Pancha French

Pancha French has a very unusual background story and education journey. Born in Thailand to an American and Thai parents, her first language was Thai. However, she moved to America at a critical language development age of 15 months where English became her dominant language. From the age of 5 she was constantly on the move, living in many different countries where the dominant language changed from Thai to English to Chinese and back to English again. She attended more than 15 schools in over 6 countries, in various languages and schools across different social economic backgrounds. They ranged from local public schools, private schools, elite international schools, Chinese public schools, Thai public schools, Catholic boarding schools and the list goes on. Despite all this upheaval in her life, the one constant was that she was an avid reader and followed her interest in her own reading journey. When she landed in London, England she finally developed some roots and attended the American School in London. She eventually graduated from Queen Mary University of London with a degree in Math and Computing and went on to become a Chartered Accountant. Her first career was in Accounting and Systems Design in the banking sector in London. When she moved to the States with her husband and had children she knew she wanted to raise her children to speak multiple languages. She understood the many cognitive benefits especially on the developing brain from infants to age 5 where the brain grows to 90% of its capacity. However, she realized this would only be possible if she homeschooled them. Thus began her journey of how to raise multilingual children. She found her calling when she realized that her passion lies in education due not only to her background but also to the extensive curriculum research she did whilst homeschooling her children. She has now developed a system to help families raise multilingual children and it is through this work she hopes to share and raise awareness of the many benefits, not only cognitively, of multilingual individuals. Her work currently is centered on the Birth to Kindergarten stage and to optimize this unparalleled window of brain development. panchafrench.com