World Language Week

Seal of Biliteracy

Webinar

Session Description:

Nebraska established the state Seal of Biliteracy in 2020.   What is the Seal of Biliteracy?  How many students received the state Seal of Biliteracy every year?   What does it mean to your students?  What are the national trends for the Seal of Biliteracy?   In this session, we look back the history of the Seal of Biliteracy movement and discuss the future of bilingualism.

More about Arthur Chou:

Arthur Chou is a social entrepreneur. He advocates the biliteracy and dual language school movement to promote education equity for English Learner students, encourages multilingualism, and prepares every student to become a global citizen. He is the founder and managing director for Academic Learning Company, LLC which operates SealofBiliteracy.org, DualLanguageSchools.org and Velázquez Press. Arthur has helped more than 30 states establishing their state Seal of Biliteracy and build an online community for dual language school educators, parents and administrators.

He is the publisher of Velázquez Press, which published the oldest and largest Spanish and English dictionary based in the United States. Velázquez Press is the preeminent authority of academic language and authentic biliteracy and has sponsored 30,000+ Biliteracy recognition medals for the Seal of Biliteracy movement.

Arthur backpacked in South America in his 20’s and learned Spanish during his travels. Besides Spanish and English, Arthur speaks 4 other languages and has traveled all 50 states and 50+ countries.

Transforming Our World through Multilingualism and Intercultural Citizenship

Webinar

Session Description:

As parents, school leaders, and language educators know, we are preparing our students to be globally minded citizens, collaborative communicators, and critical thinkers who are civic ready and can solve problems creatively.  Join this keynote session to explore the ways that Nebraska students can transform our world through multilingualism and intercultural citizenship.  As we consider how K-12 students, college students, and young members of the workforce benefit from language study, we will also unite to share advocacy ideas that allow our communities to see the power of languages in making our youth college, career, and civic ready.

More about Lea Kennedy:

Lea Graner Kennedy is currently a proven instructional leader, an educator in Connecticut, and both an independent and an ACTFL consultant.  Through her work with ACTFL, she has led curriculum design, professional learning for K-16 educators, and countless virtual experiences.  Her work with educators spans a variety of context; large districts and schools, such as Detroit, Chicago, and the American School in London, small districts in Idaho implementing the Seal of Biliteracy, statewide initiatives with BOCES in New York to help district coordinators work with the revised Standards and projects with DODEA to help teachers abroad guide their students to higher levels of proficiency.  She works with teachers K-16 to improve curriculum, assessment, and instruction so all students can have access to quality language programs, aligned to World-Readiness and Social Justice Standards. Lea has served on national committees to update the Seal of Biliteracy Guidelines, provided numerous workshops for ACTFL at state, regional and national conferences, and supported schools as they deeply examine their practices to become even more effective.

Lea was the 2016 Supervisor of the Year for the National Association of District Supervisors of Foreign Languages (NADSFL).  Lea just completed her 29th year in the classroom as a French and Spanish teacher and an administrator with Stonington Schools (CT), and also serves as an independent world language consultant in districts around the country and in Europe.  She opened her classroom as a laboratory for teachers to observe high-leverage teaching practices in the high school setting.  Through her work on the Board for CT COLT and NADSFL, National Association of District Supervisors of Foreign Languages, she has worked to bring language educators together to advocate for and deliver quality language programs for all students. Through ongoing work with JNCL-NCLIS, Lea works with the National Language Advocacy group to support language programs across our country.  Building relationships with Senators and Representatives, and their staffers, is an important way to garner support for the Seal of Biliteracy and funding for programs.  Lea was the NECTFL (Northeast Conference) Emerging Leader named to participate in the inaugural cohort through the national Leadership Initiative for Language Learning (LILL) program.  She is committed to ongoing board work and yearly presentations at the state, regional, and national levels to give back to the profession and support language teachers.

Building Intercultural Competence in the Language Classroom

When: Feb 18th, 10:00 am

Session Description: Language exemplifies cultural reality and turns intercultural encounters into intercultural relationships. Culture provides the context for language use. A world language empowers learners to interact in meaningful ways with members of other cultures that transforms our understanding of our own culture and that of others as well as our behaviors. This session introduces a model for building intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in language classrooms that promotes discovery learning and interaction while guiding learners toward proficiency in the evaluation of products and practices to reveal diverse cultural perspectives. A variety of interactive learning tasks will be experienced by the participants that will instill skills and understanding of how to integrate such ICC learning tasks into their own classrooms.

More about Ali Moeller:

Ali Moeller is the Edith S. Greer Professor of World Language Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Ali has taught German and served as TA coordinator in the Department of Modern Language and Literatures at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, spent 11 years teaching in Omaha Public Schools before assuming the position in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education at UNL. Her areas of scholarly interests include world language teacher education, professional teacher development, language assessment, mixed methods research, and intercultural communicative competence. Ali has served as President of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL),  the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) and the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (NFMLTA). She served as AP College Board Advisor in German language and culture and was a member of the ETS/AP College Board Test Development Committee. She has published widely in professional journals including Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, CALICO and Unterrichtspraxis and is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences. Ali worked with the NCSSFL/ACTFL Intercultural Communicative Competency Task Force in developing the ICC Can Do Statements. She was the recipient of the ACTFL Florence Steiner Award for Leadership in Foreign Language Education Postsecondary and ACTFL/NYSFLA Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education.