped develop our language but also taught us something about the modern culture,” Louie Rawden said.
Although she is known to most of her students as simply Madame, over the two years that I had the privilege to be her French student, I have learned that one word cannot begin to describe her.
