Learn more about one of Menlo’s most vibrant foreign language teachers!

Alex Edidin | Staff Reporter
Zoey Lieberman | A&L Editor
Photo courtesy Corinne Chung

CoA: What was your worst subject in school?
Chung: Geography. But you guys don’t have that. And history because when I was at school in high school, the history class was about memorizing dates and names and it was a sister who would give the class and she was close to eighty years old. Once in a while she would fall asleep! And now I love it but at the time I didn’t like it. And math. Math killed me in my senior year. I had such a mean teacher! I mean she really discouraged me from continuing math.

CoA: What is your most embarrassing moment?
Chung: So I go to a supermarket and a guy hears me speaking French with my husband and says “So beautiful, I love French so much!” So I did not know how to thank him so I just said “Oh you are so gay!” He did not want to talk to me anymore. […] It took me a while to realize why the guy was so upset.

CoA: What is your favorite TV show?
Chung: Oh yeah —  Game of Thrones! Chocolate News — it was an African-American [host], and would make fun of all the stories and the politically correct stuff happening in the US.

CoA: What is the worst mistake you made as a parent?
Chung: My husband went on a field trip when my daughter was in preschool. They go to a museum and arriving at school–he fell asleep in the bus because he always falls asleep–they realized they left her in the museum — she was still playing with all those plastic balls. They had to go all the way back from Palo Alto to San Jose.

CoA: What was the funniest moment of your teaching career?
Chung: When I did a lesson of pronunciation together. It was really bad! I had the time of my life! Also when I went to France with a group of students for the summer. We were all in the same room one evening and a senior who was a swimmer used to shave his entire bod. He heard that in France they sold a specific kind of wax which you can take away hair really fast. So we didn’t know how to do it so we put a lot of it on him and it dried and we didn’t know how to get it off. We finally took it off and everybody went “AHHHH!” But he wanted it!