04/05/2016
Save the date! Community-Based Heritage Language Schools: Promoting Collaboration and Advocacy Among Educators, Families, and Researchers
Date: Saturday, October 1, 2016
Location: American University, Washington DC
Registration will begin in June, 2016.
We are excited to announce that the keynote speaker for this year’s conference will be Dr. Kim Potowski, University of Illinois, Chicago, a leader in heritage language and multilingual education and a popular speaker at many events.
Many language communities in the United States have well-established schools and programs that teach a wide variety of heritage languages. These programs face similar challenges, which include maintaining sustainable funding levels, involving families fully and effectively in the language development enterprise, finding and supporting effective teachers, developing curriculum and materials that engage students and promote learning, and receiving recognition from the formal public and private school education community.
The plan to connect different community-based language schools and to discuss and address those challenges together has been the vision of our conferences at American University since we started in 2014, and they have been very successful.
This year’s conference will bring together teachers, administrators, and parents involved in community-based language schools, along with language researchers and educators in other bilingual programs, to explore ways to keep addressing these issues together.
The conference will feature presentations and workshops by leaders in the field of heritage language education who will share best practices and lead discussions to help us collaboratively seek effective solutions to common challenges.
This conference serves as a powerful venue for building productive partnerships in which community-based language schools work in collaboration with each other and with parents; public, private, and charter school programs; universities; and language organizations to advance the goal of supporting the rich heritage language resources in our country.
Organized by the AU School of Education and AU TESOL Program
Co-sponsored by the Center for Applied Linguistics