Welcome to day 2 of the Language Summit. Highlights from Day 1 and overview of Day 2

Equity, social justice, Social-Emotional Learning, mental health, and a rigorous and relevant instructional program for all students are recent but critical issues that schools today are required to address. Meanwhile, the demands of the past have not gone away. The brick-and-mortar school model of the last century with the bell schedule, boundaries, rules, regulations, certifications, tenures, contracts, and a hyper-focus on meeting proficiency on high-stakes tests continue to demand attention. While the demands continue to compound, a silver lining is emerging through the hardships brought on by COVID. It has created a tipping point for many educators, policy makers, business leaders, and parents around the immediate need to transform our education system. The pandemic has also taught us that change is possible in the ways we had not imagined even one year ago. Dr. Bill Daggett will share emerging solutions to these challenges. He is co-chairing a National Commission named “Learning 2025: National Commission on Student- centered, Equity-focused Education” with AASA, in cooperation with several other national organizations including NSBA, CCSSO, NASSP, and NESPA. The National Commission’s charge will be to identify and document the cognitive and non-cognitive skills, knowledge, behaviors, and dispositions that high school graduates will need to master to prepare for the digital age workplace as citizens of a global community.

The presenter will discuss how to design and prepare to pivot from face to face to an online environment. She will discuss tools that can be used for different purposes and ways in which online language classes can be kept dynamic and engaging.

Whether you’re an educator or in the business of education, you are trusted to make crucial investments that will affect the future of the children you serve. Come to this session to learn 3 key decisions you can make to dramatically move the needle.

It is widely known that the field of linguistics has made substantial contributions to the applied areas of language acquisition, language pedagogy, and speech therapy. It is also well known that linguistic knowledge can be usefully integrated into computer applications, not just those involving language instruction, but also those in such technological areas as speech recognition and machine translation. It might be surprising to some people, however, to learn that linguistics can also be usefully applied with computers in creatively fashioning wordplays. In this presentation we will look at how linguistic knowledge and awareness were used in preparing one such product, the PhraseWorthy software, which brainstorms wordplays for possible use in humor, advertising, and marketing.

Hip-hop is one the top 5 growing music genres globally. Not only does it have a rich origin but wherever hip-hop spreads it incorporates a part of that region’s culture and identity. This malleability of hip-hop allows for people across the world to form their own personal connection to the genre of music. Hip-hop is more than an art form. Hip-hop more than entertainment. Our presentation will show how hip-hop can be used effectively as a tool to teach english to nonnative speakers. We will break down 5 pillars of hip-hop and how each pillar correlates with a strong foundation for teaching and learning english as a foreign language. The Lo–Fi Language Learning approach to EFL provides an immersive and interactive experience for our learners while growing their confidence and capacity in the language.

Discussion Topics: 1. Deciding on the right education (in and outside of formal education) when you’re young or old 2. How to choose the right career(s) 3. The advantages and disadvantages of changing careers 4. Facing rejection and how to keep trying (when should you give up?) 5. Tips for getting hired

Discussion Topics: 1. How to become comfortable with being uncomfortable 2. Finding a balance between flexibility and structure in the classroom and the workplace 3. How to be humble enough to admit you are wrong and to try something else 4. Why is it important to keep trying new things?

Charlemagne said “To have another language is to possess a second soul.” While we know that a person’s language can communicate their worldview, few realize how much a person’s language shapes their worldview. Research shows that knowing more than one language increases one’s empathy. And in today’s climate of division, mistrust, and fear, empathy is exactly what we need to overcome those challenges. Educators and social scientists are beginning to harness the powerful technologies of today to teach empathy, as well as other languages, to younger and younger learners.

One way to ensure a high quality, personalized literacy program for English language learners is to use the learners’ own lives and experiences as curriculum. Creating spaces for students to compose and share stories results in a strong sense of community, facilitates the development of authentic literacy skills and increases student motivation and achievement. In this session, participants will learn about how an ESL teacher and a co-teacher used a personal narrative project to help students develop necessary literacy skills through building community while fostering empowerment in their cultural identity.

In this presentation, the speakers will reflect on how they collaborated to craft a process for the publication of their students’ multilingual voices by using poetry to elevate the voice of linguistically and culturally diverse students. By centering the idea that students have the ability and power to tell their own stories, the speakers were able to facilitate an anthology that resulted in almost 1,000 copies purchased worldwide and both local and international notoriety. Session participants will leave with a better understanding of why and how to support their students’ multilingualism. In addition, they will learn how the process of student self-publication can be applied to their own classrooms.

At the language summit we’ve made it our goal to democratize the language learning space by inviting everyone in the industry to join the conversation of what the future of language learning and education should look like. Learning from multiple perspectives helps us to know what changes we ought to make to strengthen and improve our current systems and also helps prompt us to reinvent some systems altogether. We’ve selected some outstanding representatives who have flourished when working with very diverse teams from all around the world and who are leaders that know the value of diversity in both the workplace and in the classroom. Prepare to learn from those who represent some of the under-heard voices in the industry and listen to their experiences and wisdom. Leave this session with a better understanding of how to introduce more diversity to your team to help your company grow, innovate, and find more competitive edges in the market.