Our instructors at the Alliance Française

Meet your teachers

Yvonne Bade

Originally from Bordeaux, Yvonne is a longtime active member and volunteer at the Alliance Française de Seattle. After living for over thirty years in Tokyo, Japan, Yvonne returned to the United States with her husband and began teaching at the Alliance Française. She has taught both French and English to students of all ages. Today, she primarily focuses her attention on Joie de Vivre, a fun and relaxing French language class for seniors.

Paula Birchman

Paula Birchman is a native Pacific Northwesterner with many years' experience teaching French in area high schools and colleges, as well as privately. She and her young family spent a year in Nantes where she taught English at the university level and her children attended school, quickly learning the language naturally. She is interested in all aspects of language learning, fascinated by the individual routes in that process and is equally comfortable teaching conversation or literature and composition. She loves all aspects of culture, reading, travel, cooking and eating and staying fit, all of which overlap nicely and can be done in French as well as English!

Delia Bratosin

Delia holds a Master’s Degree in Francophone Literatures from Babes- Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Delia began her career teaching French and English as foreign languages in Romania. She later moved to Perpignan, France, for two years, where she taught English and Romanian. In teaching French, she brings her passion for French language and culture as well as her dedication and enthusiasm to working with students of all ages.

Emily Carmichael

Emily Carmichael is originally from Alabama but has spent the last 11+ years elsewhere.  She holds a B.A. in French from Brown University, an M.A. in Museum Studies from New York University, and in August of 2009 completed her M.A. in French with Middlebury College.  She spent a year studying in Paris with Middlebury for her M.A., and also studied in Paris as an undergraduate.  While in France in 2008-2009, she taught English at Epitech, a computer programming school.  Since her arrival in Seattle in August of 2009, she has taught at several language schools in the area.  She loves French literature and cinema, as well as museums.  Her master’s thesis was a study of Paris’ Musée du Quai Branly.

Katherine Gaynor

Katherine studied abroad in Nice, La Rochelle, and Lyon in France. She graduated from Loyola University in New Orleans with a B.A. in French in 2000. She studied World Language Education at the University of Missouri and in Grenoble. She taught for six years and moved from St. Louis to Washington in 2009.

Effie Janjic

Originally from Thessaloniki, Greece, Effie began French in a Greco-Français high school, and later graduated from the University of Thessaloniki in Langue et Littérature Françaises. She also had the chance to take literature and linguistics at the University of Tours in France under a scholarship from the French government. She came to live in Seattle eight years ago and started to teach French at the Alliance Française, bringing her love for French language and culture to students of all ages!

John Matthies

John, a Seattle native, holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages & Literature from the University of Washington. He has taught French grammar, literature & civilization at the university level for over a decade. All told, he has lived over three years in France, and taught in a suburban Paris lycée (2001-2002) to complete his doctoral research. His dissertation, “Fort Apache: The Literary Lives of the Parisian banlieue Savage,” describes the origin and transmission of France’s suburban “Cowboy” narrative from the Belle Époque down to the present day, and concludes with an examination of the “Redskin” themes developed in contemporary banlieue (suburban) fiction. His teaching and research interests include the 20th- and 21st-century literatures of the Francophone world and the Yiddish tradition.

Mélanie Rozes

Mélanie is a French national who is originally from the Southwest of France.  She spent almost 15 years in Paris before moving to Seattle last summer. She attended the Sorbonne University where she earned a B.A. in  History and one in Geography as well as a Master’s degree in Contemporary political history.

After a fifth year of university studies in history and geography in preparation for teaching in high schools, she spent seven years as a history and geography teacher in Parisian high schools.

She loves to teach and share about culture in general. She’s passionate about literature, cinema and art from all over the world.  She is enthusiastic and honored to be a part of the great team of teachers and members of the Alliance Française.

Gwénoëlle Sauvage

Ms. Sauvage grew up in the outskirts of Paris. She studied the Sciences at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI, in Paris. After receiving her engineering degree, she started working for France's largest automobile manufacturer, PSA Peugeot Citroën, in a very international context, first as an engineer and then as a project manager and manager.

During the 15 years she spent at Citroën, she worked closely with people from all over the world, as partners, suppliers and competitors. Gwen was also exposed to teaching where she built partnerships with technical colleges in Paris in an effort to offer highly qualified interns the opportunity to practice their skills in a real-life professional environment.

Gwen has extensive experience in the French business arena. She is knowledgeable in hiring processes, technical processes, protocol involving interviewing, presentations, and meetings.

She is currently studying to obtain a graduate degree in FLE (French as a Second Language) through CNED (National French Remote Education) classes with l'Alliance Française de Paris.

El-Hadji Sougou

El-Hadji is a native French speaker born in Senegal (West Africa). He holds an Economics degree from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Master of Arts in Business from l’Université de Picardie Jules Vernes in Amiens. 

El-Hadji has taught French in a variety of settings, namely in the business arena where he gave lessons to Brazilian employees of L’Oréal-Brazil Headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.  In France, he tutored French and other subjects to students of all ages from different backgrounds in the suburbs of Paris.

El Hadji is enthusiastic to be part of the Alliance team of teachers and brings with him a fresh perspective from his well-traveled experiences into other cultures and is ready to share them with his students.

Scott Taylor

Scott is a southern transplant from East Tennessee who came to the Northwest in 2001 where he began his teaching career as an instructor of French at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. He holds a PhD in French Literature and Critical Theory from Florida State University (2003) and a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee. He specializes in Contemporary French Theatre, Performance Studies, and Semiotics, and has published most recently in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and in Journal of Modern Drama.

He is currently a visiting assistant professor of French at Western Washington University, in Bellingham, and has also taught French at both the University of Puget Sound and Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. He has spent nearly 3 years living, traveling, studying, and working in both France and Belgium, where, among other things, he served as an English lecturer at the Université de Paris – La Sorbonne IV, and as an English assistant in a French high school in Lens, France. 

In addition to his teaching and research, he enjoys creative writing (including poetry, prose, essays, adaptations, and translations), as well as directing plays. He has directed shows in both French and English, most recently with Steeplechase Productions in Seattle, and at PLU. His other interests include swimming, biking, music, and spending time with friends and loved ones.

Andrea Taylor-Brochet

Andrea was born in the U.S. to a Swiss-American family. She grew up in Geneva, Switzerland, and has lived most of her adult life in France. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in French and Psychology from Duke University and is completely bilingual. Andrea has taught English as a Second Language to French executives for the past twenty years outside of Paris and she now teaches French in Seattle, at universities and at the Alliance Française. Currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Teaching at Seattle Pacific University, she has extensive international experience and is passionate about foreign languages, linguistics and teaching.

Nathalie Tomaszewski

Nathalie Tomaszewski was born in France and has been living in Seattle for several years. Her studies began at the Sorbonne where she studied French and German and later, pursued a Masters of Arts in French Studies from the University of Washington, with a specialty in 19th century French literature. Nathalie has been teaching adults and children for over 10 years in various schools and colleges. In addition to teaching, her interests also include acting and stage productions. She is actively involved with Playing French Seattle, a francophone theater group. Nathalie's teaching style focuses on facilitating dialogue, verbal expression and communication among students. "How to ask things" is as important as "how to answer." In her class, you will not only study French, you will discover a whole different culture through texts, movies, music, and food.

Jennifer Vaissellet

Jennifer is originally from Orange, France and attended the Université d'Avignon in Provence, where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in English and a Master's Degree in Teaching French as a Foreign Language (FLE). She lived in Saint Paul, MN where she was a French Lab instructor at Macalester College and was also in charge of organizing events to promote French culture on Campus. Later on, she moved to Louisiana where she spent 3 years teaching French from Kindergarten to 5th grade in public schools. Jennifer is very patient and her goal is to make all her students love French.

Ivette Valdés

Originally from Havana, Cuba, Ivette holds a BA from Princeton University in French Culture and Civilization as well as an MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in French Literature. While living in France, she taught English at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. Ivette has also taught French in Lugano, Switzerland. Ivette's more than fifteen years of teaching experience embraces all age groups in a variety of traditional and nontraditional settings. Before joining the Alliance Française de Seattle three years ago, she taught French and Spanish at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska Ivette's teaching interests include grammar and composition, French cinema and Francophone literature. She has a deep passion for the history and writings of the French Caribbean. Ivette's literature classes at the Alliance have covered a wide range of topics including African women writers, literature and gastronomy, French theater from Molière to Ionesco, history and literature in the French Caribbean and literature & immigration in France.