The first thing you hear upon walking into Madame Krikorian’s classroom is always “Bonjour tout le monde!” The second is a sleepy but cheerful chorus of “Bonjour, Madame” as students pull out homework packets and start on their warm-up.

Madame Krikorian has been my French teacher for all four years of high school. Throughout my time in her class, I have conquered not only tricky verb tenses and irregular past participles, but my fear of asking questions and my diffidence in approaching teachers. Her stern but affable approach to teaching is one-of-a-kind; though cell phones are strictly prohibited in the classroom (as is the norm in French schools), her interactions with her students are always laced with light-hearted jokes and jabs. If a student starts falling asleep in class, she calls them out, but not without admitting that she wants to take a nap too. Once, when we were still in online school, a student started complaining about French to his friend, not realizing he was unmuted. Rather than punish the student, Madame only laughed and made a joke to defuse the situation.

Though the subject matter is interesting in and of itself, I think the environment of Madame’s classroom is what makes learning French so addictive. Instead of A+’s, we get A :)’s, and her corrections on our in-class essays are always thorough, thoughtful, and encouraging. No matter whether you’re in French 1 or AP French, she maintains a comfortable balance between education and entertainment, drawing from a wide variety of movies, podcasts, poems, articles, news clips, and sketches to supplement our classwork. In her class, learning no longer consists of cramming vocab into our heads the night before un examen, but comes naturally as the result of her carefully planned lessons.

As an American, I knew nothing about Europe before taking French. (At one point I thought Italy was a city.) But with the help of the many maps posted around the room and our lessons on francophone regions around the world, Madame Krikorian introduced us to cultures from Senegal to Switzerland through a combination of Youtube videos, presentation projects, and poems.

I also came to meet some of the most intelligent and hilarious people I know because of French class. Madame Krikorian’s dedication to forging a supportive rapport between her students allows us to learn while also building genuine interpersonal relationships: Whether it’s sharing an eraser for a test, drawing mustaches on textbook pictures, or hyping each other up in Quizlet Live groups, there’s always more than enough room for games, laughter, and conversation on our plates. Thanks to her countless partner conversation exercises and conjugation competitions, I almost always end up bonding more with my seat partners in French than in any other class. 

Every year, French has consistently been my favorite period. Which means, as a senior, I find it difficult to accept that there will be no more dictées, chansons, or rédactions after this year (not at AHS, at least). But as I look back on these past four years and ahead at the ones ahead of me, I can only be heartened by the knowledge that AHS’ future freshmen francophiles are in good hands. Merci beaucoup, Madame Krikorian!