Manuela Mendonca

I have always been passionate about communication and expression and have felt sure about my future as a teacher and a writer since I was a child. The second of these intentions is not something I have yet fully achieved, although I do enjoy writing a personal blog from time to time. I grew up in a multilingual family, it therefore didn’t take long to realize that I loved languages and multiculturalism. I decided to deepen my knowledge of Voltaire’s language and studied French linguistics and literature at university.
I had the opportunity to start teaching students aged 14 to 20 in high schools at the age of 23 and then decided to move to another latin country. After working for four years in Spain, where I had contact with a lot of different cultures, having to use different languages in my daily routine, I decided to head to Switzerland and started teaching languages. I have taught French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, both to secondary students and adults.

I’ve been working at Terra Nova since August 2020. My daily motivation is to transmit to my students my passion and my enthusiasm for languages, in this case for French, and for all its characteristics, history, culture, diversity. It is not always easy to teach a third language in a bilingual school, where students have to focus on learning German and English impeccably, but this is what makes my mission even more challenging: to immerse young people in discovering such a beautiful and captivating language as this one and helping them make use of it as a breathtaking and fascinating way of communication.

Since I arrived at this school, I feel that I am living a true “love story”: I love my profession, I work everyday with joy and passion and try to transmit it from the heart. The students receive my teachings with a smile on their face and with incredible curiosity. Eager and motivated, they are immensely creative and have managed to show me that together we are an excellent team!