Mrs. Amy Welenc is a beloved French teacher at Neshaminy High School. She provides a safe and loving environment for all of her students. Though Welenc is a newer teacher to Neshaminy School District, she has made an everlasting positive effect on the students that pass through her classroom.

After graduating high school, Welenc moved to study French in France, with a French and Spanish major.

After graduating college, she moved back to the United States and began working a corporate job.

After realizing how unhappy her corporate job made her, she decided to change life paths.

“I was so miserable at my corporate job that I was like, ‘hey what can I do so that I don’t have to do this anymore,” Welenc said. “And my mom had said, when I was going to college and I didn’t know what I wanted to do after I switched my major to French and Spanish, she was like ‘you should just be a French teacher.’ My mom has always been right in my experience. I always disagree with her and realize later that she was right.”

Welenc not only has a main focus on teaching her kids French, but she also enjoys forming bonds with them as well.

“My favorite thing about being a teacher is the fact that I get to interact with so many students every day.’ Welenc recalled. “When kids start to open up to me and tell me about their life without me even asking, it makes me feel so happy because it makes me feel like I’m actually making a difference in the world because I can actually see it every day.”

Teaching for Welenc has always been about making a difference in the lives of her students. Growing up Welenc did not always have teachers that supported her the way she strives to support the students who come in and out of her classroom.

“I feel like some people have that like one teacher that changed their whole life. Unfortunately, I think that I had the opposite of that where I had teachers that where I look back on the experience that I had I go: okay that’s the opposite of what I want to be.” Welenc explained. “I’ve had teachers that make you feel bad about yourself and teachers that make you feel small, who won’t listen to the things that you’re saying, and who won’t talk to you like a human being. Because I had those experiences, that’s something I never want to make someone else feel.”

Those in Welenc’s classes always describe her classroom as a safe and supportive place to be.

“I always want to make my kids feel seen and heard and validated in class. I want them to feel represented by the things that we talk about. We don’t always realize how much our words can affect someone else.”

France to study French, majoring in French and Spanish. Post-college, she moved back to the United States and began working a corporate job. Realizing how unhappy her corporate job made her, she decided to change career paths.

“I was so miserable at my corporate job that I was like, ‘Hey what can I do so that I don’t have to do this anymore,’” Welenc said. “And my mom had said, when I was going to college and I didn’t know what I wanted to do after I switched my major to French and Spanish, she was like ‘You should just be a French teacher.’ My mom has always been right. I always disagree with her and realize later that she was right.”

Welenc not only focuses on teaching her kids French, but she also enjoys forming bonds with them.

“My favorite thing about being a teacher is the fact that I get to interact with so many students every day.” Welenc recalled. “When kids start to open up to me and tell me about their life without me even asking, it makes me feel so happy because it makes me feel like I’m actually making a difference in the world because I can actually see it every day.”

For Welenc, teaching has always been about making a difference in the lives of her students. Growing up Welenc did not always have teachers that supported her the way she strives to support the students who come in and out of her classroom.

“I feel like some people have that like one teacher that changed their whole life. Unfortunately, I think that I had the opposite of that where I had teachers that when I look back on the experience that I had I go; ‘okay, that’s the opposite of what I want to be.’” Welenc explained. “I’ve had teachers that make you feel bad about yourself and teachers that make you feel small, who won’t listen to the things that you’re saying, and who won’t talk to you like you’re a human being. Because I had those experiences, that’s something I never want to make someone else feel.”

Those in Welenc’s classes always describe her classroom as a safe and supportive place to be.

“I always want to make my kids feel seen and heard and validated in class. I want them to feel represented by the things that we talk about. We don’t always realize how much our words can affect someone else.”

Welenc wants to accomplish many things for her students, but some of her biggest hopes have to do with what kids carry with them through life.

“The idea of every one of my students becoming fluent in French is unrealistic,” Welenc admitted. “What I hope to accomplish with these guys is really to introduce them to the language, and obviously, we have to learn some of the boring stuff like grammar, but to get them excited about what else is out there. Some of these kids have never been to

Philadelphia and it’s thirty minutes away. So what I get the opportunity to do is open their minds to how big the world is. To me, a success story would be a student that emails me in five or six years and says, ‘Hey, I had this experience and I remembered something that we learned about it and I got to go see it in real life, the fact that they took something and wanted to go see it with their own eyes.’”

There is so much to see outside of the classroom, and Welenc hopes that the skills she has taught her kids, whether it be in life or academics, helps them get to where they want to be.

“The world is huge, it’s so big, and it is so beautiful. There’s so much it has to offer us, that we have to go out and explore it and I think that’s how you really learn and grow as a person.”