Congratulations!
The Franco-American Centre / Alliance Française de Manchester presents the 2021 French Teacher of the Year Award to Rebecca Fortgang of Fall Mountain Regional High School and Misty Bowden Strevig of Gorham Middle High School for their outstanding work promoting French in their classrooms and communities.
The Franco-American Centre established the award three years ago in order to highlight the remarkable work that French teachers are doing in our state. “The promotion of the French language is especially important in New Hampshire,” explains Education Committee Chair Professor Katharine Harrington of Plymouth State University. “NH is a state where French/French-Canadian is the largest ancestry group and its border with French-speaking Québec has numerous economic and tourism implications.”
Rebecca Fortgang
Rebecca Fortgang is the French teacher and World Language Chair at Fall Mountain Regional High School. She
has been teaching French for 11 years and serves on the board for the NH Association of World Language Teachers. She is a member of the American Association of Teachers of French, serves as the advisor of the Fall Mountain French Honor Society and coordinates Teen Prêt-à-Parler, a virtual program engaging teen students from around the country in monthly French discussions. She has also established a Running Start program at her school which allows high school students to take community college classes and earn dual credit for them.
Misty Bowden Strevig
Misty Bowden Strevig is a French teacher at Gorham Middle High School. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, she spent two years as a Teaching Assistant in Angoulême, France and is currently in her ninth year teaching at Gorham and her 11th year teaching French. She advises the French Club at her school and established a French Honor Society last year. She says that the French heritage of the North Country is one of the reasons she decided to move there. Many families in her community either speak French or have some kind of French presence in their homes, so she regularly draws on this in her classes to make the study of French relevant to their lives, incorporating trips to Quebec and a newly established French film series.
Congratulations!!!
Previous Recipient
Edith Takantjas
French Teacher of the Year, 2018