Iowa World Language Association

Iowa World Language Association

Meeting of the Advisory Council and Executive Board

Saturday, May 5, 2012 – Ames, Iowa

Ames City Hall

Call to order – 9:16 AM by President Erik Ladner

Attendees: Erik Ladner, Tracy Dinesen, Kim Huegerich, Stacy Amling, Karla Jensen, Carrie Morris, Kate Falvey, KerisaBaedke, Christine McCormick

Approval of Minutes from October 6, 2011 meeting

-KeekaBaedkemoved to approve minutes, Tracy Dinesen seconded. Motion carried, minutes approved.

Treasurer’s Report

-Still have healthy balance, and always looking for ways to spend money and still be conservative. Exhibitor checks just received from Christine. $1,677.50 will be added to Veridian account. Preparing to file our tax return postcard.

-Need to figure out online payment process for conference. Since Wild Apricot is a Canadian company, conversion rates could be incurred and more information is needed.

-Wild Apricot and ACTFL subscriptions are included in memberships category of treasurer’s report.

Awards

-Tracy is receiving Educator of the Year, new TOP award and grant nominees. Have about 10 nominees for the new TOP award. 2 grant applications and 2-3 EOTY nominations. Grace has agreed to continue as Grants chair. If we know of people who want to be on the committee, contact Tracy. Rubrics for awards and grants are online, helps to give people more guidance for expectations.

Advisory Council reports

Japanese – Sachiko Murphy (report)

-High school and college teachers of Japanese in Iowa have formed JLCTI (Japanese Language and Culture Teachers of Iowa) this year. Dan Carolin from Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids is the president. We have discussed future workshops for high school-college articulation and using TPRS in classrooms.

-West Des Moines School district has decided not to eliminate Japanese program at Valley High School. It is not too much to say that the overwhelming show of community support for the Japanese program played a critical role in the board’s decision.

-Koma High School group from Yamanashi prefecture visited Des Moines Public Schools and West Des Moines’ Valley High School in March. Koma students stayed one week at the host family homes in Des Moines and West Des Moines, and had a wonderful time. Students from Central Campus and Valley High School will travel to Yamanashi in the summer of 2013.

-The 10th annual Asian Festival will be held on Saturday, May 12 from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm. at the Capital East Ground. A dedication ceremony for Sakura trees that were planted around the Yamanashi Bell will also take place during the festival. (about 1:00 pm.) A group of Des Moines students who are traveling to Yamanashi will perform their song at the festival stage.

NNELL – ShanonShreffler (report)

-Shanon attended the Central States Conference and did a lot of networking with other NNELL representatives and K-8 teachers in our state. She attended FLES Fest, and would like to find a time to attempt to have one here in Iowa. Several elementary foreign language teachers met in February at Iowa State to watch presentations and discuss our role in the articulation of language programs. She is also working on arranging a trip to Chicago for any language teacher interested to see what Brightspark (a trip planning company) can provide for student trips.

Private Colleges – Amy Schumann, Coralie Turner (report)

-Grand View University has hired a full time instructor Dr. Sarah Miller Boelts graduated from University of Minnesota and will be joining our team starting the end of May.

-Coralie and Amy visited Northwestern College in Orange City, IA to investigate their new Translation and Interpretation (TI) program. A liberal arts school, affiliated with the Reformed Church of America, just recently added a $100,000 interpreting and translation lab to their campus. Piet Koene is the instructor and driving force behind the addition and states that it is one of only 4 colleges nationally offering this major. He also mentioned that he was offering a workshop this summer for one day and it was already booked completely, however they suggested they would be interested in it as well and he plans to offer another one next summer.

-Also, they have been discussing the importance of collaboration with high schools and colleges to give us an idea of our future clientele. Coralie visited Norwalk School District this week and discussed concerns and goals of a Spanish teacher at the middle/high school level there. They feel it is imperative to collaborate and understand each other in order to strengthen each other's programs together.

Central States – Kat Dierking (report)

-Kat appreciates the opportunity IWLA has given her the last two years to attend Central States. It was so great to be able to attend conferences with other individuals from many other states. She attended the State Delegates meeting, the keynote speaker about a developing language program, visited the vendors, and attended many sessions.
-In the Delegates meeting they listened to ACTFL representatives discuss their national conference and there was much discussion on membership. The Missouri delegates had a lot to say about Iowa's change in philosophy on membership. So many of the delegates were baffled on theidea and were going to go back to their states to discuss this option and if it would work for them.

-Some sessions focused on changes being made in World Languages, Nebraska's Elementary Linguifolio, curriculum and more. She was mainly focused on the curriculum focus as we strive for a new representative for the State of Iowa in World Languages.

-She has made it a personal goal to re-write curriculum over the summer and align with many different areas including, Common Core in Literacy and 21st Century Skills, MISIC curriculum (also tightlyaligned with Common Core), Linguafolio, and the 5 C's. It will be an interesting project and an enduring one at that. She will look for guidance, assistance, andlearning partnerships as well.

-Kat is excited to run for Vice-President of IWLA, and would love to bring a project like this to the board as a possible project in the future. Kat would love to see Iowa’s Linguafolio strongly tied to the literacy and 21st Century goals of the Common Core, multiple curriculums in Iowa, and continue to incorporate the 5C's. She would love to set some guidelines for all teachers to be able to follow as she is still a learning teacher and had no guidelines to follow. There are so many projects, ideas, and needs we need to cover as educators, so this may not be something we are ready for until we do get a representative for the state.

AATF – Elizabeth Zwanziger Page (report)

-AATF has cancelled all spring events. The Tete-a-Tete at UNI has also been cancelled.

Conference chair – Candace Sherwood (report)

-The hospitality room will be the same as last year.

AATG – Kate Falvey

AATG has been discussing promotion of German, encouraging more to take the national German exam. Discussed situation of networking, making contact with all the German teachers in Iowa, get more into IWLA, AATG etc. UNI German faculty is in transition at UNI. University of Iowa still has their Master’s program, but courses are only offered on campus.

Central States Advisory Council – KerisaBaedke

-Thank you to IWLA for funding her presence at CSCTFL, from March 6-11. She attended the Conference workshop/Extension workshop that Laura Terrill presented entitled “Making sense of writing.” IWLA was not sending anyone to that workshop, so Keeka attended and the workshop was outstanding! She will be presenting it this fall at the conference.

-Attendance was up—820 were pre-registered, 26 from Iowa.Conference highlights - 24 workshops, FLES fest, multiple ACTFL presentations, 194 presentations, ACTFL’s OPI workshop, Leadership academy, Delegate assembly, Advisory Council, and the Awards ceremony. Keeka presented Donna Clementi, whom she nominated, with the CSCTFL Founder’s Award. There were 10 presenters from Iowa, 2 whose articles were published in the CSCTFL report. Anne Lair was a finalist for the ACTFL Nelson Brooks Award for the teaching of culture.

-It is Keeka’s personal goal to have IWLA MORE involved in the CSCTFL andsheI would like to see us take advantage of ALL that CSCTFL has to offer.

-Here are the dates and locations for the conference for the next three years. Keeka will be program chair for the 2015 conference in Minneapolis, and is hoping there will be MANY Iowa presenters at that conference.
March 14 - 16, 2013: Hilton Columbus Downtown; Columbus, OH
March 20 - 22, 2014: Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark; St. Louis, MO
March 12 - 14, 2015: Hilton Minneapolis; Minneapolis, MN

-IWLA should have more than one person attend the delegate assembly if possible. It would be great if the CSCTFL rep and an officer attend each year. IWLA should submit one name for the CW/EW each year so that person can bring that session and present it in Iowa. We should have at least one person in the leadership program each year. We always talk about wanting to bring in new people. This is a way to train emerging leaders. Iowa teachers should attend the conference, join the Advisory Council, present at CSCTFL and apply for scholarships every year. And IWLA should be ready to take advantage of special opportunities like the OPI workshop when they are offered.

-One way to facilitate all of this would be through the website and email blasts. Ask for names of people who are planning to go and follow up with them to cover the various activities. If you attend the CW/EW you pay a $45 workshop fee that will be refunded to you once you submit evidence that you extended the workshop – so after you present it at IWLA. For this year’s OPI workshop, each state designee got their conference registration reimbursed by ACTFL. We hope to offer this again next year.

-The IWLA board needs to do a better job of communication with CSCTFL if we hope to increase our involvement in that organization and if we hope to benefit from all that it has to offer. The board needs to determine who on the Executive Board will work with Central States on requests for information. The IWLA Board should reinstitute the practice of sending the president to CSCTFL and ACTFL. The president could attend the Delegate Assembly and speak to the issues that face our state. S/he would also be more familiar with CSCTFL and ACTFL and would be able to see firsthand how we could strengthen our ties to both organizations. If the budget doesn’t allow for both, thenKeeka suggests CSCTFL. The CSCTFL conference is outstanding every year and it is much more manageable than ACTFL due to its size. And since ACTFL has more of a presence at regional conferences now you would still benefit from knowledge from ACTFL.

-Keekacontacted Marty Abbott, ACTFL Executive Director and Patrick Raven, CSCTFL and asked them if they would be interested in collaborating with IWLA to bring in some outstanding presenters to our fall conference. Marty responded right away that she would be interested, if the IWLA Board would submit a proposal. CSCTFL will not be able to provide funds. She was reminded that our state needs to take advantage of what CSCTFL offers, such as the CW/EW and the OPI workshop already mentioned in this report. Keeka contacted Paul Sandrock, Donna Clementi, and Laura Terrill, but can get other names from Marty at ACTFL. Toni Thiesen may be another possibility.

-Keeka has other information for participation in leadership program (January 10 deadline), giving an extension workshop (due in February), and receiving scholarships (December 15 deadline) through CSCTFL.

Conference Program Chair – KerisaBaedke

-Please include call for proposals for the conference in the e-mail blast, as there are only 5 proposals so far. They are due June 20. Keeka is hopeful that many will sign up for the poster sessions. Keeka will contact the 16 that were nominated for Best of Iowa/All-Stars and ask them to present again this year. Some were repeats from the year before and may choose not to present again.

-Please send names and email addresses of people you would like to see present to and to . Please talk about the conference and the session proposals with friends and colleagues. If you are at a college or university, please encourage your students to present, perhaps to give a poster session. Please encourage your college and university friends to do the same.

-We had a great conference this past fall with more sessions than we have had in all of Keeka’s years working on the program. We had a total of 62 sessions with 38 on Friday, 24 on Saturday and the AATs. The conference was very successful from the program standpoint and we hope to be able to do as well this fall.

Exhibits - Christine McCormick

- 6 exhibitors have committed so far. Wartburg and Northwestern have committed, as has The Learning Post. One exhibitor break and hospitality room have been funded. Would like to find more small, fun shoppingvendors at IWLA.

Advocacy Report – Karla Jensen

-Karla is considering some type of encouragement in times of difficulty. Share thoughts of support.

-Senate Democrats have passed a bill for Price Lab to be open, but UNI is saying that it can be open but students won’t necessarily be enrolled.

Conference Notes

-International Food Festival is September 21st to 23rd of 2012, not during our conference.

-Will offer technology workshop free again, and ask Juliana Smith to present Susan Sandholm-Peterson for Linguafolio or Gmail/Google docs, Kim Huegerich could present about this as well. Jason Noble could present again. iPad one on one sessions may be good.

-Site works well and schedule works well for technology workshop. Heartland and Drake have stopped doing class credit, but something could be done if it is a study group. The tech workshop could be the face to face part, and then go into a Wiki. Stacy will keep working on this to see what other options may be available. Heartland was excited about this possibility. It will be EDEX credit most likely, and not full graduate credit. EDEX won’t count toward a Master’s, toward a degree, but most districts will count them for salary schedule advancement.

Reminders

- Simpson still planning their immersion weekend on August 3-4. Tracy will put the information on the webpage and it will also be included in the e-mail blast.

Adjournment

-Motion for adjournment by Kate Falvey, seconded by Stacy Amling. Meeting adjourned at 10:32AM.

Respectfully submitted,

Carrie Morris – Secretary