ACTFL 2019 Reflections
The 2019 conference for the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) ended with Dr. Christopher Emdin challenging participants to act full. He asked his audience to act full of purpose, conviction, and love. He challenged the room to act full in all they do as language teachers and as the adults responsible for educating our nation’s young people.
Dr. Emdin provided an unbelievable ending to a conference that did indeed feel full.
As a first time attendee, I left with a head and heart full of inspiration. When I arrived in Washington DC for ACTFL, I didn’t know what to expect. Armed with a dim concept of what language teachers do, I wasn’t prepared for the passion, dedication, purpose, emotion and deep learning I encountered at ACTFL.
Here are a few reflections on my time at ACTFL 2019…
ACTFL is a highly intentional conference.
The whole conference was a clinic in intentionality.
The opening session followed a clear thread of inclusion and teaching cultural perspectives over words and grammar, which I saw everywhere I looked for the rest of the conference.
When I walked into the opening session, a 9-piece band was playing funk music. An educator on Twitter informed me that they were playing Go-Go - a type of funk unique to Washington DC. Intentionality.
That band played a song in-between the Teacher of the Year Award announcement and the Keynote. Even that song tied into the themes of the opening session. Intentionality.
As the conference went on, I found myself at sessions that touched on topics I heard raised at the opening session. The power to listen and tell stories, for example, was touched on at that first session as we learned about the journey of a young couple they dubbed “The Great Untold.”
I heard those topics and conversations come up over and over again in my sessions. Even sessions with deeply academic content started by tugging on that main thread of empowerment and the importance of sharing and listening to stories. Intentionality.
And the closing session wrapped everything up with one of the best, most engaging speakers I’ve seen in any field or industry. Dr. Emdin made the room laugh, cry, sing, dance, and collectively gasp in a hushed silence. He did it all effortlessly and used his own stories to highlight the importance of listening as educators.
From start to finish, the level of planning and attention to detail at ACTFL were sensational.
Teaching is complicated and teaching a language has further complexities still.
World Language educators think about WAY more than the language they’re teaching. Educators of any subject have other things to consider besides their primary subject, of course. But there are some issues that come up more often or only for language teachers.
Learning a language provides students the opportunity to understand the world and find their place in it.
On Saturday I attended a session titled “Obstacles Facing Women Refugees in Language Acquisition.” The presenter, Warifa Sobh, shared examples from her childhood as well as a few stories from other refugees. One story was of a Syrian refugee student who passed out during a fire drill. She had watched her family killed by a bomb blast and the fire drill was too much for her system. She just shut down. While every teacher at that school was impacted by that incident, the only way that student could share her experiences (and for her teachers to create a support system) is through language learning.
Warifa went on to detail the obstacles female refugees face and how to think about and support them, specifically as they learn a new language. As she dove into the details, I felt like I’d never been further from understanding the challenges language teachers face.
In another session, a presenter shared a story about a student who was embarrassed that he didn’t speak his heritage language and the pride he felt and the impact that learning that language had on his life.
Stories like these helped me start thinking about language education in a whole new light. Language learners are empowered by the languages they learn in a variety of ways. For many, learning a new language is far more than a path toward being able to order dinner while on vacation. Learning a language can help give student’s a voice to tell their stories as well as the ability to understand the stories of others.
By the end of ACTFL, I had a new appreciation for the specific complexities of teaching languages and a new sense of purpose regarding our role in understanding and supporting them.
Language teachers are ahead of the curve.
I was impressed time and time again in how sessions I attended, the teachers I spoke to, and how ACTFL as an organization approached a wide range of topics. Two areas that stood out were inclusion and technology.
Inclusion
Every conference I’ve ever been to in any industry has ribbons attendees can add to their badges. This is the first conference I’ve been to where I’ve seen pronoun ribbons. The conference apparently has had them at least since last year, and the addition of them seemed to be in line with what teachers I spoke to expected from ACTFL.
And the ribbons were just one example. Almost every session I attended mentioned inclusion in one way or another. It's clear that many language teachers at ACTFL are constantly thinking about inclusivity and how the ways they teach language can play a role in the broader discussion.
Technology
I heard time and time again that language teachers are on the cutting edge of educational tech tools. And I saw it, too. There were way fewer sessions about introducing tech tools than I expected. And there were way more sessions than I expected that dove deep on when and how to implement specific tech tools than I could’ve ever fathomed.
There was an incredible mother and son duo (Michael and Lisa Camp) who presented not on a tech tool or “the newest tech tools for your language classroom,” but on how to identify and implement technology. They taught their room how to think critically tech as a solution to a problem and how to implement that solution. They introduced and taught the room how to use a framework for identifying the need for a technical solution, and how to figure out which piece of tech would work best.
Many language teachers at ACTFL are beyond learning about tech tools because they know most of them already. They’ve advanced beyond discovery (they have the methods for that down) and moved on to thinking more deeply about incorporating and integrating tech into their classrooms.
We don’t know enough (and that’s good).
On Friday I met Belal, a super nice guy and an Arabic teacher.
Belal and I had a great conversation and he had a few product suggestions. One of which was the ability to duplicate questions while creating Kits. We've heard this suggestion before. It's never made it very far up on our priority list because we didn't think it would save THAT much time. Belal straightened me out. He gave a clear example of a question he might want to duplicate and talked about how much time it takes to re-write everything in Arabic. It might not take long to rewrite in English, he noted, but Arabic or Chinese or Japanese were a different story.
OHMYGOSHOFCOURSE!! What a no brainer. Why didn't we think of that!? Because we’re not language teachers, that's why.
OK, so we don’t know enough about how language teachers work. That sucks. But on top of that, what else don’t we know enough about? Education in general, to be sure. But also, I suspect, all of the tiny details involved with each and every teaching discipline.
We know we have a lot of work to do before Gimkit can reach its full potential. But this small moment with Belal started my brain snowball going downhill. There’s so much amazing, challenging, empowering, mysterious work ahead of us. And we can’t wait!
A few appreciations before I finally shut up.
Traci! We finally met Traci!!!
Traci Dougherty has been an unbelievable friend to Gimkit, and to Josh and I. I was traveling in DC alone and Traci welcomed me into her group of (clearly insane) Latin teacher friends. Traci made sure I didn’t feel too lonely and I can’t say enough how much I appreciate her warmth. Beyond ACTFL, Traci constantly shares ideas with us and is never afraid to tell us if we’re making or made a mistake. Traci, you’re a true friend and I can’t thank you enough for your kindness while at ACTFL. It was SO COOL to meet you in person and your friendship means a ton to me, and to us!
Fluentkey and Me! From Left, TJ, Mandy, Me, Hollin, and Hugo
Fluentkey is a company I just started learning about right before ACTFL. Teachers we know and trust spoke highly of them. As we looked at that they were doing, we were impressed. I had the pleasure of meeting the whole Fuentkey team and my goodness are they amazing! If there’s such a thing as company soul mates, we might have found it in them. Mandy, Hollin, Hugo, and TJ share our dedication to teachers and their vision for Fluentkey knocked my socks off. I’m so excited to know them and I can’t wait for our teams to get to know each other and to bring our companies closer together!
Carmen Scoggins did an unbelievable job at the Social Media Lounge!
I also want to thank the dozens of educators who talked to me about themselves, their classes, their experiences, and Gimkit. I heard so many amazing suggestions and ideas that I would only have heard from language teachers.
Meredith White & Joseph Parodi-Brown
We love our entire educator community - you all have been amazingly kind and welcoming to us as a new tech company. I felt the love we feel on Twitter every day in person at ACTFL - and it blew me away.
Heidi Trude was an early, early Gimkit user and evangelist! So happy to have met her!
A humongous THANK YOU to Cat, Letty, Sarah, Meredith & Joseph, Stephanie & Co., Heidi, Miriam & Rachel, Anne, Belal, Maris, and all of the other marvelous teachers who took time out of their busy conference to hang out with and talk to me. 💜