In portable 310, French teacher Rachel Tennen shares her love of French with her students. In October, Tennen received an award for New Foreign Language Teacher of The Year for 2012 from the Texas Foreign Language Association. “I was really flattered when I was nominated,” Tennen said. “The whole thing was a great experience and was overall really exciting.” Tennen was nominated by AISD foreign language coordinated, Tina Dong. “She is a hard-working and dedicated teacher who puts a lot of time and effort into her lesson planning,” Dong said. Tennen received the award at a luncheon during the TFLA conference and was accompanied by her mom. “Even though I knew that I got the award beforehand I was still really excited when they called my name,” Tennen said. “It was really nice because they read excerpts from the recommendation letters, so it was awesome to hear all of the things that people said about me.” Tennen hasn’t always been interested in French. “My adviser really pushed me to persue my studies in French when I was in college,” Tennen said. Tennen was always interested in education. “My mom was always in education so I knew that I wanted to do something with education,” Tennen said. “When I started getting into French I knew that was what I wanted to teach. I was really happy that I got the ability to combine the two in my job.” Her favorite part of teaching is getting to share things with her students. “I love having the ability to share what I love and know about French with my students,” Tennen said. Dong sees promise in Tennen. “We are very lucky to have such an incredible educator who shows so much passion and enthusiasm from the start,” Dong said. “I know she will continue to work at this level of commitment as she moves forward in her career.”