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Newsletter - March 2025
Dear language educators,
We are excited to announce that our new course, Language Teaching with Generative AI: Harnessing AI to Elevate Instruction, will be available for enrollment beginning this summer. 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 courses are open to teachers of all languages. Please see below for more information.
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
Language Teaching with
Generative AI
We are excited to announce that our new course, Language Teaching with Generative AI: Harnessing AI to Elevate Instruction, will be available for enrollment beginning this summer. The course will be taught by Dr. Frederick Poole, a faculty member in the MA in Foreign Language Teaching program at MSU and a researcher in the field of Generative AI. The course is open to teachers of all languages.
The course is designed to provide language instructors with the knowledge and skills to leverage GenAI in ways that align with communicative and task-based language teaching. Participants will explore diverse GenAI tools for language learning and teaching, experiment with GenAI activity design and assessment, and develop strategies for integrating AI into their teaching in meaningful, pedagogically sound ways.
Two sections of the course will be offered this summer:
- Summer Session 1: May 19 – June 6
- Summer Session 2: July 7-25
Looking Back, Looking Forward
The Shared LCTL Symposium will be held in conjunction with the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) Annual Conference in Chicago on April 24, 2025 from 1-5:30pm!
Personnel from the Mellon Transforming Language Instruction project and the LCTL and Indigenous Languages Partnership project will review 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 will then have an exploratory panel discussion with representatives from various LCTL organizations to explore possible collaborative avenues for the future.
Collaborative PD Funds
Are you a LCTL instructor that is interested in hosting a webinar or workshop? The NLRC offers professional development funds that can help you achieve that goal. You will have the opportunity to receive speaker fees or general event support funding. As long as you are any LCTL instructor in the country, you are eligible to apply!
To apply for PD funds, learn more here. The next deadline is April 15th!
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.
Penn State LCTL Survey
LCTL instructors and graduate students, check it out! Penn State’s CALPER (Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research) has an anonymous survey that for LCTL instructors and graduate students teaching any language other than the following: English, Spanish, French, or German! You can take the survey here.
The ViVID project has now welcomed its third cohort with fellows coming from 11 institutions and representing 5 target languages including Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and Serbian. The teachers work in a variety of teaching contexts, such as 9-12 grade secondary schools and 4-year college or universities, and their teaching experience varies from 2 to 20+ years in the classroom, which enriches the peer mentoring groups and provides the perfect opportunity for professional growth. More information about the fellows will be coming in future newsletters!
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
We have officially entered and concluded the month of love, February! This month is also the notable and significant month that is Black History Month, from the 1st all the way to the end of the month. This month, we also celebrated National Black Literacy Day on the 14th, right alongside Valentine’s Day. On February 9th, we acknowledged Greek Language Day, and on February 21st we celebrated International Mother Language Day! This month may be the shortest month in the calendar year, but it is definitely one of the most significant and meaningful months that will continue to remain significant to our country. Happy February, and happy Black History Month!
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) will be 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. The first workshop is scheduled for March 6th.
The Open Language Resource Center at the University of Kansas will host the fourth annual Language OER Conference on Saturday, March 8th via Zoom. The conference provides a venue to showcase large-scale language OER and to exchange information on topics related to OER production and adoption. This year’s conference will highlight materials in Arabic, Chinese, English as a Second Language, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. The Language OER Conference is completely free, but registration is required.
- The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) 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. Applications open on January 6th.
- 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.
- The CALPER program at Penn State is hosting their Spring 2025 Professional Development webinar series, revolving around "Advances in World Language Pedagogy". Register here.
- The National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa is offering a 5-module open-enrollment self-study course for language educators beginning to learn about Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL). Register here.
