ACTFL 2019 Takeaways

I am feeling so invigorated, refreshed, inspired, and grateful after ACTFL! ACTFL is so big and so overwhelming and if you don't have a focus before you go, it can be tricky to get the most out of it.  So, I decided to focus on Social Justice at the conference this year. This is something that I thought I was addressing in my class and the good news for me is that I am doing a decent job... however, I can do much better! So, I am going to share some of my takeaways and some resources that I hope to explore more.

On Thursday I went to the full day workshop: Teaching for Social Justice in the World Language Classroom with Cassandra Glynn and Beth Wassel, two of the authors of the book Words and Actions: Teaching Languages Through the lens of Social Justice.

The benefit of the pre-conference workshops is that you get to spend the full day delving into one specific thing. I am excited to update, revise, and refine some of my units to really have a Social Justice focus. But more importantly, I am hoping to have the lens of Social Justice for all of my units. 

One big take takeaway from that workshop is the Teaching Tolerance Social Justice Standards:

I am going to start to look at my units to see if and/or which ones I am including in the unit. For instance, I hope to update and refine this #cacerolazo unit. These are the standards I am going to try to include in the (future) revised unit:

I also hope to develop a unit around the movie Campeones. So, far, I have compiled some ideas in this doc with ideas, this presentation, an article, and the playlist of videos below. We'll see if I have time to pull it all together!

On Friday, I went to see Leslie Davison present "Take a trip! Geo tools for an immersion experience".  Leslie is so smart and an excellently engaging presenter. She shared four tools for maps: an app called Street View, Google's Tour Builder, Google Earth, and My Maps. I am super excited about My Maps because you can use Google Forms and automatically import data into a map! Also, students can keep track of a variety of things using My Maps... I will be sharing more with this in the future! I also want to use Tour Builder more, in particular with books and/or movies that I use. Here is an example of what I did this past fall for my Ecuador unit.

On Friday, I also went to Latino/a, Latin@, Latinx, Latiné, Latinae: An inclusion and social justice approach. This was presented by Marialuisa DiStefano, William Yepes-Amaya, and Abelardo Almazán-Vásquez. This was very informative and eye opening. I love how we started with a dance - and that I got to dance with Emilia Carrillo, someone I have known on Twitter for years and finally got to meet face to face! There is a lot to unpack from this session, but my big takeaway is that inclusion, representation, and recognition of all identities are super important and I need to be more intentional about those things and I need to recognize who I am including and who I am excluding with the language I use and resources I choose. but I'm just going to share a couple of videos from the session:

On Friday, I also went to my good friend Arianne Dowd's session "Scaffolded Film Through the Lens of Social Justice with AP Tasks/Assessment". Arianne's session offered a ton of amazing ideas and resources! Check them out here and here. There is a lot to unpack from that session too! One of the movies she presented about is Anita. Here is the trailer:

On Friday, I also presented about using the TV Series Go! Vive a tu manera in the CI Posse booth. That was a different way to present with a small group, but I hope they got some good ideas to use! 

On Saturday, my first session was about using the song Latinoamérica by Calle 13. I have used the song and the video in the past, but I haven't in a few years. I remembered how much I love the song and how many amazing products, practices, and perspectives are in the song and video! Here is what I did the last time I used the song.

I love comparing that song to this song/video #NewHampshire #LiveFreeOrDie #MyState #LoveIt

Saturday, I also went to see Martina Bex talk about Proficiency Oriented Language Instruction. Martina is an amazing presenter, a very smart woman, and an engaging teacher. There is too much to say about this session! Here is an amazing post that I will just link here.

Finally, I presented with Erin Almeranti (head of the Nuestra Historia project) and Gary DiBianca (co-author of the Nuestra Historia Aprender y Preparar) about Nuestra Historia. Gary and I are very proud of this book and we can't wait for more teachers to 

And I also love my delicious dinner at Jaleo with some wonderful people, some of whom I have "known" for years, but never met face to face.

And I loved seeing so many "conference friends" and meeting so many new people too!