You might know Molly French as the person you email when you are sick or running late. You might know her for the lively music she plays in the lobby on Friday mornings, or for her new bubble machine by her desk. But did you know that French made pickles and salsas on an organic farm, was a trapeze artist in the circus, worked on a remote search and rescue team, taught for Teach for America, and trains her pug Violet for agility competitions?
French started working at Lick six years ago, after working as an office manager at Barbary Coast Consulting in a corporate office downtown. She enjoys working in schools because she “like[s] to be in the middle of a lot of action.” French said, “In this other office it was just so boring.” She was managing mostly trivial issues such as someone saying “I don’t think the clock is straight on the wall,” she recalled.
At Lick, French is definitely in the middle of action. “I am responsible for teachers, students, admin, and parents, and I kind of have to take care of all of them,” French said.
When she came to Lick, the only work she was hired to do was open the door and answer the phone. “I was like, oh no, I can do so much more,” French recalled. She started taking responsibility for student attendance and substitute teaching. French now creates a giant purple calendar with every class and every room for every block, and at least one potential substitute teacher assigned to each.
“I [had] so much time, you know?” French said. So she took responsibility for a task from the facilities department, scheduling all of the room reservations for student, parent, and admin meetings and events. French also handles all of Lick’s phone calls, mail, and packages.
For French, no day is ever the same. Her favorite parts of her job, though, are her interactions with the kids. One yearly moment that is really special for French is her role at graduation. She stands at the door to the stage entrance to make sure that students know where to go. “I get to hug and say goodbye to every kid as they go through… I love it,” French said.
French has faced difficult moments during her time at Lick. She noted that when members of the staff experience tragedies or hardship, the whole staff feels it. “We really are a family,” French said. “One thing kids sometimes don’t realize is that we are a very tight team.”
French takes her responsibilities for the student body seriously. “I consider myself ‘mom’ when you guys are at school,” French said, “which means I’m both good cop and bad cop.” She expresses concern and communicates with staff when kids do not seem right, or if she frequently sees students out of class when she does not think they should be.
French’s story, the path that lead her to Lick-Wilmerding, is incredibly unique and anything but linear. French grew up in San Francisco. She went to the Katherine Delmar Burke School and Lowell High School and loved acting and singing. When French graduated from UC Santa Cruz, she “panicked” because she didn’t think she could act and sing professionally. She instead pursued her teaching credentials, joining Teach for America. She taught first grade in an underfunded school in Houston for several years.
Then, when French was home in San Francisco for the summer, she saw Cirque du Soleil, and was so inspired she decided she wanted to learn trapeze. She moved home to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco School of Circus Arts, now called the Circus Center. She taught at Colma Elemntary in Daly City during the day and went to circus school at night. ”For four years, trapeze was everything to me… I loved it,” French said.
French eventually decided to leave teaching. She felt overwhelmed by the discrepancies in her class, such as the massive differences in reading levels, and wanted to be free of work at night such as grading assignments so she could spend more time at the Circus Center. French started to work in office management at a multimedia company called C Wave, training for trapeze at nights and on the weekends. After 9/11, French said, “It struck me that I would be the kind of person that would be able to help in an emergency situation.” Referencing her lack of squeamishness, French joined the Red Cross and worked in disaster relief after disasters such as the San Bernardino wildfires. Throughout her time working for the Red Cross, French served food to displaced people, went into buildings to take inventory of damage, and went door-to-door looking for missing kids. As part of an all-volunteer search and rescue team, she was also helicoptered into remote locations such as Yosemite to look for missing people.
A good friend of hers from the circus moved to Montreal in 2006, and Molly decided to go with her. French speaks excellent French, but she did not have a green card. She worked 10 hour shifts at a grocery store. She stayed in Montreal for two years before moving back to San Francisco. French then worked for six years at the charter school City Arts and Tech, where she did everything she does at Lick and more: doing admissions, filing absences, reporting grades, and sending school data to the government. “There was no admissions department, that was me,” French said.
French then moved to the corporate office job, where she stayed for about six months, and then to Lick-Wilmerding. French lives in the Sunset district with her sister, brother-in-law, niece, nephew, and pug Violet. She loves to walk Violet in her two favorite places in San Francisco: the Presidio and Fort Funston. French used to train Violet for agility competitions, which was easy because Violet is especially “food motivated.” When Violet ultimately became a little too interested in her treats instead of jumping through hoops, they retired, as French “didn’t want to make [Violet] do something she didn’t want to do.”
French emphasized the value in following one’s interests. “One of the things I always tell kids is that you may have the feeling that when you graduate high school, you are on the path to the thing you will do for the rest of your life…It’s just not true… For the majority of us, you’re going to try lots of things,” French said. The “most important thing is to give everything you have to whatever you are doing at the moment.” French remembered the confusion she felt when she left teaching, the thing she felt like she was “supposed to do.”
“You don’t have to be set in any one path…it’s okay to step away from something,” she said. “If someone had told me I would be the front office person at a high school, I would have had a snobby attitude that [that job] wasn’t good enough for me,” French recalled. “But I love my job and my heart is in it.”
French explained that the reason she has done so many things is because she never wants to be the person who wistfully says “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“I’m gonna try it and give it my all, and be able to say I did it,” French said. Her advice, always, is “go for it and you are going to get something out of it. As long as you give it your all.”
