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Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference

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2021 Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference Promoting Collaboration among Educators, Families, and Researchers

This conference is for program directors and administrators of community-based heritage language schools; members of the language communities involved in these schools; and directors and leaders in public, private, and charter schools who are interested in working with community-based heritage language schools.

2021 Online conference

Friday, October 8, 2020 - 12:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT
Saturday, October 9, 2020 - 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT

Please find links to the presentation slides and the presentation recordings in the 2021Schedule section.

This conference aims to:

  1. Build partnerships among and across community-based heritage language schools and determine arenas for future action
  2. Help schools create, strengthen, and build their school structures and activities
  3. Make clear the importance of community-based heritage language schools in the United States and in the lives of language communities in this country
  4. Develop information about community-based heritage language schools through a national survey of schools
  5. Share and make available resources that will be helpful to schools

Friday, October 8

(Eastern Time)

12:00 to 12:30 p.m. - Participant Check-in

12:30 to 1:00 p.m. – Conference Opening

1:00 to 2:30 p.m. - Language-Focused Organizations and Initiatives in the U.S.

These leaders are promoting and helping to sustain and grow language education initiatives in the United States.

Presenters

2:30 to 2:45p.m. - Networking Break

  • Time to take a break, walk aroundOR
  • Stay in the main room and talk with others there

2:45to 4:15p.m. - Workshop:Beyond the Bake Sale: A Recipe for Sustainable Outreach and Funding

Do you feel like you are living from fundraising event to fundraising event without aplan? Do you wonder where you should even start building a plan for sustainablefunding for your organization? There's no exact recipe forfundraising, but with the rightingredients, you can build sustainable funding for your organization! In this session,we'll talk about how you can analyze your current fundraising efforts, how to create aplan to strategically maximize your efforts, and how to engage your board members andbring them on board with the plan!

Presenter

  • Karen Price, Director, Development and Strategic Partnerships, Eno Center for Transportation; Founder/CEO, The Modern Fundraiser

4:15to 4:30 p.m. - NetworkingBreak

4:30 to 6:00 p.m. - Workshop:Working with Parents and Engaging Students

Leaders in heritage language schools have spent years connecting with their communities tomotivate parents and engage their children in learning thelanguage and connecting withtheir native culture. “I convince one parent at a time how important it is to teach ourlanguage and culture to the nextgeneration and make it a part of their American identity,”says Ashok Ojha, whohas directed STARTALK Hindi Programs since 2010. Workshopspeakers willpresent their experiences in Bulgarian, Dari and Pashto, Hindi, Japanese, andTamil schools.

Opening

  • Marta McCabe, Founder and Director, Czech and Slovak School of North Carolina

Presenters

  • Angela Hasheva, Founder and President, The Association of Bulgarian Schools in America; Founder and Director, The Bulgarian School of Seattle
  • Ashok Ojha, President, Yuva Hindi Sansthan, Edison, New Jersey
  • Farid Saydee, Adjunct Professor, School of Curriculum and Teaching, Kean University (Dari and Pashto)
  • Sornam Sankar, Co-Founder and Acadmic Head, Ellicott Tamil School, Maryland
  • Bob Uriu, Board of Tustees, Orange Coast Gakuen Japanese Language School

6:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Time to stay online and talk, if desired.

7:30 p.m.

Meet and Greet dinnerfor participants present in the DC Area

Saturday, October 9

(Eastern Time)

9:30to 9:45a.m. - Participant Check-in

9:45-10:05a.m. – Meet Our International Partners

These leaders are developing and sustaining community-based heritage language education intheir countries.

Presenters

10:05to 11:30 a.m. - Workshop: Leveraging Technology for EffectiveTeaching and Leading inCommunity-Based Heritage Language Schools

Presenters share strategies to build interpersonal communication in hybrid (online andon site) mixed (heritage and non-heritage speakers) classesthrough STEAM-based(Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) lessons.

Presenters

  • Maria Carreira, Professor Emerita of Spanish, California State University, Long Beach
  • Agnès Ndiaye Tounkara, Program Officer, French Heritage Language Program, FACE(French American Cultural Exchange) Foundation
  • Bhavya Singh, Director, Bhasha Sanskriti, California (Hindi); Hindi Facilitator, California Language Teachers Association;Instructional TechnologySpecialist, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University (STARTALK - Arabic,Hindi, Urdu)
  • Tommy Lu, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) Working Group member;advisor to the Washington Metropolitan Association of Chinese Schools (WMACS)

11:30 to 11:45 a.m. - NetworkingBreak

11:45to 1:15p.m. -Workshop: Using Inquiry-based, Problem-based, and Project-basedLearning with Diverse Learners

YPAR, or youth participatory action research, is an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning that centers on youth knowledge in order to address real-life societal issues.This workshop will explore the power and potential of designing learning environments around inquiry-based, problem-posing, and project-based approaches with bi/multilingual learners. We will familiarize ourselves with the foundation of these approaches and draw clear links between their fundamental goals and the goals of creating rich multilingual and multiliteracies environments with heritage/bilingual learners.

Presenters

  • Maria Carreira, Professor Emerita of Spanish, California State University, Long Beach
  • J. Eik Diggs, M. Ed., PhD student, Department of Teaching Learning and Sociocultural Studies, University of Arizona

1:15 to 2:00 p.m. - Lunch

  • Time to take a break, walk aroundOR
  • Stay in the main room and talk with others there OR
  • Join a language group OR
  • Join one of these groups to discuss a specific topic:
    --Administrators: How to manage a school
    --Administrators: How to hold events
    --Teachers: How to continue teaching online
    --Teachers: How to engage students

2:00 to 3:30 p.m. - Workshop: Focusing Your Program on Developing Learners' LanguageProficiency

All learners want to use their language for real purposes: exploring interesting content inwritten, spoken, or media messages; exchanging information, ideas,and opinions; and creatingmessages to inform, persuade, or narrate.Build onyour understanding of proficiency toidentify what learners need to develop to increase what they can do with and through thelanguage.Apply the design oflearning progressions: specific tasks to guide learners to higherlevels ofproficiency. Focus your program on developing confident and competentlanguageusers.

Presenter

  • Paul Sandrock, Senior Advisor for Language Learning Initiatives, ACTFL

3:30 to 3:45p.m. - NetworkingBreak

3:45 to 5:15p.m. - Workshop: Maximizing Language Learner Opportunities with Seals of Biliteracy

Earning a State or Global Seal of Biliteracy is a great way to excite your students aboutlearning a language. Parents see the award's value as a way to distinguish their students oncollege and scholarship applications. Testing for a Seal ofBiliteracy provides your programwith evaluative feedback and can demonstratethe efficacy of your program to allstakeholders. This workshop's presenters will share how they are using Seal of Biliteracyprograms to grow retention and the language proficiency of their students. We will discussthe various aspects ofimplementation, including program adoption, promotion, testing,local schoolcoordination, and celebrations.

Presenters

  • Linda Egnatz, Executive Director, Global Seal of Biliteracy
  • Patrick Wallace, Program Specialist for World Languages and Global Workforce Initiativeswith the Georgia Department of Education
  • Angela Hasheva, Association of Bulgarian Schools in America (ABSA), Washington
  • Anbarasan Vincent (Anbu), Counselor for High School Credit and Seal of Biliteracy, Alpharetta Tamil School, Georgia

5:20-6:00 p.m. – Conference Closing

6:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Time to stay online and talk, if desired. Share ideas for the upcoming year.

7:30 p.m.

Dinner gathering for participants present in the DC Area

The 2021 Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference Online is hosted as a collaboration between the American University Institute for Innovation in Education and the .

We are grateful to our Conference Sponsor Partners:

ACTFL

Avant Assessment

Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)

Kazickas Family Foundation

Global Seal of Biliteracy

2018 Keynote Address

Engaging Students in Community-Based Schools

1:47:10

Dr. Maria Carreira, Professor of Spanish at California State University, Long Beach and the Co-director of the National Heritage Language Resource Center at UCLA.

Conference Planning Team

Joy Kreeft Peyton, Conference Chair, Senior Fellow, Center for Applied Linguistics

Ana Lucia Lico, Co-Founder and Board Member, Brazilian Association for Culture and Education (ABRACE)

Marta McCabe, Founder and President, Czech and Slovak School of North Carolina

Danielle Gervais Sodani, Director, Institute of Innovation in Education, American University, School of Education

Mark Forsberg, Program Coordinator, Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference