The Alabama World Languages Association (AWLA) is calling for nominations for the 2018 AWLA Awards. Each year, AWLA is dedicated to recognizing exceptional educators and leaders who exhibit an unwavering commitment to the advocacy, teaching, and learning of world languages. Please consider nominating a deserving individual for the following awards: 

• Promising New World Language Teacher Award 
  
• AWLA Outstanding Administrator Award 
  
• Alabama Educator of Excellence Award (Post-Secondary Educators)
  
• AWLA Teacher of the Year Award
  
• Marlin Harris Award for Outstanding Service to the World Languages Profession​ ​ 
  

Descriptions and criteria for each award may be found online at theawla.org 

Nominations will close on August 1, 2017.

2017 SCOLT conference program is ready,  please check it out here.  Conference is March 16 - 18, 2017. Theme: Languages: Your Global Fast Pass , Location: Orlando, Florida 

MLA Forum on Second Language Teaching and Learning

2018 Calls for Papers

1. Perspectives on Social Justice in Language Teaching and Learning

What does it mean to teach and learn languages in an era of globalization? Papers in this session should explore how we as language faculty can bring pressing political, social, and ethical issues to bear on our curricula and pedagogies and challenge students to think critically about the world around them and their roles within it. We welcome papers on how the philosophy and actions of a social justice pedagogy can inform second language teaching and learning. Papers may address, for example, L2 teaching practices that draw on the strengths and talents of increasingly diverse populations of students and faculty, or pedagogical models for integrating equity, empathy, and agency into second language learning environments. Submit 250-word abstracts by March 20, 2017 to Jennifer Redmann (jennifer.redmann@fandm.edu).

2. Language Teaching and Learning in the Multilingual Landscape

How can the multilingual landscape, a term which refers to the diverse range of texts and textual practices that surround us in our everyday lives and in the public sphere, inform and enrich second language teaching and learning? Papers in this session may address how the multilingual landscape can help overcome the division between language and content in L2 instruction, or how it can transform the monolingual and monocultural mindset that tends to frame L2 teaching and learning in terms of a minimum level of foreign language proficiency students need to be liberally educated or to enter the global workforce. We welcome papers that explore how the concept of the multilingual landscape can help L2 instructors activate the rich multilingual and multicultural skills and sensitivities that learners already possess as individuals living in a diverse society and at the intersection of various identities, including gender, class, generation, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and race. Submit 250-word abstracts by March 20, 2017 to Jennifer Redmann (jennifer.redmann@fandm.edu).

35-word calls for MLA website

Perspectives on Social Justice in Language Teaching and Learning

How can language faculty integrate political, social, and ethical issues into curricula and pedagogies and challenge students to think critically? 250-word abstracts by March 20, jennifer.redmann@fandm.edu

Language Teaching and Learning in the Multilingual Landscape

How can the multilingual landscape - those texts and textual practices that surround us - inform language teaching and learning? 250-word abstracts by March 20, jennifer.redmann@fandm.edu

Dear AWLA,

Greetings, and Happy New Year!  I am writing to personally invite you and all your world languages teachers to take advantage of a rare opportunity to attend a top-notch regional conference in our own "back yard".  

This is an opportunity similar to having ACTFL come in that there will be professionals from 13 states in the southeast region attending.  This opportunity includes:

• networking, collaborating & making connections within and outside Florida and throughout the southeast region
• high quality sessions & workshops on the "latest and greatest" in world languages
• access to workshops from the BEST of ACTFL, SEALLT (tech) and all the state conferences in the region (13 states, including yours!)
• come support and cheer on your state Teacher of the Year and your BEST OF presentation that will represent your organization at SCOLT
• personalized professional development through "hot seat" sessions and "unconference" format where teachers can sit down one-on-one with experts, ask questions and get the answers they need and want!
• become a Sponsor and Patron and get special access to the "products, practices and perspectives" at the Orlando Regional History Center that you can take back and implement into your classroom for meaningful student learning
• Advocacy for world languages in Florida as the coding bill and Biliteracy Seal are hot topics that could affect every one of your programs - learn more and get involved in order to help save and promote our language programs!!! 
• bring your teachers together to collaborate, learn and grow - together!

This is an opportunity you don't want to miss for your teachers.  We know as language teachers that part of what we should do is to reach outside of our classrooms to the "real world" community.  This conference will expand your teachers' world by deepening both their personal and professional experiences to help them grow into the BEST versions of themselves as teachers!

Please share this information with your teachers and encourage them to register now for this conference. You will be so glad you did!

For more information and to register, go to:

http://scolt.org/index.php/conferences/current-conference 

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.  

Thank you, and I hope to see you at SCOLT in Orlando!  

Kind regards,

Linda Markley

Find them online at the UAH Department of World Languages and Cultures.

Members can visit the Forums for handouts, powerpoint, share and continue the conversation.