Alumni Profiles - Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley

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Alumni’s Page—La Page des Anciens Elèves ALUMNI PROFILE: DELPHINE SCHMIDT, CLASS OF 1983 Here is an article from Delphine who only went to EB for one year. Her younger brother (Adrien, Class of 1987) went to EB for many years. Their mother was on the Board of Ecole Bilingue. was eight years old when my family I moved from Annecy (South East of France) to San Francisco. I did not speak a word of English and therefore went to the French Lycée in San Francisco. We rapidly moved to Berkeley and I discovered EB in fifth grade. I remember, on the first day, our French teacher saying “There is a new French girl amongst us now, her name is Delphine” and I was thinking while being stared at: “Oh my! I hope someone speaks French around here!!!!” Of course the kids spoke French, they were almost all bilingual! I was very much encouraged in improving my English by Jan, our English teacher; she was always very positive “Great progress! Wonderful! You’ve improved so much!” I had a lot of happy faces on my notebook although my essays were full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors…! She really did help a lot! Everything went very fast: I felt integrated in no time, made great friends and soon preferred speaking English than French. I even volunteered to be “Annie” (the main character) in the play we were to act in front of all the parents. I ended up being the maid, though…my English accent was probably not good enough! Wonderful souvenirs which were due to the teachers, the students, everyone at EB I guess! Unfortunately, I spent only a year at EB as there was no middle school. I then attended the French American International School in San Francisco, as well as most of my EB friends. I moved back to France (Paris) when I was 14, in tenth grade. I then studied law at Sorbonne Paris, succeeded in the French bar exam in 1996, and became a lawyer specialized in mergers & acquisitions/private equity. Since the beginning of my career, I have worked, in majority, on international transactions (e.g. foreign clients purchasing French companies). I started out in an English law firm (Freshfields Paris) for 3 years before my husband and I decided to move to Lyon, located in the South East of France, close to the mountains! My husband found a job in an investment bank and I joined the law firm Soulier (well known for its foreign clients, mostly Americans) and worked there for 31⁄2 years. I am now working (still in Lyon) for the law firm Duteil Avocat where my task is to develop the firm’s international M&A and private equity transactions (through, in particular, the search for an active international network of lawyers, whether existing or to be created). I am particularly attached to the “international” aspect of my job, which no doubt comes from my 6 years experience in San Francisco. I would love it if my daughter Elise (21⁄2 years old), with whom I speak English, had the chance to live the same experience as mine at EB. Receiving a bilingual education clearly opened my mind and helped me understand better other cultures and attitudes. Maybe an opportunity will show up one day…!? In the meantime, I am coming back to San Francisco next September, one of my best friends from EB is getting married… I just can’t wait to meet with my old friends! WN30–6 MAY 2004 7
Administration’s Page—La Page de l’Administration ALUMNI PROFILE: THE HASSE FAMILY Interview of Ann Hasse by Tina Meyer Ann and Colin Hasse became parents at Ecole Bilingue in 1984 when their son Andrew (Class of 1995) began pre-K. Twenty years later, they are ready to become an Alumni family as their younger son, John, is about to graduate from the 8 th grade. Having spaced their children in order to maximize their membership in the EB Parents Association, one wonders how these American parents came to be so committed to bilingual education and EB. With a Ph.D. in Classics, Colin’s language proficiency did not (and still does not) include French. Ann spent her junior year of high school in Paris with her parents when her philosophy professor father took a sabbatical year in 1964. Ann used her high school French and coaching from her fluent father (despite the fact that he had never been to Europe before his sabbatical!) when she spent that year in a private French girls’ school called L’Institut Norma Désir. Since the educational reforms made after 1968 were yet to come, many of her teachers spent the whole class period reading from prepared texts—not a practice inclined to endear them to a California adolescent, but very good for Ann’s French. That was about the extent of their French connection when Ann and Colin began to think about schools for Andrew. With the urging of a friend whose child was already in grade school at EB, they chose our pre-school program for their own child. That three-year old is now a twentysomething who graduated from New York University last year with a degree in film-making. Ann, Colin, and John recently attended a screening of his film at the NYU First Run Film Festival which show cases the work of recent graduates. Andrew’s film , My Friend Friedrich (that would be Friedrich Nietzsche – Andrew IS the grandson of WN33–27 MAY 2004 a philosophy professor) is a 20-minute romantic comedy in which a spectral Nietzsche appears to give advice to a love-sick undergraduate. Andrew was the screenwriter and director of the production which involved about twenty people and was shot at several locations around New York City. He had begun the screenplay for the film during the spring of his junior year at the NYU program in Paris. Andrew’s decision to spend a semester in Paris had taken his parents by surprise: as a high school student at Marin Academy, Andrew had taken Spanish, nor did he study French in college before going to Paris. Nonetheless, having EB in his his past, Andrew returned from Paris with the best French of the non-native speakers in the program. EB was also the beginning of Andrew’s film career. His seventh grade English teacher, Chris Nickoloff, had given Andrew and several classmates permission to make a video book report. Their 20- minute video on Lord of the Rings won third place honors in the East Bay Film Festival. Currently, Andrew is back in Berkeley where he works for Fluid, an animation production company which was founded by a group of former Pixar employees. Andrew was hired as a script writer and he has just been made the production director for a TV pilot. Ann notes that Andrew has kept his EB friends: “Those ties continue.” Just as Andrew was leaving EB, his younger brother John began pre-school. As he is at the end of middle school and the beginning of adolescence, John’s life as an EB alumni has yet to be lived. He will be going to Berkeley High School next year, partly because BHS has a golf team! John also feels ready for a larger school and he values the cultural, social, ethnic and economic diversity that is such a big part of EB and not so easily found at many private high schools. Ann does not know what John’s attachment to French will be as 9 an alumni, although she feels that he is much more fluent and secure in French than Andrew was at the same age because of changes which have taken place at EB. English is now given a 50% share of the curriculum beginning in the 3 rd grade rather than the 1 st grade. Nor does she feel that John’s English skills have suffered as a consequence despite some concern. Ann notes that her two sons, despite their very different personalities, both refused to speak French at home. But, because of EB, “they both have a sense that there are at least two worlds”—a sense that many other Americans do not share. With the experience of twenty years behind her, Ann says (with perhaps only a little anticipatory nostalgia!) EB has been a very positive experience. As a parent volunteer, she has been a room representative (repeatedly) for each of her son’s classes. She lays claim to the gift basket as fund raising tool: for many years, she donated a chocolate basket for the raffle and Kitchen Tour which has since become a model at EB auctions. Ann and Colin handled ticket management for the Kitchen Tour and Raffle for a number of years and they sold EB t-shirts and sweatshirts in several different styles for seven years. When the Hasses became parents at EB twenty years ago, the school was led by its second Head of School (Fréderic Canadas is the fifth), EB had only several hundred students (now there are just over 500), there was no middle school and no middle school site. Thanks to the Hasses and the efforts and commitment of many, many other families, EB is a very special school.
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