Congratulations to AWLA member Rhea Grate at Saint James School in Montgomery for her students' achievement!

Sumner Brown earned the highest score in all four categories tested: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  He actually has earned the Working Fluency status.  This is amazing after only 3 years of high school instruction.

Aubrey Wright earned the Functional Fluency status, which is also amazing since she has not taken Spanish this year.  She finished Spanish 4 with me last year (including one quarter of fully remote learning).

Look what ACTFL TOY Noah Geisel says about AWLA PD this summer! We invite anyone around the world to join for just $25 and get all of our amazing workshops for free! 

For the past four years, AWLA representatives have been attending the JNCL-NCLIS Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. During this two-day event, we are able to meet with representatives from the offices of our elected officials. During the short meetings, we report on the state of languages in Alabama, which includes sharing some success stories about you and what you’re doing in the classroom! Most recently, during ACTFL in November, numerous AWLA board members met with these offices and asked our elected officials to better support funding for world languages. The reception this year, and over the past four years, has been very positive!

 

During the last Advocacy Day, a representative from another state mentioned an idea that may make a huge impact on world language education in Alabama…. inviting our elected officials to our classrooms to see what it is that we do! When we brought this up to our elected officials, they were excited at the possibility of the elected official themselves or a representative from their local office coming to the classroom and see a live course!

This is where you come in! Using this site (http://myreps.datamade.us/index.html) find the contact information for your state and federal elected officials. Send them an email and also call to invite someone from their office, or the official themselves, to a class! Whenever they agree to come, plan a day in your class where you do something that gives them a good idea of what is like to be a student in a language class! Maybe it’s a day when you plan to be a breakout or when the students are presenting on careers in their language. Use this time as a chance to show our officials the impact you’re making on our students who are the future of Alabama!

Nick Gossett, Advocacy Chair

nicholas.s.gossett@gmail.com

In her own words....

After attending ACTFL 2018, I decided to take the challenge and test my one Spanish 4 student for the Global Seal of Biliteracy (the Seal).  She had the English score needed in the ACT, so my challenge was to see if she could achieve the score in Spanish.  There are many ways to demonstrate achievement, but I choose AAPPL testing.  To qualify for the Seal, she needed to take Form B of the AAPPL test and achieve the Intermediate 4, Intermediate 5 or Advanced 1 level in all four parts:  Interpretive Listening (IL), Interpretive Reading (IR), Interpersonal Listening and Speaking (ILS), and Presentational Writing (PW).  

The testing cost $20, but since I am at a private school, the school paid for it.  So, there was no issue with funding or a lengthy process to receive funding.  It is a reasonable price.  Also, results for the IL and IR were virtually instant.  The ILS and PW took a few weeks.  

The value of earning this distinction is high for university level and in the workplace.  The trend in the industry is to use this common language for assessment and help place students and workers accurately based on their language knowledge.  

I highly encourage every teacher to work towards having his/ her student earn the Global Seal of Biliteracy and be recognized for reading, writing, speaking and listening proficiency.

Some links to help:

https://www.languagetesting.com/pub/media/wysiwyg/AAPPL_Measure_Forms-ACTFL_Performance_Scale.png

https://theglobalseal.com/apply

Rhea Grate

rgrate@stjweb.org 

Saint James School

Montgomery, AL