Initiatives Events, Groups, Meetings

National Standards for the Teaching of Modern Greek

During 2011 MGLTA, in collaboration with the Hellenic Link and in collaboration with educators at the national level, has supported the efforts of creating National Standards for Modern Greek. A Task Force comprised of k-16 educators and representing geographical areas and Greek programs throughout the United States, is working to see this project through, under the approval, framework and partnership of ACTFL. As Standards define the agenda for the future developments in the field of language education, MGLTA and its membership believe that Greek language curricula must be updated to include the National Standards as the tool to build performance standards for linguistic and cultural competency. Greek language programs will align their curriculum and assessment to the National Standards and will follow the guidelines for implementing the Standards. Teaching with the Standards will permeate programs of professional development and will become a part of the preparation and professionalization of Greek language educators. The Task Force met in Boston during the ACTFL conference in November 2010. A second meeting took place in Madison Wisconsin at the NCOLCTL conference in April 2011, and in November 2011, the Task Force met at the ACTFL conference in Denver. In March 2015 the task force met with educators at the Odyssey Charter School in Wilmington, DE. Workshops and meetings to discuss on-going work were fruitful and have created a strong collaborative environment. A Reviewers Board and an Advisory Council are in place while development of the Standards for Modern Greek continues. Funding for the efforts of the Task Force has been provided generously by the Spyropoulos Foundation.

ACTFL Special Interest Group in Modern Greek

Modern Greek Language Educators have been working toward the creation of a Special Interest Group (SIG) in Modern Greek under ACTFL. The SIG had its first business meeting and a workshop at Denver, at the ACTFL conference. Language educators of Modern Greek as well as language educators of other fields with an interest in Modern Greek participated with enthusiasm. The SIG is currently organizing activities for the 2015 ACTFL conference and is focusing on offering quality professional programs to Greek language educators, on creating collaborations to enhance K-16 articulation, on building community and unifying efforts among Greek language educators at the state, regional and national level and on advancing professional development programs for Greek language educators.

In particular the goals of the SIG are:

• To promote the teaching and learning of Modern Greek language and culture as a field
• To provide a forum for sharing the best teaching practices and most recent research findings in the field
• To establish and address needs and priorities for resources relevant to the field and those who represent it.
• To provide opportunities for individual and collective scholarly work in the field of teaching Modern Greek language and culture.
• To provide opportunities for training in pedagogy, curricular innovation and uses of technology, and language program design.
• To link, internationally, efforts of those who teach Modern Greek Language and Culture.
• To share the development of strategies for articulation policies across all levels