Anna Gilcher, PhD

Co-Director

Anna is an intellectually engaged and heart-centered language educator who specializes in teaching French and training language teachers to create a more joyful, effective, and equitable classroom environment. Anna works with her students—adults and children alike—to weave a web of connections, bringing language, culture, story, and learning to life. With her business partner Rachelle, Anna is committed to having every world language classroom be the place where culturally-responsive teaching happens through Comprehensible Input (CI). Anna also speaks German and Spanish. 

Anna offers French classes for learners of all ages and brains, both in person in the DC area, and online for learners around the globe. She targets many of her online classes specifically to language teachers, offering them the lived experience of deepening their French language acquisition in a CI environment. 

Integrating her training as an InterPlay leader, spiritual director, and committed practitioner of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Anna brings both playfulness and presence to her teaching and leadership, creating an inclusive, deeply welcoming, and low-stress environment for participants. In addition to teaching French, Anna runs a monthly job-embedded professional development series for world language teachers in the DC metro area. Working with administrators and teachers, Anna helps create culturally responsive CI curricula for a variety of independent and public schools and districts. Based on CI teaching methods, Anna trains language teachers regionally, nationally, and internationally, embedding all instruction within a culturally responsive teaching framework. 

Anna has taught in both university and secondary (middle/high school) settings, and has served with professors and AP teachers from around the country as a College Board AP French Reader. Vista Higher Learning published her AP French syllabus as the sample syllabus for the Thèmes textbook in January 2016. She also served as Academic Director of the Aumazo Tutoring Program in Bankondji, Cameroon and as Instructional Coordinator for the Cherokee Nation’s IGNITE conference. This wide experience informs and enriches her offerings at conferences around the country such as NTPRS, iFLT, Comprehensible Midwest, Comprehensible Cascadia, GWATFL, the Express Fluency Teacher Workshop, and of course IGNITE. 

Anna has worked with District of Columbia Public Schools on curriculum development, teacher training modules, as well as training pre-service teachers. This work, combined with Elevate’s ongoing professional development opportunities for DC area teachers, undergirds her commitment to helping the DC area become the CI capital of the United States.    

When Anna isn’t working she can be found practicing yoga, reading novels in French, German and Spanish, singing in her church choir (which her husband directs), listening to feminist & anti-racist podcasts such as Kiffe ta Race and La Poudre, walking her dog, and enjoying her family.