A glimpse into the life of French teacher Emilie Pierce
French teacher Emilie Pierce posing in the French room (Briana Jauregui, The Puma Prensa)
By Briana Jauregui, staff writer
With an enthusiastic personality and passion for teaching, Emilie Pierce is one of two French teachers at Maria Carrillo High School, and has been proudly teaching for the past nine years.
Pierce was born in Cairo, Egypt, but due to her father’s occupation as a building engineer, she was constantly on the go for a large portion of her childhood as she moved from country to country, including to Corsica, Malaysia, and Paraguay. Eventually, her family settled in France for most of her teenage years, before making a final move to the United States towards the end of high school.
Pierce attended college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she studied Ecology and Biology. After college, she initially began her teaching career as a science teacher, but came to MCHS as a French teacher through her friend Stephanie Richards, Carrillo’s other French teacher, who thought Pierce would be perfect for the job due to her French-American bi-nationality and love for teaching. Throughout the years, she has deeply enjoyed her time as a French teacher. “I love Carrillo, I love the students, I love my co-workers, and I love how the school functions, [as well as] the support everybody gives each other,” she added. Currently, Pierce teaches French 3 as well as a combination class of AP French and French 4.
Before she made the decision to apply as a teacher, she was a musician who lived off of her music, which has always been a big part of her life and something she enjoys. When performing, she only sings, but plays the piano and guitar for fun and practice. As time went by, she found it hard to receive a livable wage as a musician in Sonoma County. This led her to take different part time jobs at schools as a teacher’s assistant or support staff, but she quickly fell in love with the work she did. “I found that I really liked working with students, so I got my teaching credential and became a teacher,” she said.
Teaching is only a fraction of Pierce’s busy life, though, as she often participates in a wide variety of activities and proudly embraces her many passions. As mentioned before, Pierce is very passionate about music, having first sung on stage at 13. Now, she is a part of multiple bands, one being with her brother that she started nearly two decades ago. Her band performs original music that she said is “all high-energy [and] danceable stuff.”
In addition to having a band with her brother, she has two other bands where she sings a lot of mid-century French music and has other small side projects where she performs in trios or duos. Pierce has many ambitions for her future, hoping to become well-known for her music and live solely based off of it. She has even showcased this love in her French class, sharing her music with her students.
Besides her music, she is also quite adventurous and loves nature, made evident through her numerous outdoor-related activities. Her most prominent activities are beekeeping and gardening. She has a big garden with 30 fruit trees that her family calls an “urban farm.” Pierce describes it as very convenient since she rarely ever has to go to the store and just takes things from her garden. Currently, she says that she is looking forward to an exciting trip up to Mt. Shasta in May.
For the foreseeable future, Pierce hopes to continue teaching and singing, seeing as her current schedule with being both a teacher and musician is practical, due to the balance she is able to maintain between the important aspects of her life: her family, her work, and her passions.
She has big goals, with dreams of becoming famous and being able to live off of the music she makes. As a last comment, Pierce said, “As long as I can still play music with the people I care about and the music I care about, I’m happy.”