Ed Cieslak

Ed Cieslak currently teaches French at Duluth High School in the Gwinnett County School System. He is a recent graduate of Georgia State University with a BA in French/Teacher Education and an MA in French with a concentration in Applied Linguistics and Foreign Language Pedagogy. He also holds a degree from The Art Institute of Atlanta in Computer Animation and Multimedia Development.

In the 1990s, he worked for Emory University’s School of Public Health creating and maintaining their website as well as online lessons for the professors. He also helped to develop and localize educational and testing software in French for Quiz, Inc.,Bingwa Multimedia, and Spire Multimedia in Atlanta. He was also a key Animator for the Stone Mountain Laser Show. He played an active role as a Language Coordinator/Interpreter for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Since 2001, he has been actively pursuing a career in teaching which began at Fullsail University in Orlando, Florida teaching Media Arts as the Associate Course Director. In 2002-2003, he worked as an EFL teacher overseas in South Korea and continued to teach ESL in the Atlanta area until 2012.

Since returning to the USA in 2004, he taught a wide variety of digital design courses such as graphic design, multimedia and web development, video/sound editing, PHP & MySQL programming, 2D/3D modeling and animation, and portfolio development at Anthem College in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2011, he received the Dr. Carol Semonsky Award for excellence in Foreign Language Education from Georgia State University. He is GACE certified in both French K-12 and Art K-12 and serves on the French GACE Bias Review Committee.

ed marie
Moi avec Marie Antoinette!

“I started studying French back in high school and knew on the second day of that class that I wanted to one day speak French fluently. My teacher never spoke much in class and I always wanted more. Having aspirations to be an artist with the intention of wanting to speak French better, I decided to move to France after high school and try to get into a French fine arts program or university. After a year in the country and immersed in the language, I was able to communicate well enough to become accepted to L’École des Beaux Arts in Angers. I continued on a path as an artist for the next fifteen years becoming a computer animator and graphic designer. I discovered teaching in 2001 and never looked back. After five years of