Webinars 2020–2021
The NYSAFLT Webinar Series 2020–21
Co-sponsored by the NYS Language Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network at NYU
Tuesday September 29 — 4:00 p.m. (1 hour)
Caution: Heavy Load – Practical Ways to Keep Proficiency-Based Teaching Sustainable and Purposeful
Presenter: Meredith White, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Gwinnett County, GA
Many times, we as teachers are overwhelmed with professional development: session options, new technology tools, constant collaboration, lesson planning, the list goes on. Meanwhile, we still have the same goals: foster students’ enjoyment of language and culture while advancing their proficiency. This presentation will provide ideas to empower teachers to keep language teaching sustainable and forward-moving, divided into three tiers: organization, planning, and assessing. Don’t come for the latest, greatest, all-new teacher shiny; come to reflect and possibly even level-up what you’re already doing. You, as a teacher, are already enough, and this session looks to validate and align the work you’ve already put in and see if it can be pushed further. All slides, resources, videos, and tools mentioned will be available before, during, and after the presentation.
Meredith White is a Georgia transplant who earned her B.A., B.S., M.Ed., and Ed.S. all from the University of Georgia. Her focus on novice learners works to ingrain proficiency, authentic resources, genuine tasks, student-centered thematic units, student-guided lessons, and making language learning enjoyable. When she isn’t at PRHS teaching Spanish, she’s at Georgia State University teaching educational methods classes in the evenings and at state, regional, and national workshops, both attending and presenting. Furthermore, she blogs, moderates the PLN #langchat (@PRHSspanish), and serves on the GGC College of Education Advisory and SEALLT Executive Boards.
Wednesday, Nov. 11 — 7:00 p.m. (1 hour)
Planting the Seeds of Proficiency in Elementary and Middle School
Presenter: Joshua Cabral, Brookwood School, Manchester, MA
Students are successful in the elementary and middle school classroom when instruction is aligned with principles of child development. Language learning is most productive and effective in a classroom community that makes learners feel safe, valued and successful. In this workshop, you will learn activities that provide a supportive context for risk-taking, build community, focus on authentic communication and follow language proficiency guidelines. Can Do Statements and speaking goals are not just for older language learners.
Joshua Cabral has an MA in Applied Linguistics, specializing in second language acquisition. He has been teaching French and Spanish at the elementary, middle and high school levels for 22 years. In addition to teaching at Brookwood School in Manchester, MA he regularly presents workshops on language proficiency and cultural competence at state, regional and national conferences. He also consults with schools and districts across the country as they build proficiency-based language programs. Joshua is passionate about access to education in developing countries as well and works closely with schools in Haiti and Nicaragua.
Tuesday, December 8 — 7:00 p.m. (1 hour)
#AuthRes 101: Finding & Embedding Authentic Resources in the World Language Classroom 2.0
Presenter: Michelle Walpole, Penfield High School , Penfield, NY
Back by popular demand, this webinar will go through the way to find, embed, and utilize authentic materials in the World Language Classroom. Attendees will go through the process with several examples to see how to use authentic resources in an engaging way. Where do you start? How do you make them accessible to your students and what will they do with the resource? Is the language at the correct level of difficulty? In this webinar, the
presenter will walk you through the steps for finding and integrating authentic resources into instruction, designing meaningful interpretive assessments, and finding practical resources already created online. Attendees will leave with a tool kit of strategies for embedding authentic cultural resources in their classrooms.
Michelle Walpole is a Spanish teacher at Penfield High School. She has had a variety of teaching experiences during the last seven years in multiple educational settings. She holds a B.A. in Spanish & Secondary Education from SUNY Geneseo and a Masters of Spanish Education from the University of Nebraska Kearney. She has had many opportunities to present at conferences around the state. In addition, she was part of the NYSAFLT Leaders of Tomorrow program in 2018, and presented a webinar on authentic resources in 2019. She believes the ideal recipe for student success in the classroom is student rapport, authenticity, engagement, empathy, and creativity.
Thursday, January 14, 2021 — 4:00 p.m. (1 hour)
Anchor Standard 1: Purposeful Communication Through Language Functions
Presenters:
Bill Heller, SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo, NY
Joanne O’Toole, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY
Explore how leading with key communicative functions embedded in the new checkpoint performance indicators for the proposed NYS World Language Standards 1, 2 and 3 can simplify your planning. These language functions help focus instruction on what is essential to purposeful communication and guide your learners to make continuous progress on their pathway of proficiency.
Joanne O’Toole, Ph.D., is Professor of Modern Language Education at SUNY Oswego. She has held several world language leadership positions, including NYSAFLT President and NECTFL Director. She currently serves on the NYSED OBEWL Content Advisory Panel Executive Committee. She is a regular presenter at local, state, and national conferences. She previously taught secondary Spanish for 16 years.
Bill Heller has taught students at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels for 40 years including 24 years as the high school Spanish teacher at Perry Central Schools. He has been a methods and Spanish instructor at SUNY Geneseo since 2001. He has done workshops, preconferences and keynotes at local, state, regional and national conferences for World Language teachers. He is currently serving on the Executive Committee of the NYSED Content Advisory Panel for World Languages. Bill has served on the NYSAFLT Board of Directors and as Conference Chair for the 2017 Northeast Conference (NECTFL). He and his rescue pup, Sadie, live in Warsaw, NY.
Thursday, February 25 — 4:00 p.m. (1 hour)
Anchor Standard 2: Accessing Culture through Language Functions
Presenters:
Joanne O’Toole, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY
Bill Heller, SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo, NY
“Use the language to…” are the words that both introduce Anchor Standard 2, Culture, and define the relationship between language and culture embedded in the revised New York State Standards. Examine how joining the key language functions with content from authentic resources provides a cultural context for communicative tasks in any mode. Explore how the performance indicators inform culturally-contextualized target-language task design at each proficiency checkpoint.
Joanne O’Toole, Ph.D., is Professor of Modern Language Education at SUNY Oswego. She has held several world language leadership positions, including NYSAFLT President and NECTFL Director. She currently serves on the NYSED OBEWL Content Advisory Panel Executive Committee. She is a regular presenter at local, state, and national conferences. She previously taught secondary Spanish for 16 years.
Bill Heller Bill Heller has taught students at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels for 40 years including 24 years as the high school Spanish teacher at Perry Central Schools. He has been a methods and Spanish instructor at SUNY Geneseo since 2001. He has done workshops, preconferences and keynotes at local, state, regional and national conferences for World Language teachers. He is currently serving on the Executive Committee of the NYSED Content Advisory Panel for World Languages. Bill has served on the NYSAFLT Board of Directors and as Conference Chair for the 2017 Northeast Conference (NECTFL). He and his rescue pup, Sadie, live in Warsaw, NY.
Monday, March 15 — 4:00 p.m. (1 hour) Rescheduled to March 22, 4:00 p.m.
Rethinking Grading Practices in a Communicative Classroom
Presenter: Melanie Thomas, Spencerport CSD, Spencerport, NY
As teachers shift their classrooms to focus on communicative proficiency, we need to look at our grading practices. How can we modify our grades to reflect students’ skills and abilities with the language? Students need to be graded on what they know and can do in the target language. Do our grades reflect that?
Melanie Thomas teaches Spanish at Spencerport CSD. Her experience includes levels I, III, IV and V in conjunction with Syracuse University. She holds her WL National Board Certification. Her MATL from the University of Southern Mississippi focused on the knowledge, skills, and theories in language, language acquisition, and language instruction. This background in SLA supports her strive to teach with Comprehensible Input to help learners acquire the language they study. @senoramthomas
senoraMThomas.blogspot.com Find me on YouTube: bit.ly/CIvids
Tuesday, May 4 — 7:00 p.m. (1 hour)
Shifting Academic Mindset: Lessons Learned from Action Research in Actionable Corrective Feedback
Presenter: Beth Slocum, Genesee Valley BOCES, Pavilion, NY
Whether we are teaching face-to-face, online or in a hybrid model, learner engagement and ownership of learning are essential factors for student success. After a summer of PD and pondering, this teacher engaged in an action research project to implement a wise feedback model with her middle school students. We know that offering actionable corrective feedback is critical in second language acquisition. Join me as I share the ongoing findings of my quest to balance expectations and authentic engagement while students take a more active role in tracking their progress.
Beth Slocum is a teacher of French and Spanish for Genesee Valley BOCES. After a summer book study of Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Beth took on the challenge of redesigning the feedback model in her classroom based on Hammond’s Asset-Based Feedback Protocol. In these unprecedented times, never has social-emotional learning been more important. This webinar is a report on a work in progress as Beth embarks on a new journey of action research on SEL and effective feedback in the language classroom.
Click here to see our past webinar archives.
The NYSAFLT webinar series offers professional development throughout the school year that addresses multiple facets of world language education. You are encouraged to register early for any of the webinars above or for past webinars, which are available “on demand” (fee applies) at https://www.nysaflt.org.
NYSAFLT is an approved Sponsor of Continuing Teacher and Leader Education (CTLE) pursuant to Section 80-6 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education, beginning July 1, 2016 and ending June 30, 2021. CTLE Identification number: 23167.
A member testimonial:
This is just to thank you for the Webinar Series that NYSAFLT offered this year [2015-16]. I have learned so much from them!! What is impressive to me is the large variety of topics presented, their uniqueness, and the high quality of their content. I truly admire the presenters as much as the moderators and organizers for doing such an amazing job. All webinars that I attended were very informative, helpful, and enjoyable. To make them even better, not only they were free this year, but we even got a recording of the webinar so we didn’t have to worry about taking notes, and missing information in the process. The presenters were very knowledgeable and very well prepared and organized every time. They presented a wealth of information and/or ideas, in just 50 minutes!! The moderators were very good at their role as well. I can’t thank you enough. I enjoyed them very much and I am already looking forward to the 2016-2017 Webinar Series.
Respectfully,
J.B.
Member, JNCL-NCLIS
Partner, NFMLTA