LE FRANCOIS BIDS SEMI-FAREWELL
Teacher Erin Kittle Le Francois is leaving her full-time teaching role at Mammoth High School after a career spanning over two decades.
But she’s not really done. Not yet.
Le Francois will now be engaging in a reduced workload arrangement, sharing a contract with another full-time employee and teaching part-time at nearby Sierra High School. It’s a new phase that marks the continuation of a storied career in the halls of MUSD—one that spans back to 1997.
“I’m thankful our district offers reduced workload,” said Le Francois. “I’m looking forward to working with a smaller group, for sure, with more focus on helping the kids and utilizing my resources to help them be successful.”
Le Francois’s connection to Mammoth began when her parents moved here in ‘76.
“I moved to Mammoth when I was seven years old,” she recalls, “Back in the day when the elementary school was down by the fish hatchery. That was before it was closed by an earthquake in my fifth-grade year.”
Le Francois went on to attend the combined K-12 school that emerged after that earthquake, where she excelled both academically and athletically, eventually earning a Division I volleyball scholarship to Saint Mary’s College in Moraga. There, she majored in Government.
Teaching, then, was not Le Francois’s original career plan.
After college, she played semi-pro volleyball in the Bay Area and considered pursuing a career in law.
But soon enough, she “fell into teaching,” obtained her credential from the College of Notre Dame in Belmont, student taught at Sequoia Union High School, and remained there for four years.
“Teaching really was an accident for me,” Le Francois admitted to The Sheet. “I didn’t think I was going to do it permanently, but I just ended up liking it so much that I stayed in it.”
Her eventual return to Mammoth was influenced by her mother’s encouragement—herself a teacher, and one that actually helped open Sierra High School.
“She suggested I apply for a position back home,” Erin explains. “That was in 1997. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to move home yet, but I interviewed and got the job.”
Since then, there have been few corners of the school unimpacted by Le Francois. She’s taught AP U.S. History, AP Comparative Politics, and AP Government and Politics, in line with her own academic background.
“Government was really more of my major,” she said. “Those courses were kind of my jam.”
Outside of the classroom, Le Francois proved herself to be a winning coach for the high school’s cross country team and volleyball team, the latter of which she took on immediately after returning to Mammoth and later resumed in 2019 after the pandemic’s hiatus. She also started the beach volleyball program at Mammoth High School—a team 3 years running in the league, and one that frequently travels to the west side of the Sierra to compete.
But through it all, Le Francois says that her students have made the job worthwhile. She describes herself as “one of those weird people that tend to get along better with teenagers than I do adults.”
Some of her best memories of these past 20 years, says Le Francois, are of playing board games and cooking dinners with her athletes while traveling out-of-town for tournaments. Or, as Senior Class Advisor, chaperoning a trip of 74 teachers who were “fun to be around” and “keep you young.”
“I don’t have too many bad days at work…because the best thing about being a teacher is the kids,” said Le Francois. “And the best way to get to know them is not necessarily in class, it’s outside of class.”
This Friday, Le Francois’s daughter, Madeline, graduates from Mammoth High School and will go on to attend UCLA where her brother, Aidan, will be a senior. Le Francois also has a son, Quentin, currently attending CU Boulder.
As she approaches semi-retirement, Le Francois says she’s looking forward to moving Madeline into school, spending time with her children, and joining Gerry—her “hubby”—who has been retired for the past 2 years.
