Jennifer teaches Spanish as well as directing the community service programming. She lives in East Granby with her husband Stefan and their four children ages 15, 13 and 10-year-old twins. As a family, they enjoy spending their summers traveling around Spain, most recently Salamanca and Valencia. When she isn’t traveling, she is either watching her children play hockey or tending to her gardens. 

 

Prior, Jennifer spent 17 years at Hartford Public Schools, serving her last 10 years at Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy where she was a world language department coach.

Born in Cameroon, Frantz Batoh is a 27-year veteran French teacher who began teaching in his native country. He moved to the United States in 2005 in search of new challenges. Before joining Westminster, he taught French at The Cambridge School of Weston, Derby Academy, St. Luke’s School and Hilton Head Preparatory School, among others. He is a native French speaker, as well as having proficiency in Italian, Japanese, Latin and Spanish.

 

Frantz believes that every human being is endowed with unique gifts that will help them reach their goals. He also believes that a teacher’s job is to guide students to identify those gifts and use them throughout their learning process.

 

In addition to his bachelor’s in French/English and a doctorate in public policy and administration of NGOs (non-governmental organizations), Frantz earned a master’s in teaching from École Normale Supérieure du Cameroun and the School for International Training in Vermont. His research includes a dissertation on “The Colonial Legacy on Education and Employment in Sub-Saharan African,” socioeconomic impacts on populations in terms of management of refugees and resettlement in Africa, and Western diplomacy and power-making in French-speaking countries in Africa. His most recent degree, from Walden University where he earned his doctorate, is a master's of philosophy in public policy and administration.

 

Frantz lives on campus in Edge House, where he is dorm head, with his wife Sephora, a nurse, and two of his three girls, Hayley and Hannah. He loves cooking, doing laundry, reading books related to applied linguistics and world affairs. Soccer and using the gym are his other passions.

Marline Diaz comes to Westminster from the Bronx Global Learning Institute for Girls Charter School where she had worked since 2017. Located in the Bronx, N.Y., Marline developed and carried out lesson plans in all subjects and participated in all aspects of classroom management, mentored teacher assistants, participated in staff development activities and assisted with student assessments, among other tasks. She worked with students from kindergarten to eighth grade. She completed all tasks in English and Spanish.

 

A graduate of the University of Arizona Global Campus with a bachelor’s in education studies, Marline lives in Waterbury. At Westminster, she teaches Spanish, utilizing her experience, educational background and creative skills to foster the academic, emotional and social growth of students.

 

Nicole comes to Westminster from Trinity Preparatory School in Winter Park, Fla., where she had taught Spanish since 2012. Before that, she was a Spanish teacher at Suffield Academy and Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta, N.J.

 

At Trinity Preparatory, she planned on-site professional development opportunities, developed mentor programming for new teachers and traveled abroad with students to introduce them to a global perspective. At Suffield, she was a dormitory parent and head coach of the junior varsity field hockey and varsity softball teams. Nicole lives in Gund House with her husband, Ignacio, their cats and dog. In her free time, she enjoys running, being outside, reading and baking.

Whether in her history or her language classroom, Cara cultivates global perspectives and cross-cultural competencies in her students. A dedicated believer in the transformative power of international education, Cara also works closely with Westminster's international students and families and is the campus representative for partner programs such as School Year Abroad and ASSIST.

 

As an undergraduate at Connecticut College, Cara earned a Department of Defense scholarship to study for a year in Beijing, and in the formerly Manchurian city of Harbin. These two distinctive cities fueled Cara’s interest in Eurasian history. Upon her return to the U.S., Cara graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and distinction in Chinese studies and received the Helen Carey Coudert prize for excellence in Chinese.

 

At Harvard University, Cara earned a master’s degree in East Asian studies, and completed advanced degree coursework with some of the world’s foremost scholars of premodern East Asian history. Her time at Harvard was challenging, intellectually stimulating and fun; Cara strives to bring that same energy to her classroom each day. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in world history and East Asian history, and currently enjoys guiding Third Formers development as writers, thinkers, and scholars in Westminster’s Global History and Societies course.

 

Cara lives in Edge House with her husband Jeff and their children Mira ’25 and Luke ’27. She enjoys singing with the faculty choir, kayaking on the river, recreational reading and planning weekly corridor “feeds.” 

Julia brings extensive experience teaching Spanish in the U.S. and abroad to her position in the Language Department at Westminster. Most recently, she taught first-year through AP® language classes for four years at King’s Academy in Madaba, Jordan. While there, she was head of a girls’ dormitory, a faculty advisor and coached cross country, volleyball and no-gym fitness. Prior to that, she taught first through fourth year language courses for seven years at St. Andrew’s School in Delaware, where she also was dean of sophomore girls, an admissions officer, a resident faculty member, an advisor, and a coach of cross country and crew. She also chaperoned numerous international trips in addition to planning and co-leading two community service trips to Nicaragua. For two years, she was a Spanish teacher at The Hotchkiss School, where she served as a coach, a resident faculty member, an advisor and co-led international community service trips.

In addition to earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in Spanish, both of which included an academic year abroad in Spain, Julia has attended classes at the Universidad Internacional Menédez Pelayo and the Universidad de Granada in Spain. She also attended the Klingenstein Center Teachers College Summer Institute at Columbia University.