My name is Meredith "Merry" (Pettingell) Coyle and I graduated in '98
with a French degree. I just got married this past August and I currently live
in Chicago, IL. I am attending Saint Xavier University part time, working on my
Master's in Secondary Education. I plan to finish my coursework at the end of
this summer. After graduating Skidmore, I worked for 2 years as a French teacher/Resident
faculty at a girls' boarding high school in Raleigh, NC, called Saint Mary's School.
I moved to Chicago in 2000 and have been teaching French full time ever since
at the largest girls Catholic high school in the country, Mother McAuley Liberal
Arts High School. I am very happy with both my professional and personal life.
Besides teaching, I spent the summer of 1998 after graduation working at the English
as a Second Language Coordinator at a French summer camp in the Pyrenees, a job
I had found when I studied abroad in Paris 1996-1997, and had worked there summer
1997. Back in the states, summers of 1999, 2000 and 2001 I worked back in upstate
New York at a children's summer camp called Southwoods as the Program Director.
Although I didn't use French on a daily basis there, there were several children
who came to camp who were from France, and sometimes needed to speak French with
someone to take a break from English.