Holy Cross Senior Awarded Assistantship to Teach Secondary School in France

WORCESTER, Mass. – Moira O’Neil ’06, a French major with a self-designed international development minor from Maysville, Ky., has received an assistantship to teach English at a secondary school in La Reunion, a small island off the East Coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

In addition to teaching English to French-speaking students, O’Neil will also be participating in extra-curricular activities.

Following her assistantship, O’Neil would like to spend a few years working for non-governmental organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders or World Teach, so she can go to Latin America and learn Spanish. Following that, she plans to go to graduate school to study international relations and law.

At Holy Cross, O’Neil was chief of staff of the Bishop Healy Multicultural Society as well as an intern at AIDS Project Worcester. She was a resident assistant during her sophomore year. Moira was also a finalist this year in the national competition for the Samuel Huntington Public Service Award.

The French Ministry of Education and the Cultural Services at the French Embassy offers between 1,000 and 1,700 teaching assistant positions in French primary and secondary schools and in Instituts universitaires de formation des maîtres (teacher-training colleges).