Leslie Bradshaw is a French teacher in her second year at North Point High School, who has been teaching for 15 years now.

She travels during the day between North Point and Liberty and has a passion for the French language. Although she has lived in Missouri for a long time, she was not born here.

“I was born in southern California, but I have lived in Missouri most of my life,” Bradshaw said. “I originally went to school to study journalism, but I ended up with a degree in communication. If I wasn’t a teacher, I would probably be a software engineer or web designer.” 

She is passionate about the class she is teaching and was influenced by France a lot, as she notably taught in France for a semester.

“ I went to Paris and lived in Montpellier, and at the time I didn’t realize I  wanted to be a teacher, but I loved the French language so I decided to do it.”

This experience inspired her to become a teacher, but also made her love for the language grow even more.

“I was part of a program called TAPIF (Teaching Assistant Program In France), near Montpellier,” Bradshaw said. “This is definitely  an experience that I don’t regret and that will stick with me.”

She has goals and hopes for this class and students, as she wants to help them grow as students and also as people.

“I wanna be able to teach them about the world outside, make them discover another culture because French is spoken all around the world, it’s a multicultural language, and most students never traveled outside, so learning French is good to open their minds.”

Karolina Arhensburg, a Danish exchange student, has her class and loves it.

“I like it,”: Arhensburg said. “She’s a good teacher. It’s fun and we play games. It’s a pretty language, and as an exchange student, being able to discover other languages but also other cultures is really interesting.”

French is a nice language that can open minds about cultures.