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Educational Resources, Webinars, Workshops, and Events from COERLL

The Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL) is one of 16 National Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRC’s) funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The overall mission of these federally-funded centers is to improve the teaching and learning of foreign languages by producing resources (materials and best practices) that can be profitably employed in a variety of settings.

COERLL’s work is organized around seven basic areas:

  • Applied linguistic research
  • Teaching materials
  • Language assessment
  • Teacher development
  • Less commonly taught languages
  • K-12 initiatives
  • Outreach and dissemination. 

Mission

COERLL’s mission is to produce and disseminate Open Educational Resources (OER) for the Internet public (e.g., online language courses, reference grammars, assessment tools, corpora, etc.). The term OER refers to any educational material offered freely for anyone to use, typically involving some permission to re-mix, improve, and redistribute. Thus, COERLL seeks to promote a culture of collaboration that lies at the heart of the Open Education movement. In addition, COERLL aims to reframe foreign language education in terms of bilingualism and/or multilingualism. As such, all COERLL resources strive to represent more accurately language development and performance along dialectal and proficiency continua.  

Upcoming Events

OER Hangout: Creating inclusive open resources for language learning

Feb. 19, 2020 –

4:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Online in Zoom

Webinar

Partner Event | Universal Design for Learning 101: What Is It?

Feb. 25, 2020 –

11:30 am to 1:00 pm

Workshop

OER Hangout: Talk to teachers who have adopted and adapted OER

Mar. 04, 2020 –

6:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Online in Zoom

Webinar

Partner event | Introduction to OER Workshop

Mar. 05, 2020 –

9:00 am to 12:00 pm

PCL- Perry-Castaneda Library

Workshop

OER Hangout: Making your language curriculum more inclusive

Mar. 12, 2020 – 3:30 pm

Online in Zoom

Webinar

OER Hangout: Searching and Publishing in OER Repositories

Apr. 15, 2020 –

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm

Online in Zoom

Webinar

Get Your Students Speaking! Intentionally Raising Oral Proficiency in the Language Classroom

Jun. 24, 2020 –

9:30 am to 3:00 pm

The University of Texas at Austin

Workshop

Effective methods to advance Heritage Spanish teaching

Jun. 25, 2020 – 9:00 am to Jun. 26, 2020 – 1:00 pm

The University of Texas at Austin

Workshop

Thousands of Educators, Many Bilingual, Fear Deportation

Washington Post story of popular DREAMer teacher leaving highlights predicament of much-needed educators across the U.S.

Mother and daughter lying on warm floor reading book

A powerful Washington Post column, “Our kids are losing one of their best teachers—because he’s a ‘Dreamer’” has focused attention on one of the reasons Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) is a popular and successful program that benefits all of American society.

In the column, Max Boot explains how Carlo Barrera, a popular science teacher and soccer coach at a New York City K-8 school, has decided to leave his teaching position due to uncertainty and fears surrounding the precarious status of DACA and the inability of Congress to pass a legislative alternative. Barerra is just one of 16,000 DREAMers with DACA status working in education.

If the Supreme Court rules that the current administration lawfully ended DACA, DREAMers will likely be able to work until their employment authorization document (work permit) expires. But their future after that is uncertain.

According to Don Graham, co-founder of TheDream.US, “Nearly 700,000 DREAMers, including thousands of teachers, rely on DACA to strengthen their own lives and the communities around them. Their stories remind us why DREAMers’ futures and opportunities should be protected – by maintaining DACA and passing legislation to provide citizenship for DREAMers.”

Barerra is just the tip of the iceberg: Ahead of last November’s Supreme Court arguments about the future of DACA, TheDream.US released avideo featuring Marisela, a TheDream.US Scholar graduate now working as an elementary school teacher. As she says, “I would tell the Supreme Court to let me do my job. I love my job. I love my students. I love my school. I love my community. DACA has benefited the U.S. because a new generation of professionals are ready to serve the country that they love.” Watch Marisela’s story here

Another DACA recipient and former TheDream.US scholar, Oscar Hernandez is a graduate of Arizona State University and an Arizona public school teacher through the Teach for America program. In a recent profile published by INSIGHT into Diversity, Oscar stated: “Having experienced extreme unpredictability at the hands of politicians, my fellow DREAMers and I are resilient and ready to face whatever hardships lie ahead of us. Employers should know that they can count on us to work hard despite the adversity that could lie ahead. At my lowest point, DACA liberated me from my fears and gave me the ability to envision plans for myself.

A Supreme Court decision on DACA is expected no later than June 2020. 

President Trump’s Proposed Budget Defunds Education, National Endowment of the Arts, State Department

President Trump has released the Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Request, and similar to the past three years, aims to cut the Department of Education and other national programs. Executive Director of the Joint National Committee for Languages-National Council for Languages and International Studies Dr. Bill Rivers presented the following analysis of the budget.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

For the US Department of Education, the overall budget request is $66.6 billion, which is $6.1 billion below the current level, a reduction of 8.4%.

  • In Elementary and Secondary Education, almost all of the formula-based grants to the States would be consolidated into a single, state block grant program, the “Elementary and Secondary Education for the Disadvantaged Block Grant (ESED Block Grant).” JNCL-NCLIS advocates for Title II (Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants), Title III (English Language Acquisition), and Title IV, Part A (Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants). These three programs, and 25 others, would be consolidated into a single program. The 2020 funding levels for all 27 programs is $24.05 billion; the President proposes 19.36 billion, a reduction of $4.692 billion, a reduction of 19.5% overall.
  • In Higher Education, Title II (Teacher Quality Partnerships Program) would be eliminated, and states directed to use the ESED block grant funding. Title VI and Fulbright-Hays would also be eliminated, as the Trump Administration continues to claim that these programs are duplicative of other programs in the Departments of Defense and State.
  • The Institute for Education Sciences (IES) would receive $565.4 million under the President’s budget, a decrease of $58 million (-9.3%.) IES continues to fund a small number of high-impact research projects on the outcomes of language education.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

For the US Department of State, the overall budget request is $40.8 billion, a reduction of $15 billion (a 25% decrease) from the current level.

  • The bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs would be reduced to $310m, a decrease of $420.7m, or 56%. As of this writing, we do not have sufficient detail to determine whether the Congress-Bundestag Exchange Program or the Title VIII Program for Research in the Former Soviet States have been proposed for elimination. The Christopher Stevens Virtual Exchange Program, funded in 2020 at $5m, is slated for elimination.
  • For the Department of Defense, the President has requested $705.4 billion, an increase of $800 million over last year. At present we do not have sufficient detail to determine the President’s requests for the Defense Language National Security Education Program, StarTalk, or the Defense Language Institute. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is slated to receive $800 million, a reduction of $150 million (-15.8%). DARPA funds a significant number of research projects in computational linguistics and related fields.

National Endowment for the Humanities

The President’s budget calls for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds programs in the documentation and preservation of Native American Languages (with the National Science Foundation) as well as programs to globalize community colleges.

National Science Foundation

The President’s budget calls for a reduction of $631 million, or 7.4%, to the budget of the National Science Foundation, with a Fiscal Year 2021 request of $7.948 billion. NSF funds basic research in several fields of linguistics as well as the joint program with NEH on Documenting Endangered Languages.

sources: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/budget_fy21.pdf

https://www.languagepolicy.org/post/the-president-s-budget-defunds-department-of-education-humanities-state-department

Urge Congress to #FundLibraries

For a fourth consecutive year, the White House budget proposal for FY21 eliminates direct federal funding for libraries.

The majority of this funding is provided through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which provides more than $189.3 million for libraries through the Library Services and Technology Act. The budget proposal also cuts $27 million from the Innovative Approaches to Literacy program, which helps school libraries serve students in the most vulnerable communities across America.

According to EveryLibrary, a political action committee that provides advising and consulting services to libraries across the country, “The IMLS is the primary source of federal funding for the nation’s libraries and museums. IMLS provides grants to libraries in need to replace technology and infrastructure. Many rural and urban communities depend on these grants to continue operations and provide essential community services. In small towns and big cities, museums are vital to sharing the arts, extending our cultural memory, and connecting us with people we’d never otherwise have met. IMLS is a primary source of federal grant funding to extend state and local resources in order to educate students, preserve and digitize collections, and connect families with their communities.”

Furthermore, says EveryLibrary, “Every state library puts IMLS funding to work in critically important ways that are high-impact for their states. Public libraries often provide the only broadband access to rural communities and many Americans in all areas often rely on this access to apply to jobs, access training, and to learn new skills. Many entrepreneurs use the resources found in the library to get a competitive edge in an increasingly global marketplace. IMLS funding supports school readiness programs, provides resources and materials to educators, helps libraries develop resources for underserved and at-risk populations and funds pilot projects that enable libraries to address the needs of their communities in creative ways.”

Please tweet at your members of Congress and urge them to publicly oppose cuts to federal library funding. We need them to commit to libraries in FY21!

https://cqrcengage.com/ala/app/tweet?0&engagementId=505971

‘Parasite’ First Non-English Language Film to Win Best Picture Oscar

Korean director Bong Joon-ho made history last night as his film Parasite was the first film in language other than English to win Best Picture.

Bong Joon-ho, here with interpreter Sharon Choi, won big at Sunday’s Oscars.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The film, which is a comedy-horror-thiller drama, also won three other awards, Best Original Screenplay, Best International Film, and Best Director. This comes after last fall, when Bong Joon-ho criticized the Academy and stated, “The Oscars are not an international film festival,” he told Vulture’s E. Alex Jung then. “They’re very local.”

When accepting the Best Screenplay trophy, Bong reflected on expectations of filmmakers outside of the U.S. and how they differ from U.S. writers: “Writing a script is always such a lonely process; we never write to represent our countries,” he said via Choi, before adding in English: “But this is [the] very first Oscar to South Korea.” He is also the first Asian filmmaker to win that particular award.

Parasite isn’t just the first Korean film to win an Oscar; it’s also the first to ever earn a nomination. It also is the first film to win Best International Film after the controversial decision to change the name from Best Foreign-Language Film. The title of “Foreign-Language Film” had been criticized for being outdated, including by ‘Roma’ director Alfonso Cuarón last year during his acceptance speech where he pointed out the trappings of having something titled ‘foreign language’: “I grew up watching foreign-language movies and learning so much from them and being inspired, like Citizen Kane, Jaws, Rashomon, The Godfather, Breathless …” he said.

The Oscars have been heavily criticized for lack of inclusivity, so perhaps a ‘Parasite’ win for Best Picture is the beginning of a more diverse pool of winners in the years to come.

Museum Dedicated to Language, Planet Word, Opens in May

Planet Word– a museum dedicated to everything language in Washington D.C.– has announced that it is expected to open May 31 with 10 immersive galleries that will explore language in informative and entertaining ways.

The museum will host a variety of exhibitions designed to inform and delight. In the large Great Hall, the museum will have 31 language ambassadors who will bring together spoken and signed languages from across the globe, including Navajo, Amharic, Zulu, and Iranian Sign Language. Through tongue twisters, folk songs, sports chants, words of affection, and other fun, culture-specific phrases, ambassadors like Kainoa, Mariko, Sebi, and Cesar will introduce you to their languages—and teach you how to speak or sign a few phrases too.

A one-of-a-kind sound sculpture will greet future visitors to Planet Word: a 20-foot weeping willow tree designed by contemporary artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Walking under its branches will trigger unique audio from some of its 500 hanging speakers — each of which will contain an archive of recordings in a distinct language. This immersive piece, titled Speaking WIllow, sets the tone for what to expect at Planet Word, where surprising ways to interact with language will await at every turn.

Lozano-Hemmer is known for his highly participatory works, including his current Pulse exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum. His work combines human and technological elements with virtuosity, and he describes his pieces as existing at “the intersection of architecture and performance art.”

Of Speaking Willow, he says, “this project is designed to create intimate, organic interaction with visitors entering Planet Word. The piece makes tangible the languages spoken by over 99% of the world’s population, in the form of a diverse array of voices.”

On the second floor visitors will be able to immerse themselves in a world of poetry. In “Word Surround,” visitors will discover a contemplative space in an oval room, tucked away from the energy and bustle of the other galleries. As visitors sit and relax, poems will appear on the walls surrounding them, each line of poetry appearing and then fading away as they are read, one by one, allowing visitors to completely immerse themselves in the words and their messages. Planet Word enlisted the help of poet Adrienne Raphel and partnered with the Poetry Foundation for expert guidance.

The museum is slated to include auditorium, classrooms, a restaurant and gift shop. Admission will be free.

Edlio Adds Proven Family Engagement Tools

Edlio has updated its school communications offering to provide schools and districts with a full family-engagement solution. The result of a partnership with Livingtree, the new tools are available to more than 15,000 schools already served by Edlio.

Edlio has been helping schools make it easy for educators to connect to families through beautiful, modern websites and streamlined payment tools for nearly two decades. With Edlio Engage powered by Livingtree, Edlio offers the full spectrum of services for schools and districts looking to strengthen relationships with their communities.

As a result of the integration, Edlio Engage will offer two-way conversations, enabling families to engage with schools in a way that has a proven track record of improving academic outcomes. Other features of Edlio Engage include:

  • Translation into more than 100 languages;
  • A family efficacy score;
  • Direct messaging;
  • Photo, video, and file sharing;
  • Email and mobile push notifications;
  • SIS integration;
  • School engagement reports;
  • District-wide engagement reports;
  • District-level visibility and access; and
  • Family engagement and platform tracking.

For schools and districts that struggle with the challenge of unifying and streamlining teacher-parent connections, Edlio Engage, along with the broader suite of Edlio tools connecting schools with communities, improves educational outcomes through powerful, effective, and easy-to-use communication.

5 Ways to Celebrate Afro-Latinos For Black History Month

February is Black History Month in the United States, an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of blacks in U.S. history, and to celebrate Language Magazine would like to feature ways to honor Afro-Latinos.

1. Music

Below you’ll find a playlist created by NPR sure to get you grooving including Cumbia, bachata, mambo and son jarocho.

2. The Afro-Latin@ Reader

The Afro-Latin@ Reader presents a kaleidoscopic view of Black Latin@s in the United States. It addresses history, music, gender, class, and media representations in more than sixty selections, including scholarly essays, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, short stories, and interviews.

While the selections cover centuries of Afro-Latin@ history, since the arrival of Spanish-speaking Africans in North America in the mid-sixteenth-century, most of them focus on the past fifty years

The book can be found here.

3. Poetry

If poetry is more up your alley, check out poet and journalist Julia Constanza Burgos García. Below is a video of the poem “Ay, Ay, Ay, de la Grifa Negra” by Burgos, read by Glaisma Pérez-Silva (Teacher, Hartford, CT).

4. Podcasts

Afrosaya The Afrolatino Podcast is produced by Alex Gutierrez. The podcast is produced in English and Spanish and is an advocate for access to quality education, health and justice for all. Occasionally, in Afrosaya you will hear guest speakers who join us to share their personal stories.

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/afrosaya

5. Library

If you’re in New York City, a great way to celebrate Afro-Latinos during Black History Month is to visit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Founded in 1925 as the Negro Literature, History and Prints Division of the 135th Street Branch Library by Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is one of the leading cultural institutions in the world devoted to the preservation of materials focused on African-American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. Recognized for its prominence in digital humanities, scholarly research, and vast collection spanning over 10 million items, the Schomburg Center won the National Medal for Museum and Library Service in 2015. Today, the Schomburg serves as a space that encourages lifelong education and exploration with diverse programs that illuminate the richness of black history and culture, and in 2017 it was named a National Historic Landmark.

Chicago Pitches Legislation for Bilingual Educators of Color

Illinois state representatives Jesus Garcia and Aaron Ortiz pitched a new legislation on Monday in Chicago to increase the number of bilingual public school teachers of color. Both legislators have introduced bills to increase financial aid for prospective public school teachers and bilingual high school graduates. This comes after García along with Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, and Cory Booker of New Jersey announced the introduction of the DIVERSIFY Act to to create a well-prepared and diversified educator workforce that would double the maximum federal college grants for prospective public school teachers to $8,000 a year.

Ortiz introduced a bill last week in the Illinois General Assembly that would provide a yearly $5,000 college grant for up to 800 high school students who graduate with a state seal of biliteracy, as measured by standardized tests administered by the state. The state recently introduced a public act that allows nonpublic schools to participate in the seal of biliteracy.

According to Ortiz, the two bills pieces of legislation from himself and García are designed to work in tandem to create a “stable homegrown pipeline” of educators that reflect the needs of the state’s diverse student body. “There are many students of color, many of them bilingual, who face challenges accessing a public education, specifically around affordability,” Ortiz said. “This bill tries to address that.” The proportion of students that are either black or Latino at Chicago Public Schools are about half that of teachers in the district, while nearly one in five students is considered an English learner.

About 83% of students in CPS are either black or Latino, compared to 42% of teachers. Nearly one in five students in the district is considered an English learner.

UN Proclaims International Decade of Indigenous Languages

The UN General Assembly last month proclaimed 2022–2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, inviting Indigenous peoples—as custodians— to initiate ideas for preserving this endangered facet of their cultural and social life, as it adopted 60 resolutions and one decision recommended by its Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural).

The proclamation of a decade is strongly supported by a wide range of stakeholders. There is consensus that the decade would contribute to raising global awareness about the importance of Indigenous languages for sustainable development, peace building, and reconciliation and would mobilize further resources for the support and promotion of Indigenous languages worldwide.

Craig Ritchie, CEO of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and co-chair of the steering committee for the organization of the International Year, noted: “As a steering committee, we have agreed to support to follow an International Decade of Indigenous Languages… But more than that, we need to give substance and focus to this agenda going forward.”

Aili Keskitalo, co-chair of the steering committee for the organization of the International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019, also emphasized how preserving and promoting Indigenous languages requires a long-term strategy and joint commitment at different levels: “Keeping our languages alive is the work of generations… Our languages are like sinews that tie us to our heritage and our ancestors; they might tear, but can be mended, with care, with love, and with lots of hard work.”

A day after addressing the United Nations General Assembly to call for action to save and strengthen Indigenous languages, Assembly of First Nations (AFN) national chief Perry Bellegarde celebrated the move: ”The International Decade of Indigenous Languages demonstrates a strong international commitment to restore, support, and strengthen Indigenous languages. Our languages are our identity, our wisdom, our worldview. They must not be lost.

“The International Year of Indigenous Languages was a good start, but one year is simply not enough when we’re talking about diverse cultural heritages facing such grave threats. Let’s continue to work together to get this important work done.”

National Chief Bellegarde was at UN Headquarters in New York City to participate in the high-level event for the closing of the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages. The national chief addressed the full UN General Assembly that day, making him the first Indigenous leader from Canada to address the General Assembly twice in one year (National Chief Bellegarde also spoke to the General Assembly in February 2019).

National Chief Bellegarde told the General Assembly in his address that, in Canada, no Indigenous language is safe and only one in five Indigenous people is fluent enough in their language to hold a conversation. The national chief thanked and acknowledged the grand chief of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations, Wilton Littlechild, who was attending the UN General Assembly that week, for his dedication over many years and for his role in making the International Year of Indigenous Languages and the International Decade of Indigenous Languages a reality. In 2016, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

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