Samantha Wender, '04 (in red), taught English to junior-high level students at College Langevin Wallon in St. Gratien, France.

Like most first-time teachers, Samantha Wender was nervous about meeting her students. Not only did they belong to an age group notorious for behavioral issues, they came from a different culture and spoke a different language.

After Wender received her bachelor's degree in French from Rockhurst in May 2004, she wasted little time putting it to use. The following September, she went to St. Gratien, France, to teach English to students 11 to 15 years old.

She soon found she had nothing to fear. Wender says the students were welcoming and interested in what she had to say.

Samantha's travels through Italy took her to the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The French government pays native speakers from countries around the world to come to France to work as language assistants in junior and senior high schools, where students are required to study two foreign languages. Wender was assigned to teach conversational English at the junior high level, leaving grammatical study to the full-time teachers.

School administrators instructed Wender to speak only English and not to divulge that she spoke French so the students wouldn't lapse into their familiar tongue. She used photos from home or advertisements from American magazines to prompt conversation.

The students were impressed with the size of her house in the United States and quite surprised to learn she had a car. But what really amazed them, Wender said, was the array of fast food choices available to Americans.

In Rome, Samantha toured St. Peter's Basilica.

Samantha headed to London when her teaching experience in France was finished.

While in England, Samantha stopped at Stonehenge.

“I showed them an ad for Wendy's. They already knew about McDonalds, so they said, ‘You have more than one?'”

When Wender rattled off a list of additional franchises, the students concluded that's why Americans are so large.

“I told them not all Americans are big,” she says.

The students loved American culture, Wender says, especially music and films.

As for the French school system, Wender said the schoolwork was more difficult than in a typical U.S. school. At the high school level, students have the option of studying subjects such as math and economics taught in English.

“Europe is so integrated that you have to speak a couple of other languages to communicate with people, especially in the business world, she says.

Wender let her students continue to believe that she spoke only English, despite their growing suspicions at the end the term.

“‘But how do you buy groceries?' they would ask me. I didn't want to ruin things for the next assistant who comes in and says she doesn't speak any French.”

After traveling through Italy and to London, Wender returned to Kansas City in late May, where she plans to work for a year before starting graduate school. Eventually she would like to teach, probably at the college level. That's something she hadn't considered before her experience in France.