About Us

President / Secretary
Dana Strout
dfspcc@gmail.com

Executive Director
Joan LeMole
jlemole@roadrunner.com

Chair
Julie von Kamecke
laika6000@yahoo.com

Treasurer
Mac Deford
macdeford@gmail.com

Yuan Yuan Wu Corson is a native Mandarin speaker with 21 years of teaching English to children in Taiwan. She was born in Miao-Li in Taiwan, and received degrees from the National Taichung Institute of Tech. and the National Taiwan Academy of Arts. Ms. Wu met her American husband in Taiwan and moved to the USA in 2010.

Weiwei Curtis was born in Beijing. She is a native Mandarin speaker and near-native speaker of Japanese. She moved to Japan, attended high school there, and holds a degree in teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language from Yokohama University. Weiwei taught Chinese to adults in Japan for 7 years and is relocated since 2004 to Mid-coast Maine.

Jenny Tung. A native mandarin speaker, Ms. Tung also speaks dialect Cantonese and Taiwanese and can read and write with both traditional and simplified Chinese characters. She earned a masters in law in Chicago and then worked there for the Consular Affairs Taipei Office for five years. She is studying now how to create on-line multimedia Chinese lessons. She has taught Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan, at the Chinese Culture Education Association Chinese Language School at Skokie, IL, and most recently at Mid-Coast Christian Academy in Thomaston. She lives in Thomaston, where she enjoys gardening and participating as percussionist with the Mid-Coast Community Band. She plays also a traditional Chinese stringed instrument called pipa.

Margot Stiassni-Sieracki, B.A. French, Williams College, M.A. Univ. Illinois, M.A. Stanford. She frequently visits France and has taught French and Spanish, K-12, in Vermont and Maine since 1989. Margot has twice co-presented Methods Matter, Penobscot School's summer foreign language methodology seminar. She often uses music and the arts in her teaching of adults and children. At Penobscot School, her work has included teaching Intermediate French since 2009 and facilitating activities at French and Spanish immersion workshops.

Paul Charbonneau. Paul's education, from kindergarten days through undergraduate studies, was entirely bilingual. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Ottawa and he holds a Masters degree in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Maine. He was adjunct professor for the University of Maine (Introduction to Philosophy, Ethics, Peace Studies). His background includes more than twenty-five years experience working with groups in various educational settings and contexts. For the past five years he has facilitated bi-weekly French conversations at the Rockport Public Library.

Dennis Healy is a retired environmental engineer who has studied French for many years, including travels in France and Québec. He has assisted with the school's French immersion retreats (Le français au bord de la Mer; Français dans le Bois), sharing there his knowledge and passion for the popular lawn-bowling game of southern France - La Pétanque. He has taught French through Five Towns Adult and Community Education. He currently organizes the French language film series at Rockport Public Library.

Elisabeth Goodridge, BA, Wells College, French; MA, UM-Orono, French, 2008. Wrote her theses on 17th c. French literary fairy tales by Mme D'Aulnoy. She has taught French to all ages in Maine and Montreal for 40+ years, and countless times at PS's French immersion weekends. She enjoys acting, singing, sailing, artistic expression and French singer-songwriters of the 20th c.

Renate Tower is a native of the Rhineland in Germany. She attended the Paedagogishce Fachschule in Ludwigshafen. She has taught at Penobscot School and Adult Ed in Rockland, Camden and Belfast, as well as privately. She also was the owner of the Hansel and Gretel Gaststube, an intimate German eatery. She loves to garden, cook with home-raised foods and research her German heritage.

Eleonora Mella, from Padova, Italy, earned a Masters in Foreign Languages, (German and English) from the University of Padova in 2009. Her thesis topic was the Bayeux Tapestries. She speaks fluent German, as well as English and Italian, and some Norwegian. She loves to travel and has lived and worked in Nuremburg, Oslo and Dublin, to name a few places, making her living tutoring, waitressing and as an au pair. From January to June of 2011, she taught English to kindergarten students in Padova, then relocated to California with her American husband. She taught Italian for an online language school for several months there until the couple decided to move to Maine. She has been teaching Italian classes at the school since October, 2012.

Ezio Romeo was Penobscot School's Italian exchange teacher for 2012. He is from Acirale in Sicily, where he took a degree in Italian Literature from the university there. Then he earned a masters in Teaching Italian as a Foreign Language from the Univeristy for Foreigners in Sienna in 2008. Ezio, we discovered with delight last year, speaks 4 languages: Spanish, French, Italian and his native Catania. He is working on his Portuguese. He has taught Italian and Spanish in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, India and the USA, and now, we hear, he is in Sri Lanka. If you meet this man there, say hello from all of us here -dans le Maine- and you will meet a terrific gentleman! Bravo, Ezio, our best man in black.

Harry Kaiserian Harry Kaiserian has been cooking for friends and family for more than 60 years and has been the author of a weekly food and recipe newspaper column since 1987. He published well over 800 recipes in the Castine Patriot, The Weekly Packet, and Island Ad-vantages many of them based on his Armenian heritage.

Through world travels during his 26 years in the U.S. Navy and twenty-eight years of residing in Castine, he has harvested recipes and ideas from kitchens representing a wide variety of the world’s cuisines. He was raised on a mixture of Armenian and Turkish cooking. “After growing up on such things as kuftah, pilaf, stuffed grapeleaves and baklava, I was surprised,” he says, “to find out that I had eaten gourmet food for most of my life.” Traveling and dining around the United States, South America, Japan, Europe and the Mediterranean, Harry gained an appreciation and love for a wide diversity of cuisines. He grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and has subsequently lived in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Illinois, and Newport, Rhode Island, In addition, he has lived in Italy, Greece and Korea where he raided kitchens for recipes and techniques. He has returned to Italy on two separate occasions to learn the secrets of Italian cuisine from a Michelin one-star chef.

When we can convince Harry to offer one of his series of classes on the whys and “hows” of preparing Italian food, we feel very lucky! Please inquire at 207.594-1084.

Sachiko Clough B.A. German, Kyoto University of Foreign Language Studies. Sachiko is originally from Osaka, Japan where she taught English to children. She is a certified Japanese language teacher and also has licenses in Ikebana and Japanese tea ceremony, and she is a great cook. She currently teaches Japanese at Hall-Dale Middle School in Farmingdale. Sachiko is teaching Speaking Japanese, a Continuing course designed to provide opportunities to learn new vocabulary and structure in a conversational format.

Nobuko Kamecke Nobuko Kamecke grew up in Japan, where she studied with a master calligrapher. She then studied fine arts at The California Institute of The Arts. She has exhibited in California, in upstate New York, New York City and in Maine, and now teaches workshops in Calligraphy for children and adults in Maine. Nobuko offers the Calligraphy and Sumi-e (brush painting) course at Penobscot School.

Toshie Ichiyanagi Tesler, a native of Kobe, Japan, lives with her artist husband in Rockland, Maine. Toshie is a graduate of both Boston University and Bentley College and is a certified public accountant. She is well schooled in Japanese art and culture with certificates in Tea Ceremony and Ikebana. Her two children are also in the area, both currently serving in the United States Coast Guard.

Eva (Taran) Campbell is a native of Tallinn, Estonia, and grew up there in a bilingual environment (Russian and Estonian.) At university, she studied the Estonian language and literature for 3 and a half years, and then switched to Economics. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics in 1998 and moved to Maine in 2006.

Julianna Gerrity grew up in the northern Caucasus Mountains. She graduated from the university in Nalchik with a teaching degree in English Language and afterwards taught English to children. She has a great love of her native literature, and on occasion, offers a class called Russian Literature in Translation. She has taught all levels of Russian at Penobscot School and does private tutoring.

Billy Smith : B.A., M.A., R.N., DELE. 2006, studied English Literature, music and Romance Language at the University of Notre Dame, then earned a Masters in English Literature at the University of Toronto. He serves as a nurse interpreter, and received his Diploma en Español como Lengua Extranjera from the Spanish Ministry of Education in 2006.

María (Trujillo) Lochner, was born and raised in Pereira, Colombia where her family still resides. Maria came to the United States in 1994 to pursue a degree in Business Administration and has been here ever since. Maria has recently relocated from Annapolis to the Camden area where she teaches Spanish at the local Montessori school. She travels to Colombia as often as possible and is looking forward to teaching Spanish, and being part of the Penobscot School family. She has already been assisting at our weekly Almuerzo. Gracias, Maria!

Julie von Kamecke has taught Russian at Penobscot School for the last 16 years. She also founded the Spanish Program at Camden Rockport Elementary school, where she has taught grades K-4 since 1998. She will be joining Nohora Estes in teaching ‘In La Cocina with Kids’, a two day kids cooking class. Julie serves as the Chair of the Board at Penobscot School.

Nohora Estes, Nohora Estes, who is a native Colombian, has been associated with Penobscot School for 20+ years, leading children's courses and assisting in the immersions. She established the Spanish program at The Riley School in 1998, where she teaches K-8th grades. She has twice led student trips to Costa Rica. Nohora also teaches private Spanish lessons; she enjoys reading, walking and dancing SALSA!

Juana Domènech is a research engineer teaching at the University of La Rioja. She was an English immersion student at Penobscot School in August, 2010. She returned to our community in Spring, 2012 and attended Spanish classesas a native speaking volunteer. She also participated in a bi-lingual poetry reading, our Annual May Clean-up and made a community presentation on Camino de Santiago. Thank you, Juana, for sharing your skills and knowledge of Spanish culture with us, and lending your joyful spirit for 2 months, and touching so many lives in our community.

Jean Pierre, of Brazil, will lead a new Cooking class, Brazilian Cooking.

Marcie Howard, an elementary school teacher, is a certified Signing Time instructor.