Our Teachers

Régine Ananou

Regine Ananou

Originally from the Southwest of France, Régine is a native French speaker as well as near-native Spanish speaker. Régine earned her M.A. in English and Spanish with a concentration in international business from the University of Toulouse-Mirail, France. For the past twenty years, Régine has been teaching French and Spanish from kindergarten to high school through the Alliance Française network and at several universities on the U.S. East Coast. Prior to her family’s relocation to Long Island in the fall of 2023, Régine enjoyed teaching at Rice Memorial High school in South Burlington, where she added an AP French Language and Culture class.

Her areas of academic interest include the fundamental components of language arts such as listening, reading, speaking, and writing. 

Overall, Régine is grateful for the opportunity to share her language skills as she strives to foster an appreciation for cultural differences with all her students.

Liane Blanchard

Lianne Blanchard grew up in northern Ontario, near the Quebec border. She attended francophone schools and went on to earn her B.A. in French Language and Literature at the University of Toronto. She later earned her M.A. in French studies at the University of Waterloo.

Starting with her third year of undergrad in Nantes, France, Lianne spent much of the last two decades traveling. In addition to French, she has studied Korean, German, and Spanish. She has taught a wide range of language learners, from middle school through university level as well as adults, in classrooms from the United States and Canada to Cameroon, Syria, and South Korea. She has been teaching high school in Vermont since 2015.

Lucas Dunn

Lucas Dunn

A native Vermonter, Lucas grew up on the Canadian border. While he was working at a predominantly French-speaking campground in Alburgh, he gained French speaking ability language and an appreciation for Québec’s culture and people. He formally studied French at Middlebury College from 2005 to 2009. After graduation he taught French in public schools. In 2015 he completed Middlebury’s Immersion program and earned his master’s degree. For the past ten years he has worked as a middle and high school French teacher. He has lived in Bordeaux, France, and frequents Québec. At the AFLCR he strives to improve students’ French speaking ability; to increase their appreciation of Québécois and French cultures in Vermont; and to help break down linguistic and cultural barriers. He hopes the Burlington area will become even more of a hub for visiting Québécois, and will increasingly embrace French language and culture.

 

 

Marcus Grace

Marcus Grace is a native Vermonter who has had a passion for the French language since Middle School. He went on his high school French Club trip to France and voilà! Smitten! As a result, he went to France as an exchange student, and his life took a completely different turn.

Professionally, he taught English in northern France for four years and has been teaching French at Harwood Union High School for the last twenty. He has led many trips both to France and to Québec.

What is most important to him is his family and everything related to it, especially the amazing meals, long walks, exciting trips, and unforgettable moments with his wife Caroline and their two bilingual children: Anne-Marie and Nicholas.

Marc Juneau

Marc taught high school French for twenty years in both private and public settings before settling to teach exclusively at the Alliance. He was literally born into it, the son of two career-long French professors who raised him first speaking French in Burlington. After growing up in Vermont and in France, he earned his B.A. at U.V.M. in French and English, and went on to obtain his M.A. from Middlebury College in French Language. Highlights from his education included years abroad spent in Nice and Paris, first with UVM’s Vermont Overseas Studies Program, and then later with Middlebury at the Université de Paris IX (Nanterre). His coursework in history, literature and art was especially inspiring and is what eventually pushed him toward teaching – that he might share with others the depth and diversity of France’s cultural heritage, including contributions from lesser-known French-speaking regions of the world. Today, while he still enjoys teaching the expressions and structures that are unique to the French language, he equally appreciates being able to offer new classes at the AFCLR that allow him to explore other areas: regional history, contemporary literature and popular culture. He is delighted to live in a part of the world that places so much emphasis on French and French cultural heritage.

Laurence Lawson

Laurence Lawson

Laurence is a native French speaker. She was born in France near Lyon and studied at the University of Bordeaux III. After graduation, she traveled widely and taught French at elementary- and middle-school levels in East Kilbride, Scotland, and Sydney, Australia; she also taught continuing education classes in Cambridge, England. From 2008 to 2021, she was the French teacher at Damien High School in La Verne, California, where she also chaired the world language department and organized a student exchange program with students at Saint-Marc High School in Lyon. She now teaches at Burlington High School.

She travels to France on a regular basis to visit family and friends. At the AFLCR, Laurence is pleased to have the opportunity to share her passion for French language and culture with students of all levels and ages.

Nikki Matheson

Born of a Scottish father and French-Canadian maman, Nikki grew up in the New York City area and earned her BA in French at St. Lawrence University, with a year spent at the Faculté de Rouen. She moved to Paris to tour with a musical group. She worked as a musician, backup vocalist, song adapter, and translation editor. Her musical expeditions took her all over Europe and as far away as Japan. In 2000, after almost fourteen years, she moved to Vermont, but her bilingual life did not stop there. She went on to earn her Masters in Teaching French (MATSL) at Bennington College. She has taught in elementary schools in the Mad River Valley, at the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy’s immersion program for high school students, and at Norwich University, where she currently works. She has added some ESL graduate work and teaching as well. Through a Defense Department grant, she taught French and Wolof to members of the Vermont Army National Guard, who were being deployed to Senegal to participate in Vermont’s State Partnership Program. This led to her interpreting for President Sall of Senegal during his visit to Vermont in 2014. While teaching a the Alliance Française, Nikki continues to do translation and interpretation work, and she consults for TV and movie script adapters in France. If you are curious about her former musical career, you can visit nikkimatheson.com.

Johanna Schneider

Johanna Schneider

French has been a lifelong passion for Johanna. Growing up in New Jersey, she studied French in school from age seven, but her love affair with the language really started in high school, when she worked summers on a goat farm in the Dordogne region of France. She continued to pursue French in college and studied abroad in Marseille, France, Fez, Morocco, and Bamako, Mali. She then became an English teaching assistant in the South of France.  While completing her master’s degree in French at Middlebury College, Johanna taught high school French, levels 1 through AP, at Vermont Academy.

In addition to teaching French, Johanna worked for several years in international development, using French daily in a professional setting to manage projects in Francophone West Africa; Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin, and Senegal.  Johanna is passionate about sharing her love for the French language and Francophone cultures and is thrilled to do so through AFLCR.


Micheline Tremblay, La Directrice (Director)

Micheline Tremblay

Micheline began her long career as a French teacher in her native Quebec. After relocating to Vermont, she taught in Colchester’s middle and high schools for thirty years. In the early 2000s, she became director of the AFLCR’s French Language Center.. During her tenure as La Directrice, the school’s class sessions expanded from two to five per year, and its venues grew from a classroom in Fort Ethan Allen to spaces in Burlington, Montpelier, and Stowe. Additionally, under her directorship, the use of private tutoring sessions has greatly increased. Micheline has been actively involved in the Annual Gala Dinner fund-raiser and the Deuxième Samedi conversational gatherings. She works year round to coordinate classes and to ensure that students are properly placed. She is the AFLCR’s point person for all inquiries, both school related and general. In the coming years she hopes to enroll more younger students and to improve awareness of the depth and richness of Quebec’s culture.