Timothy Chávez | Communicative Teacher

PRESENTATION: All Hands on Deck: Total Participation Techniques for Every Learner

Tired of calling on the same few students? This session will introduce practical, high-energy Total Participation Techniques that ensure every student is actively thinking, engaged, and involved—every time.

About Timothy:

Timothy Chávez has been teaching Spanish for ten years and is a researcher by nature who enjoys reading and incorporating research into his daily lesson plans. As a queer educator, his goal is to design lessons that prioritize language acquisition research while also integrating social justice and cultural content to truly liven up and bring purpose to his curricula. 

 What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

Joy to me means authenticity and being present in the moment.

Courtney Bonino | Llearning Llama
PRESENTATION: Unlock Your Student’s Potential: Let’s Create an Escape Room

Learn how to design engaging puzzles for an escape room in the target language. From gathering the supplies to designing challenging puzzles, you will leave this session with everything you need to create your own escape room for any level and any language!

About Courtney: 

Courtney Bonino of Llearning Llama has been teaching and creating Spanish resources for 9 years. Her experience is mainly as a high school teacher, but she has taught every level from preschool through Spanish 4 Honors. Courtney has a Masters in Foreign Language Teacher. She loves providing teachers with authentic and practical activities to make Spanish class fun! She has a passion for virtual field trips, proficiency based tasks, and incorporating culture in the classroom. 

What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

Seeing students smile and laugh while learning a language! Turning average lessons into games, authentic scenarios, and student centered projects.

Sophie Forker 

PRESENTATION: Qu'est-ce qu'on s'amuse en classe de FLE !

How can we engage students in World Language classes today? What keeps our students coming back even if they have met their graduation requirements? Many of us are asked this question when presenting at conferences or interviewing for jobs as students often prioritize other classes over ours. There are many answers to this question, but in my experience the best motivator is making our classes joyful spaces! In this session I will present about several games that I use in my classes to keep students engaged and speaking the target language.

About Sophie: 

Bonjour ! ¡Hola! Hi! I'm Sophie, a French and Spanish teacher from Brooklyn, New York. I'm passionate about language acquisition, especially in tandem with queer affirming and antiracist pedagogy. I have taught both middle and high school in NYC public schools and have worked in traditional foreign language as well as dual language settings. I love learning about facilitating language acquisition in the classroom and I'm excited to share with all of you! In my free time I love spending time with my partner and our two dogs, Kevin and Snoodles.

What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

"Students are using the target language because they want to! 
Students are smiling and interacting with each other.
The teacher is also having fun!"

Maria Jernigan | Redshift Education

PRESENTATION: Video Games for Unleashing Proficiency — ¿Cómo, cuándo, y por qué?

Looking for ways to capture (and keep!) your students’ attention while staying in the target language? We’ll dive into how, when, and why to use VIDEOJUEGOS to facilitate immersive adventures that keep students curious, confident, and communicating.

About Maria: 

"Maria Jernigan teaches high school Spanish and is the Founder & CEO of Redshift Education -- the indie game studio that creates immersive, quest-based video games for students learning Spanish. In Redshift Education's immersive worlds, students speak aloud to work together and solve real-problems using the target language. How neat is that?!

Meanwhile, in the classroom, Maria teaches 100% in the target language and with project-based learning (PBL), laser focused on getting students comfortable using the language. Check out her youtube channel for her free content on 100% TL teaching + PBL for language classes... in a way that actually SAVES you time instead of eating it!"

What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

I feel the most JOYFUL when I see something I've worked so hard on... just CLICK with a student. Like, BOOM, that was just the right thing, for that right time, to get them where they needed to be.

Diane Neubauer, PhD

PRESENTATION: Humor and Play in the World Language Classroom

What kinds of playful activities can language teachers choose to impact students' language development and engagement? See and experience examples of easy ways to play through the use of language in your classroom.

About Diane: 

Diane Neubauer, 杜雁子, taught Mandarin Chinese for 10 years in elementary, middle, and high schools before completing her PhD in Foreign Language and ESL Education at the University of Iowa in 2022. She is Clinical Assistant Professor of Multilingual Education at the University of Louisville, teaches Chinese online, and facilitates language teacher training. She is especially interested in how language teachers can facilitate students’ comprehension of target language, engagement in classroom learning, & development of intercultural competence. She has a podcast with Reed Riggs, Conversations about Language Teaching. Check her YouTube channel for language learning, sometimes featuring her flock of backyard chickens!

What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

Joy means the teacher AND the students find pleasure in their time together in the language, even in the midst of challenging circumstances. Fun means incorporating language play into our classrooms, deliberately using language to be playful together.

Sierra Wessels | Profe Sierra

PRESENTATION: Sneaky Input: Games and Routines to Increase Target Language Input

What your students don't know, won't hurt them! Come explore some options for SNEAKY input. Sierra defines sneaky input as highly engaging and fun games, brain breaks, and routines that can be done in the target language and your students are LOVE them so much they don't even notice how much input they are really getting! These activities and routines are fun, dynamic, JOYFUL, and engaging, BUT most importantly they are RICH in language acquisition opportunities and input. We won't just talk about the how to do them, but also the when, so that you get the most out of each activity.

About Sierra: 

Sierra Wessels is a second-generation Spanish teacher that loves sharing her life, experiences, and learning as a language teacher using acquisition driven instruction and comprehensible input approaches on her Instagram and blog as Profe Sierra. You’ll see that she puts an emphasis on connection over curriculum focusing on using resources and methods tied to music, authentic tv shows, and leveled novels to help keep her students engaged and acquiring new language. While she has taught everything from 6th grade -Spanish IV over the last 7 years she has found her passion in working with intermediate level students and loves helping other teachers do the same.

What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

Joy and fun in my classroom is creating a community and relationship where we are laughing until we cry, bonding over shared interests, celebrating the things that make each of uniquely us, and feeling loved and supported as both students and the teacher.

Robyn French | Madame French Toast | French Toast Cuentos

PRESENTATION: Read, Play, Repeat: Games and Activities for Language Learners

Discover how reading can become a source of joy and engagement in your world language classroom! In this session, we’ll explore a variety of interactive reading activities and games that keep students motivated and immersed in the target language. From creative comprehension tasks to movement-based reading games, you’ll leave with practical strategies to make reading both meaningful and fun for learners of all levels.

About Robyn: 

Bonjour! My name is Robyn French, and I am a French teacher (yes, you read that correctly—I teach French, and my last name is French!). I’ve been teaching for about 10 years. While I’ve primarily taught French, I’ve also worked as a paraprofessional and spent a year teaching English in France through the TAPIF program. Most of my experience is with middle school students, but I’ve also taught high school and upper elementary (4th and 5th graders—who are really fun to teach!). In recent years, I’ve been working more on supporting other World Language teachers through mentoring, creating comprehensible resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, and co-authoring a blog called French Toast Cuentos with my colleague Catherine. I’m excited to present at this conference and to share ideas that can help make your work easier—and bring more joy to your teaching!

What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

This year, joy in the classroom means using more games and activities that spark engagement. I’m also leaning into lessons I love, because when I’m having fun, the whole class feels it!

Pamela Parks, "Madame Sensei"

PRESENTATION: Game-Based Learning To Bring You Joy in the World Language Classroom

Grading long paper and pen assessments was bringing both me and my students down, and it didn't feel very authentic!  I describe how I turned to game-based learning, which makes my classroom a joyful (albeit boisterous and loud) space.

About Pamela: 

My name is Pamela Parks, but my students call me "Madame Sensei." I teach French, Spanish, and Japanese to highschoolers in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. (Plus I had to cram more than 30 students into each of my classes so that I could take on an ELA class this year... Talk about whiplash...) I decided long ago that I dislike grading long exams, and what I really want to do is the fun stuff. So I moved to a game-based and project-based curriculum. I find that I get more authentic language production that way -- Students aren't worried about the sounds coming out of their mouth, they just want to win the game. Affective Filter lowered, students are 100% engaged, and I enjoy myself, too. It's a win-win-win.

What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

To me, joy means seeing the lightbulb go off over my students heads.  To my students, it means that their Affective Filter is lowered, and they are not worried about the sounds coming out of their mouth.  They are just totally 100% invested in the game.

Leah Rogstad

PRESENTATION: Song of the week Re-imagined: Cultural Competence, Community and Critical Thinking at all Proficiency Levels

We will explore how bring a song of the week into your classroom can foster not just linguistic competence, but also build classroom community, bring representation of diverse identities to the classroom, establish a sustainable classroom routine, and enable students to interact with authentic language at their proficiency level from day 1. You will walk away with 10 different strategies with song of the week to load up students with input, investigate the cultural products, practices, and perspectives of various cultures, and foster a passion for learning language through music.

About Leah: 

Leah Rogstad is a Spanish teacher passionate about critical thinking, cultural competence and convivencia in the language classroom. With a experience ranging from middle school to university at both public and independent schools in the US and abroad, Leah loves to design curriculum that brings authentic texts and resources to the classroom and creates a space that connects language to students' lives. She strives to create a classroom that fosters not just linguistic competence but also encourages students to widen their perspective, become more self-aware and curious, and to connect with people from around the world. Leah is currently based in Vermont at Brattleboro Union High School, where she teaches all levels of Spanish.

What does Joy & Fun mean to you? 

Joy means  experiencing awe when seeing a beautiful landscape in a song, when you laugh for the first time at a joke in your second language, when you learn the perfect way to cook a tortilla so it puffs up. Joy is feeling the texture and tastes and sounds of a language beyond just its words.