Both members of the French Department, Séverine Fortune and Jennifer Murphy, will not return to Moorestown Friends School for the 2021-22 school year, leaving the French Department in new hands. Murphy will be leaving to pursue her academic and personal goals, while Fortune will continue teaching French at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia.

Over the course of five years, Murphy has taken on many roles in the community. She has served as an MS Spanish teacher and is currently an MS and US French teacher, MS advisor, and the MS diversity coordinator.

“I love MFS; I love the students here, I love the culture… so it’s really hard to leave, but [I’ve] wanted to pursue my own interests for a while,” said Murphy. Among those interests is continuing her linguistic education, as she will be taking Arabic courses over the summer.

An integral part of Murphy’s French classes is the plays that seventh and eighth grade students learn and record. Former French student Keller Ulrich ’24 shared, “My favorite memory is probably when we did some of the plays in seventh grade.” He continued, “I did really like those. I thought that they were a really good bonding experience for the class and a really great way to learn French.”

Séverine Fortune is also leaving MFS after three years; Fortune teaches MS and US French and is involved in the Diversity Committee. Fortune is also known for advocating for conserving the environment. She avoids the use of disposable items in her classroom and also signs off all her emails with a statistic on the amount of plastic in the ocean. 

While Fortune has many memories from MFS, her favorite is an interaction she had with a middle schooler: “I was explaining in French what ‘in the trash can’ means, and I was using a brand new tissue. He stopped me in English and said, ‘Please don’t waste it, it’s not good for the environment.’ I felt that it was a very special community.”

The school has already begun the search for two new members of the French Department and has had prospective candidates teach classes.