Free Fall/Winter Virtual Workshop Series
NECTFL is pleased to present an outstanding line-up of presenters to help us learn and grow professionally during the short days of winter.
- Workshops will be one hour in length and will be conducted using Zoom. They will be available synchronously at the time indicated and will also be recorded for asynchronous viewing. Recordings will be posted to our YouTube channel.
- Registration is limited to the first 500 participants in each workshop.
Workshops in this series are provided at no cost through he generous support of Wayside Publishing.
4:00 PM, Thursday, December 2, 2021
Going Global: Taking Action in World Language Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment
Ashley Warren, West Windsor Plainsboro Regional School District, Plainsboro, NJ
As language educators, we want to empower our students to become global change agents. After all, we don’t just want our students to be able to speak another language; we want them to take action and use the target language to make a positive contribution to the world. In this workshop, we will explore how students can learn to take action in the world language classroom. This means that we will critically examine our curricula, our instructional practices, and our assessments to ensure that we are equipping students to be the global change agents that we want them to be!
Ashley Warren finds joy in connecting with students from kindergarten to college. Ashley has taught FLES and high school Spanish, from level one to AP Spanish Literature. She has also taught college courses for English Language Learners. Most recently, she taught Kindergarten in her district’s dual language immersion (DLI) program. Currently, Ashley serves as a supervisor of K-12 World Language and DLI. At every level, Ashley focuses on creating inclusive, equitable learning communities where students develop the linguistic and cultural proficiency to “find their voice” in the target language and become global change agents.
View Slideshow (PDF)
4:00 PM, Tuesday, December 14, 2021
It’s All About Context
Leslie Grahn, Independent Consultant, Clarksville, MD
How do we add context to the learning experiences we plan for our students? Contextualized lesson tasks that provide relevance and connections to real life are highly engaging to our Generation Z global learners. Join us for this virtual workshop where participants will gain strategies for designing learning experiences that provide context for students based on real-world scenarios and authentic resources. Practice enriching your unit themes with relevant topics and make global connections for your students for a variety of task types.
Leslie Grahn has twenty-seven years of language teaching experience at the middle and high school levels and twelve years of experience at the central office level, most recently as Coordinator of World Languages for the Howard County Public School System in Maryland. Leslie is a frequent presenter at conferences, specializing in best practices. She curates and creates resources to support language teaching and learning and shares them through her website (www.grahnforlang.com) and on Pinterest (grahnforlang). Leslie is the co-author of The Keys to Strategies for Language Instruction and has served on the boards of NECTFL, NADSFL and ACTFL.
7:00 PM, Wednesday, January 5, 2022
Tiered Interpretive Tasks for Authentic Texts
Kathryn Rump, Appoquinimink High School, DECTFL, Middletown, DE
Bring new ideas to your authentic texts and resource while using them in class! This presentation will provide teachers with the rationale for using tiered tasks while giving them resources and ideas on how they may create tiered interpretive tasks to better suit their learners’ proficiency level. It will discuss ways that tasks can be completed in-person or digitally, and will provide ideas for synchronous and asynchronous work. Examples will be shown in Spanish. Be ready to participate in a fun and interactive session!
Kathryn Rump is a Spanish teacher in Middletown, Delaware. She loves fusing learning language and culture with games, music, and technology. Her lessons focus on personalization and integration of comprehensible input. She regularly engages her students with a variety of authentic texts, web 2.0 tools, and game-based learning. She had the honor of being DECTFL’s 2020 Teacher of the Year and is a member of the 2021 – 2022 ACTFL LILL Cohort. She has degrees from the University of Delaware (BA – 3 Foreign Languages), West Chester University (M.Ed. – Spanish Education) and Wilmington University (M.Ed. – Applied Technology).
7:00 PM, Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Anti-Bias Practice in Language Classroom
Bonnie Wang, Durham Academy, Durham, NC
Vicky Wang, St. Paul’s School, Brooklandville, MD
This workshop explores ways of developing an anti-bias curriculum that covers diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) topics in world language classrooms at all levels. The presenters will focus on pedagogical processes including addressing, teaching, and modeling anti-bias in the classroom. They will demonstrate recent curricular examples and share the process of building lesson plans featuring multi-cultural and social justice themes. Participants will be encouraged to engage in open conversations, brainstorming ideas of social justice topics, and drafting a practical lesson plan that they can use in their courses.
Bonnie Chunmeng Wang is a Chinese teacher and Diversity, Equity and Engagement Curriculum Consultant at Durham Academy Upper School in Durham, North Carolina. She was awarded 2019 Teacher of the Year by Foreign Language Association of North Carolina (FLANC), and is currently serving on the board of several teachers associations including SCOLT and FLANC. Wang holds an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her pedagogical research focuses on proficiency-based language assessment, incorporating social justice into World Language curriculum, as well as integrating calligraphy, Taichi, and classical poetry into Chinese Language and Culture curriculum.
Vicky Wang is currently working at the St. Paul’s Schools in Maryland as the Upper School Chinese language and culture teacher. She is also serving as the Asian students’ affinity group mentor and international club advisor. Ms. Wang was the VP of the Chinese Language Association of Secondary and Elementary Schools (CLASS) for the year of 2021 and board of directors since 2016. She is one the founding members of Courageous Dialogues with Chinese Educators (CDCE) to create affinity spaces for Chinese educators to grow and to learn about how to advocate for themselves as well as to create a safe and equitable learning environment for our students. Ms. Wang is currently serving on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee for ACTFL and was a member of Leadership Initiative for Language Learning cohort 3.
PD Credit / NYS CTLE:
If you would like confirmation of viewing a NECTFL webinar for PD purposes, after you view the webinar please:
- download this webinar viewing confirmation form and complete it, then
- return it to us via this form.
Once you submit your form, you will receive an email confirmation with the information you submitted
All past webinars are available on our YouTube channel:
Fall/Winter 2020–21 Series on World Languages for Social Justice
- Social Justice in World Languages Education: Where Do I Start? with Beth Wassell, Ph.D, Rowan University, Slideshow
- Having Conversations about Race in Foreign Language Classrooms with Angèle Kingué, Ph.D, Bucknell University, Handout
- Finding LGBTQ+ Voices in the World Language Classroom with Joseph Parodi-Brown, Ed.D, Marionapolis Preparatory School, Slideshow, Resources
- Designing for Equity: Power, Perspectives and Protocols with Maryann Woods-Murphy, Ed.D, Woods-Murphy Educational Services, Slideshow
- Using Digital Games to Create Communicative Activities About Social Justice Topics with Silvina Orsatti, Ed.D, U. of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Slideshow and Handouts
Spring 2020 Series on Remote Teaching and Learning
- Language Learning after Corona: Lessons Learned as We Move Forward with Rebecca Aubrey
- Building a Community Response to Crisis with Georges Chahwan and Ian Wollman
- Rethinking the Flipped Classroom for Remote Learning with Christopher Gwin
- “We’ll Always Have Paris:” Adapting Best Strategies to The New Now with Rebecca Blouwolff
- Charting Your Course: Instructional Planning During (and after!) Coronavirus with Michelle Olah, Handout
- How to Engage Language Learners in Online Learning with Leslie Grahn
ACTFL Webinars
ACTFL is also providing free webinars on the topic of distance learning. Please visit the ACTFL website for complete details.
For ACTFL resources that address issues on race, diversity, and social justice, click here.