Multilingual McAuliffe

The new school year welcomes not only a new class of freshman into the doors of Stuyvesant High School, but also a wave of new faces in the faculty. Among them is the new Assistant Principal of the Language Department, Francesca McAuliffe.

When entering the AP Language Department aisle on the fifth floor, the familiar infrastructure and design awaits, but now, there is seemingly a gust of new energy. McAuliffe is sitting by her desk with a name plate gifted by her sister situated at the rim, smiling warmly at any welcoming guest. She greets you and eases any sort of pressure, except from speaking to such a well-spoken person. “I guess I’m a good listener,” she said. Any sort of initial tension would dissipate once knowing that she is listening intently.

As a first-generation American with both her parents born in Italy, McAuliffe grew up bilingual in English and Italian. She started learning Spanish in sixth grade and continued to study the language for her Bachelor’s degree. “When I went to college, I was contemplating between studying Spanish or Italian,” McAuliffe said. “They didn’t have Italian as a major, so I continued with Spanish.”

McAuliffe discovered her passion in teaching when she was just a high school student. She expressed that her teacher, Ms. Castro, was her inspiration. “[She] was very energetic and loved her job,” McAuliffe explained. “So I started asking her some questions about her career path. She said it was very rewarding, and I was sold.”

Choosing to teach foreign language is what you would naturally expect from McAuliffe after hearing the way she expressed her love for foreign languages. She said with a soft smile, “I love hearing them. I love experiencing them. I love learning them. I love adding some nuances to my own arsenal.” She finds learning new languages to be extremely rewarding, as they introduce her to worlds and cultures that she otherwise wouldn’t be able to connect to. Fluent in three languages, McAuliffe is able to help confused tourists on the streets of Manhattan. Moreover, when she was working as a salesperson at CVS as one of her first jobs, she was offered extra money because she could tend to Spanish speaking customers. When asked what superpower she would love to have, McAuliffe answered without hesitation, “To be able to speak every single language in the world fluently, because the entire world would be so accessible. You could call someone instantly, and there would be no language barrier.”

Prior to coming to Stuyvesant, McAuliffe spent 14 years teaching Spanish and Italian in New Dorp High School in Staten Island. She had been pursuing an assistant principal position for a few years, and when an opportunity to interview at Stuyvesant came, she eagerly took it. Now, she teaches two sections of Spanish I and works as the assistant principal for the language department. When asked what her responsibilities as the assistant principal are, McAuliffe chuckled and admitted that she is still in process of learning, as she is new to the school. However, she concluded, “My role is to support educators and students who are learning world languages, make their experiences more fulfilling, and ensure that students are getting the highest quality education possible.”

As the new assistant principal of language, McAuliffe elaborated on her goals for the coming years. She listed one of her goals as the incorporation of Boomalang, a program that allows students to have Skype-like conversations with native speakers. Though the program is currently only offered in Spanish and French, McAuliffe stated that she has worked with them at her prior school and is hoping to do the same here. Additionally, McAuliffe hopes to bring about a student exchange program, explaining her previous experience with exchange programs. “I did that at my previous school where there were students from the Netherlands who came and lived with [our students’ families] and attended classes with them, and our students went there during spring break,” she said. Optimistic for the following years, McAuliffe hopes to add such programs into the curriculum. One thing McAuliffe definitely wants to do “is to ask the students what they are looking for to push their language learning,” she said. With regards to language learning, according to McAuliffe, the best way to learn a new language is through immersion, the usage of authentic resources, and engaging trips.

Moving forward to her newfound experiences at Stuyvesant, when asked about any of the expectations she had regarding this community, McAuliffe answered, “ I don’t really like to expect something before experiencing it,” but she acknowledged that she knew “the students were very hardworking and determined because of all the studying that [they] do to become a Stuy student,” she said. Upon becoming a new member of this family, McAuliffe praises us for being exactly how she expected us to be: diligent and hardworking.

About the high standards and expectations she encountered here, McAuliffe compared the environment at Stuyvesant to that of the school she taught at for 14 years. At her old school, every homework assigned came back on time. Respectively, McAuliffe thanked the Stuyvesant students for their dedication and passion. She was awed by the amount of APs a general Stuyvesant student took on. She later commended the community for working so hard and being able to take on such a task.

With the expectations, realities follow. Though not expecting the students and staff of Stuyvesant to have stellar amounts of sleep, one thing McAuliffe noticed was the norm here: the lack of sleep. When talking about the absence of sleep in our school, McAuliffe revealed that her experience as a personal trainer in the past allowed her to have a bigger insight as to how significant sleep is. “Without sleep, you can’t heal, you can’t digest food properly and you can’t be the best you if you don’t sleep.” However, even with the knowledge of all this, she joked that she, too, upon joining this community, has joined the ever growing no-sleep club.

Other than this piece of advice McAuliffe offers, she also hopes that Stuyvesant students engage in activities of interest, participate in extracurriculars, and just have some fun during their high school years. She recalled her past experiences, saying, “When I was in high school, those [were] the things that [made] long-lasting friends.” As a student, McAuliffe was not only trilingual, but also a varsity cross country runner, soccer athlete, and a part of a musical group that sang old Spanish classics. Even now, she has a countless number of hobbies she enjoys in her free time: singing, rollerblading, kayaking, playing soccer, running, traveling with her husband, and cooking. The dedication in her work and hobbies is reflected as she says, “I like to give 100 percent to what I’m doing. I feel like if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

Recognizing that our new language assistant principal is ambitious and well accommodated with a wide spectrum of skills and talents, we know that McAuliffe has a lot to offer, and we hope that Stuyvesant, too, can offer as much.