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Newsletter - May 2025
Dear all,
We just returned from a very successful 2025 Shared LCTL Symposium in Chicago, which you can read more about below. As the semester comes to a close, we hope that you will consider signing up for one of our summer professional development opportunities - the deadline is fast approaching!
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 (also linked below under PD Opportunities and Resources).
Updates
Looking Back, Looking Forward
The Shared LCTL Symposium was held in conjunction with the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) Annual Conference in Chicago on April 24, 2025.
Personnel from the Mellon Transforming Language Instruction project and the LCTL and Indigenous Languages Partnership project reviewed their collaborative efforts over the years of their funding with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which has made SLCTLS possible over the past nine years. We also hosted an exploratory panel discussion with representatives from various LCTL organizations to explore possible collaborative avenues for the future. Lastly, we announced the 2025 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Award winners and we were pleased to be able to host Dr. Saccomani in person for a presentation of his project. Congratulations Juliano!
Deadline for Summer Courses Application is Approaching
As a reminder, applications are open for enrollment in our new course, Language Teaching with Generative AI: Harnessing AI to Elevate Instruction. Two sections of the Generative AI course will be offered this summer:
- Summer Session 1: May 19 – June 6
- Summer Session 2: July 7-25
The deadline to apply for both these sections is May 5th.
In addition to this new course, we are also grateful to welcome back Dr. Tom Garza to lead a session of his popular course Teaching the Whole Class: Technology for Differentiated Instruction. The dates for this course are June 9-27 and the application deadline is May 26th.
The courses are open to teachers of all languages. Please click the link below for more information.
CERCLL Spring Webinars
CERLL is offering spring webinars on Current Directions in Language Program Administration! This is a FREE webinar series. Each session will explore crucial aspects of language program development and administration, complementing CERCLL and CARLA's (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition) collaborative Language Program Direction self-study modules.
Check out the link for more info here.
Free Consulting/Coaching
with the NLRC
Did you know that the NLRC offers FREE consulting/coaching?
Do you or your language department want to talk through something related to LCTL teaching or learning? From grant writing feedback to proficiency-based teaching, from online language learning to OERs, you can book time with the NLRC to gather resources, get feedback, and process ideas about the teaching and learning of LCTLs.
Don't hesitate to reach out to us to book an initial 30 minute call!
NLRC Social Media Highlight
April showers bring May updates! This past month we celebrated many notable language and culture related days, as well as marking deadlines to NLRC affiliated events and courses. We kicked off the month by celebrating Arab American Heritage Month, where we honored the beautiful Arabic cultures, language variations, and diasporas all over the world. We also celebrated Chinese Language Day and Spanish Language Day on the 20th and 23rd, respectively. English Language Day also fell on the 23rd, coinciding with Spanish Language Day. We also marked several deadlines for our OLT courses that will be beginning this summer. Check out our social media pages for more updates!
OER Textbooks from MSU
There are three new OER (Open Educational Resource) books that have been published at MSU, which include the languages of Vietnamese, Tamil, and Khmer! OER Textbooks are a great form of accessible teaching and learning, for all subjects and languages! MSU and the NLRC will continue to promote and provide resources for LCTL teachers and students. Check them out here:
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 Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) is offering a series of workshops as part of their Social Justice in Language Education initiative, which was developed to address the important need for professional development and instructional materials anchored in social justice and critical pedagogies.
- CARLA also announced the schedule for their 2025 Summer Institutes for Language Teachers. For its 30th annual program, CARLA will offer ten online institutes and four in-person institutes, all of which are designed to link research and theory with practical applications for the classroom.
- CARLA’s new Exploring Learner Language website is adapted from an innovative workbook and video series of the same name that was designed to provide an introductory hands-on experience studying the language used by English as a second language (ESL) learners. Accompanying videos feature six adult ESL learners and (for comparison) two native speakers of English all completing the same individual and paired oral and written communication tasks. In carrying out a guided analysis of the language the learners use in these tasks, teachers can develop instructional skills in identifying their students’ language-learning needs.
- CERCLL Webinar Series Rebooting Language Educ-AI-tion from Spring 2024 has all recordings available for reference!
- 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 for this academic year, including topics surrounding proficiency-based instruction and teacher wellbeing.
- 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.
- The LCTL Program at the Ohio State University has created self-paced, asynchronous LCTL Courses on their Scarlet Canvas platform. Course options exist in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Catalan, Persian, Polish, and Romanian.
