Last month, the Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education announced the appointment of a new Deputy Assistant Secretary for International and Foreign Language Education — Clay Pell, the grandson of former senator Claiborne Pell, after whom the Pell Grant program is named.

Pell comes from the White House, where he served as director for strategic planning on the National Security Staff and helped advance President Obama’s key national security priorities.

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Although 145,000 Saudi students have enrolled in U.S. intensive English programs and universities since the advent of the King Abdullah scholarship program in 2005, some institutions are still experiencing “the Saudi wave” for the first time as these students learn of smaller and more out-of-the-way educational opportunities over time. At 2013 TESOL conference in Dallas, for example, some U.S. school administrators shared surprise and dismay at the related challenges. Some talked about the adjustments needed by first-time teachers of Saudi nationals, and others commented on the challenges experienced by the Saudi newcomers themselves.

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The classroom filled almost imperceptibly, and by the scheduled 7:30 p.m, start, 30 students were ready to begin their twelve-week course in the Thai language in a meeting room at the YMCA in Penang, Malaysia.

Combining both humble grace and engaging discourse, Professor Prim quickly brought the class to their task at hand, reading out a number of Thai words and phrases while introducing Thai culture to the classroom full of both men and women ranging in age from 18 to 65.

For the complete story, click here.

Indigenous Languages
Nunavut Official Languages Act and preserving Nahuatl

Multilingual Malaysia
Gordon Berrick sees Malaysia’s language skills leading to its success

Interview with Clay Pell
The nation’s new language czar speaks with Language Magazine

Coaxing Students Down Under
Kristal Bivona admires Australia’s initiatives to attract international students

Acquiring Academic Literacy from the Inside
Lina Sun breaks down the barriers to academic English from the student’s perspective

La Renaissance Mapping the resurgence of French in America

International Education News

Acclimatizing Saudi Students
Susan Matson offers context and suggestions for helping Saudi Arabian students adjust to the Western educational setting

Keys to the Kingdom
Mark D. Rentz offers success strategies for Saudi scholarship students on intensive English programs

Last Writes Richard Lederer brings English from Olympus

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) is releasing the Obama Administration’s blueprint for elevating and transforming the teaching profession, also known as the Blueprint for RESPECT (Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching). The far-reaching proposals include more flexibility over the school day, the school year, the classroom set up, seniority structures, the grade-according-to-age system, leadership roles, and pay scales.

RESPECT was first launched in February of 2012 as a national conversation on the teaching profession, shortly after the President committed to support the development of a new, comprehensive teacher policy in his state of the union address.

Since then, the Department has engaged more than 5,700 educators nationwide to develop and refine a vision of teaching and leading that will help both teachers and students to meet the new, 21st century demands being placed on them.
“Our nation’s educators are entrusted with a responsibility that’s impossible to overstate—which is nothing less than to prepare their students, and our children, for the future,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We heard from thousands of teachers from across the country who contributed their time and creative ideas to help the RESPECT blueprint reflect their own vision for the teaching profession. With this blueprint, together we can work to elevate the profession through competitive salaries, transforming professional development and career opportunities, and relying on the expertise of teachers to advance educational practice and improve outcomes for students.”

The RESPECT Blueprint suggests seven key components of a transformed teaching profession:
• A Culture of Shared Responsibility and Leadership
• Top Talent, Prepared for Success
• Continuous Growth and Professional Development
• Effective Teachers and Principals
• A Professional Career Continuum with Competitive Compensation
• Conditions for Successful Teaching and Learning
• Engaged Communities

It further identifies ways that this work will continue to be integrated into the Department’s existing policies and calls the field to take action to work toward the RESPECT vision.

President Obama is asking for a $5 billion investment from Congress to support a RESPECT grant program outlined in the blueprint, including salaries for the teaching profession competitive with professions like architecture, medicine and law, more support for novice teachers, and more career opportunities for accomplished teachers. Special mention is made of the need to provide incentives for English language teachers.

In tandem with the release of the blueprint, the Department has re-launched ED’s educator homepage to include new information about the RESPECT initiative, including the blueprint document (both PDF and e-book formats), a description of how educators provided input, and video of teachers describing their connection with the RESPECT vision. The site also includes resources to help stakeholders take action, including a self-inventory to assess one’s own school or district on the seven critical components of RESPECT.

Visit http://www.ed.gov/teaching for more information.
Let us know what you think of the blueprint by commenting!

Alcalá de Henares, Spain, May 9-11, 2013

Instituto Franklin-UAH will host the First International Conference on Bilingual Education in a Globalized World: Comparison between Spain and the United States. This conference aims to be an open forum for debate among specialists and people interested in education, bilingualism and its relationship with other social, cultural, political, economic, linguistic and pedagogical issues.

The conference is organized around different themes:

Economic aspects: how are bilingual programs financed in the US and Spain; governmental institutions that participate and how; how will bilingualism be financed in the future?
Political aspects: the politics of bilingualism in the US and Spain, election campaigns and bilingualism, immigration and bilingualism.

Social and cultural aspects: changes in the American and Spanish societies due to bilingualism; the challenges that families face and how they are dealing with them.

Linguistic aspects: teaching American – British English in Spain; teaching Peninsular and Latin American Spanish in the US. Spanglish.

Psychopedagogical aspects: methods of bilingual education; new technologies; quality seals, learning psychology, methods and models of learning new languages.
Click here for more

“In one lifetime, the number of Lakota speakers has dropped 75 percent,” states the Complaint. “There have been no new Lakota speakers in three generations. There are 6,000 to 8,000 Lakota language speakers left.”

Last week, Lakota elders, activists and supporters marched through New York to the United Nations, where they attempted to present a petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Entitled the Official Lakota Oyate Complaint of Genocide Based on the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the petition listed the numerous injustices faced by the Lakota people. (Oyate is a Sioux word for “people” or “nation.”)

At the UN, security officers told them that they would not be able to enter the building and present the complaint.

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The 8th International Conference on Language Teacher Education (LTE 2013), organized by the National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC), will be held in Washington, DC from May 30-June 1, 2013.

Designed for practitioners and researchers involved in the preparation and ongoing professional development of language teachers, LTE 2013 will address the education of teachers of all languages, at all instructional and institutional levels, and in many national and international contexts in which this takes place, including:

* English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instruction;

* foreign/modern/world language teaching;

* bilingual education;

* immersion education;

* indigenous and minority language education; and

* the teaching of less commonly taught languages.

The conference aims to bring together teacher educators from these contexts to discuss and share research, theory, and best practices and to initiate and sustain a meaningful professional dialogue across languages, levels, and settings.

Pre-Conference Workshops will run from 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM and 1:30 – 4:30 PM on Thursday, May 30, 2013. The Opening Plenary and Reception will follow at 5:00 PM.

Visit our PD page for training options

Danny Brassell gets over himself to make learning fun for all ages

When I first began teaching elementary school, my principal asked me if I knew any Spanish. After I replied, “Un poquito (a little),” he said, “Good. You’re our new bilingual coordinator!”

Mind you, my school had over 950 students, and over 85 percent of them were English language learners. Handed a classroom filled with primarily ESL students, I turned to my new posse and congratulated them on knowing Spanish so well. I knew English, and I bragged that all of us were going to learn two languages that year.

This was my introduction to working with ESL students.

For more about Danny Brassell, click here.