North Carolina Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of French (NC-AATF)

Ms. Leslie Bradshaw, French teacher at The Asheville School, was honored recently by the North Carolina Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of French (NC-AATF). At its spring meeting, held in Chapel Hill on April 21, 2007, NC-AATF designated Ms. Bradshaw as the 2007 winner of the Concours Pédagogique, the chapter’s annual lesson plan competition.
The Concours Pédagogique features an invitation for French teachers throughout North Carolina to submit creative and successful plans for teaching French language, literature, and culture at any level. Submissions are reviewed by the NC-AATF Executive Board, and winners are recognized at each year’s spring meeting with a certificate and a cash award. In addition, winners are invited to present their successful lesson plans at a future meeting of the NC-AATF, and their plan is widely distributed to other French teachers through publication in the chapter newsletter, The NC-AATF Bulletin.
Ms. Bradshaw, who taught French at The Asheville School from 1982-1987 and now since 1998, holds an A.B., magna cum laude, degree in Romance Languages from Bowdoin College and an M.A. in French literature from Tufts University. She has participated in a number of professional development opportunities for French teachers in the US and in France, including Advanced Placement Workshops in Language and Literature, summer seminars, and the Institute for American Universities in Avignon, France.
Ms. Bradshaw has taught French, Spanish, and music both privately and in schools and colleges in North Carolina, Maine, and Massachusetts, as well as English language and America civilization at the Université de Clermont-Ferrand in France.
Ms. Bradshaw is an active member of the American Association of Teachers of French and of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. She regularly participates in activities sponsored by those organizations, and she is an active participant in activities of her school and community.
The 2007 NC-AATF winning lesson plan presents Ms. Bradshaw’s strategy for teaching and learning appropriate use of French possessive adjectives through personalized opportunities for their use. Her children, Nathan, 20, and Andrew, 17, and her husband David J. Bradshaw, Professor of English and Classical Literature at Warren Wilson College, feature prominently in the materials that she uses for these activities. Ms. Bradshaw describes these lessons as offering students a more natural context to apply French grammar and as offering students of different abilities the opportunity to “‘show their stuff’” as they simultaneously use material they have already learned and practice new material.
NC-AATF is proud to honor Ms. Leslie Bradshaw as the 2007 winner of the Concours Pédagogique and congratulates The Asheville School as it draws on talented and experienced faculty members like Ms. Leslie Bradshaw to foster the growth of its French program.