Meet Amy Pitsker

Photo Credits: Amy Pitsker

By Zoe Patterson

Amy Pitsker is one of two new French teachers at Athenian. She’s teaching French 1, 2, 3-Honors, and 4-Honors. While she loves French, she started learning it because of a different interest of hers: art.

“I grew up around art, and I really loved art, and I wanted to go see some of this art at some point in my life as a young person,” Pitsker said. “And so I asked my mom, how can I get to [this museum], and she said...if you learn French and went to a school that had a study abroad program, you could get there.”

However, as Pitsker learned French, she began to fall in love with many aspects of the language and culture.

“I got really passionate about the language and the beauty of the poetry in the language,” Pitsker said. “I really loved it. And also, the cinema was another thing that really drew me in.”

Pitsker is quite interested in the arts in English as well, especially in music.

“I love talking about songs,” Pitsker said. “My favorite song right now would probably be Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here.’”

Making her own music is something that Pitsker claims not to be good at, but that she enjoys regardless.

“I picked up the guitar in my 30s, and I’m all self-taught, so I’m not very good, but I’ve gotten better over the 20 years I’ve been playing,” Pitsker said.

Pitsker’s love of live music in particular has been unfortunately affected by the current situation with COVID-19.

“Dancing to live music...is the thing that feeds me and centers me,” Pitsker said. “It’s the thing that I have to do to feel really in my body. And I’ve been dancing...and it’s just not the same. I miss that so much I can’t even tell you.”

However, in other areas, Pitsker has long been an adaptable person who is open to change, partly due, she says, to her childhood.

“I went to—I think it’s 13...K–12 schools, and I think one of the reasons that’s important is that it developed me personally in a lot of ways,” Pitsker said. “Like, I’m really flexible and curious, and I think both of those things came out of having moved so many times and having to change communities so many times that it became a way of being for me to be a person who welcomes change and newness. I like things that are new.”

This has, in fact, influenced Pitsker’s experience with French.

“Even within the United States, I’ve lived in different cultural kind of groups of the US, and they’ve been really different...and then of course, I lived in Paris for a year, and that was very different, and I’ve traveled in a lot of French-speaking countries that are different as well, and lived for, like, a month in France a couple of times,” Pitsker said. “All of this is the kind of thing that is fed by my childhood of having to change so often and explore what’s new and rise to the moment.”

Pitsker has always looked at this affinity for change optimistically and considers it an important part of her life.

“When you leave a place, there’s always things you miss, but then there’s always something good about where you’re going, so that’s kind of my motto in life,” Pitsker said. “There’s always something good about where you’re going.”