Ms. Micheline Tabet is one of the newest French teachers at JP Stevens. She is very excited to be a part of the community here and work with motivated students who are excited to learn and work to become someone they can be proud of.

Although a new to the JP community, Ms. Tabet is not new to the world of teaching and has over 10 years of experience in the field. She always knew she wanted to teach, but French specifically was not part of the plan. Before coming to the United States, Ms. Tabet went to school for two years in Lebanon, where she studied philosophy. She then decided to put her education on hold for a few years when she got married and had children. After settling down, Ms. Tabet decided it was finally time to finish her bachelor’s degree at Rutgers University. Although she was still interested in the field of philosophy, she was eager to jump into work and decided to begin teaching French.

Growing up in Lebanon, everyone spoke, wrote, and taught in French. As such, Ms. Tabet is fluent in French and grew to love the language. When working for a private company, however, she quickly realized teaching adults was much harder than it seemed. This led to her decision to get certified in child education and become a school teacher, which she has happily continued for the past 10 years. Recently, she felt she was ready to expand to a bigger school and transferred to JP, where she would get to meet more students and be part of a larger team.

Teamwork and communication are key skills that Ms. Tabet applies to her teaching style each day. She hopes to incorporate more verbal language and communication exercises in her classroom, as she believes that the key to learning any language is communication. She feels as if it is easy to get caught up in things such as vocabulary and sentence structure in French, but that speaking the language comprehensibly is the most important aspect. She hopes to do this by testing different levels of comprehension and getting to know her students’ abilities at a more personal level.

Even for experienced teachers, starting a new job always comes with some level of anxiety. Ms. Tabet explained that she has yet to learn her way around the school and has a ton of paperwork to get through. However, the biggest challenge she described was starting her school year almost two months after everyone else, as she felt that many students had already established routines and it would be difficult to break these barriers after the first few weeks of school.

Ms. Tabet describes herself as a lively Libra who loves to travel with her husband and three children. Having traveled much of the world, she still hopes to check Thailand off her list soon, and she looks forward to experiencing such a diverse culture. Additionally, she loves to read books that have deep meaning to them such as The Kite Runner which is among her favorites.

Despite the difficulties she may face, Ms. Tabet is extremely excited to be teaching at a large school with a diverse culture. It is great to have a teacher on board that thinks of her students so highly, and describes her teaching experience as “a dream come true.”