No images? Click here
Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it here.
Newsletter - May 2024
Check out more of our latest happenings below, including the upcoming ViVID cohort, an announcement for the 2024 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Awards, a new summer online course, and our new Teach-a-LCTL Resources Guides!
Don't forget to explore opportunities from other LRCs and Language Centers in our PD Opportunities and Resources section, at the end of the newsletter!
New to our newsletter? Explore all eleven of our projects in our three core areas of professional development, open resources, and strategic collaboration on our website!
Check out other events on our joint LRC calendar here (also linked under 'PD Opportunities and Resources').
Updates
Calling all LCTL educators! Join the ViVID Project as a fellow and participate in reflective teaching and peer mentoring through video-based feedback.
The ViVID Project provides opportunities for teachers of less-commonly-taught languages to form a lasting virtual community and use video-based feedback to develop skills in reflective teaching and peer observation. All participants will receive a $1,000 stipend for the 9-month program.
The NLRC is excited to announce the 2024 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Award winners!
The NLRC gives these awards to recognize outstanding innovations in LCTL instruction. These innovations use technology to creatively and effectively address a real, context-based problem in LCTL education. Award winners use technology to transform traditional teaching practices, prompting learners to explore, create, and develop proficiency with language through accessible technology. These awards are generously sponsored by the Masters in Foreign Language Teaching at Michigan State University.
For the 2024 edition, the two winners are Lisa Gulesserian from Harvard University and Mansi Bajaj from Yale University! We have two honorable mentions for the LCTL awards: Wenjing Huang and Gaspara Borbal.
Head over to our website to learn more about each innovation!
We are excited to announce our summer course schedule, which includes a brand new course we've never offered before titled Community-Oriented Teaching.
The class focuses on engagement within our classroom communities and beyond with the target language-speaking community locally and globally. We first explore what makes our language learning class communities special, review various community building efforts (e.g. extracurricular experiences) and reassess what realistic expectations for community engagement in various modalities may be.
In addition to this new course, we are pleased to be able to offer another session of Teaching the Whole Class, with guest educator Dr. Tom Garza (University of Texas at Austin).
As usual, our summer courses will be offered completely free of charge. The deadline to apply is June 3rd.
Teach-a-LCTL Resources Guides
The Teach-a-LCTL Resources Guides combine scholarship on community language education, heritage language learners, and literacies-based approaches to language learning. The goal of the guides is to give an easy-to-use resource to teachers and coordinators of community LCTL education programs, so that they can adapt lesson plans to fit their languages, cultures, and learners.
The guide contains sample lesson plans on 5 themes: music; sports and movement; clothing; expressions and emotions; and food. It also directs community language educators to additional educational and organizational resources.
NLRC Social Media Highlight
We began this month by celebrating Arab-American History Month, as we recognize those that are part of the Arab diaspora! In terms of language and LCTLs, we observed Chinese Language Day on April 20th, as well as English Language day and Spanish Language day, both of which are on April 23rd! Props to all of you that speak a LCTL, regardless of how globally spoken such as Spanish, or as difficult as Chinese! Alongside these notable dates, we also advertised our new OLT courses, application PD funds—that deadline of which was on April 15th, as well as ViVID fellows applications! Follow us on social media for our updates and other tidbits!
FREE PD OPPORTUNITIES
Learn more about our Summer 2024 Online Language Teaching courses!
Teaching the Whole Class
Leverage course design principles and learning technologies to facilitate proficiency development for class sections with heterogeneous learners (differing proficiency levels, heritage, abilities, backgrounds, etc.).
Summer session starts: June 7
Community-Oriented Teaching
The class focuses on engagement within our classroom communities and beyond with the target language-speaking community locally and globally. We explore what makes our language learning class communities special and imagine what realistic expectations for community engagement in various modalities may be.
Summer session starts: July 8
PD Opportunities and Resources
To view all current LRC offerings in an aggregate format, please see this calendar:
Many of our fellow Language Resource Centers and National Resource Centers (and some of our collaborative partners) have their own professional development opportunities. This section highlights some of those opportunities/resources.
- The Teaching and Learning Languages in the United States (TELL-US) podcast series is available. This resource is aimed at novice LCTL instructors with content focusing on pedagogy and school culture.
- The Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has several professional development events online this academic year (2023-2024), including topics surrounding SLA and language ideologies. Check out the link above for more information!
- The Cornell Language Resource Center has a podcast called "Speaking of Language" as well as a Speaker Series (with archived videos of previous events), covering topics of wide-ranging interest for language learners and instructors!
- Applications are now open for Wisconsin Intensive Summer Language Institutes! Most institutes have a March 15 priority deadline, but some of them may still be available!
