Loren Morgan ’05 along the Seine River in Paris, France.

When a letter written in French arrived at the Morgan home in York, Pa., Loren Morgan’s ’05 mother had no idea what it said. She called Loren, a French and English major, on the phone and read the letter to her. A joyful squeal leapt across Loren’s lips as she exclaimed, “I was accepted!”

After six months of waiting, she was accepted to a year-long assignment as an English teaching assistant in a French public high school. Before graduation from Albright, Morgan applied for the job on the French embassy web site, frenchculture.org. While she says her French professor “was awesome,” she felt that her speaking skills still weren’t perfect. So, she says, the only way to master it was to actually go there and learn it.

She spent the summer following graduation preparing for her trip, but didn’t know where or in what kind of school she would be teaching.“They told me to put down my top three regions. I ended up getting Provence, which is south of France in a town called L’Isle sur la Sorgue. It’s a small town, but it has a pretty big high school,” says Morgan. A combined high school and technical school, there are about 1,300 students enrolled. Students have the option of going to a regular high school or pursuing a technical degree.

The French education system is a lot different than schools in the United States, Morgan says. There are only three grades in high school. Morgan worked with first-year students, which is equivalent to the sophomore year in the United States. Everyone in France is expected to take two languages: English and a language of their choice.

“I taught conversation class and my job was to get the students to talk. They liked to talk most about
what they like, what they dislike, music, food, sports and movies. It’s really surprising how American things are in France,” Morgan says.

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“The students can be very
timid about speaking,
but I tried to remind them
that I know what it’s like.”

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Trying to get the students to talk in class was a challenge, so she worked hard to find things that interested them, but were still instructional.“I had students who were interested in the class and some students who were not. Some didn’t feel learning English was necessary,” Morgan says. Knowing first-hand that it’s difficult to learn a new language, she understood her students’ frustration. “The students can be very timid about speaking, but I tried to remind them that I know what it’s like,” Morgan says.

Although she had previously traveled to France and studied in both Quebec and Martinique, she says that it took a little while to adjust to the culture, but “it got easier once I got into a routine.” Advice from her Albright French professor Adam John, Ph.D., helped Morgan to cope. “I remembered the things my French professor taught me like what’s polite, and not to be insulted about certain phrases because they are not meant to be taken with offense.”

Now back in the United States, Morgan says she is thinking about going to graduate school to study French. Excited to pursue this path, she’s also eager to help younger people see that the United States is not the only place to live and is not the center of the world. “The world has so much more to offer,” she says.

Traveling abroad, Morgan has learned, is not only a way to learn about different cultures and people, it’s also a way to learn about oneself.“I learned I was a lot stronger than I thought I was,” she says. “Learning another language is very important. It’s seeing the world through different eyes.”

Morgan says this experience has helped her gain the confidence in knowing she can pick up, go somewhere far from home and be okay. “I’m not sure what the next year is going to bring, but I’m looking for another adventure.”

– Caitlin A. Scribner ’07