Mary Jane Kelley, Ohio University

Martha Pero of Hudson High School headlined the twenty-ninth annual gathering of the Ohio Valley Foreign Language Alliance on the campus of Ohio University in Athens on November 3rd.  Pero, an Ohio Teacher of the Year and former president of OFLA, presented “What are we assessing?,” which walked the audience through examples of how to make assessments more relevant to our students while aligning them clearly with the Standards.  The program concluded with a customary feature of OVFLA meeting agendas, “Mini-lessons,” in which OVFLA teachers demonstrated activities they have found effective in their classrooms.  Lois Vines presented “We’ve got your number,” a telephone conversation simulation to practice numbers; Johann Le Guelte explained how “La Guillotine” can be an effective tool for exam review; Svetlana Gordon demonstrated “Teaching the Imperative with TPR”; and Stephanie Creighton shared the impressive results of her students’ Día de los Muertos project in “La Ofrenda.”  In addition to the formal agenda, teachers exchanged ideas over coffee and donuts and lingered in conversation after the meeting’s conclusion.

The OVFLA was founded in 1983 as part of the national Academic Alliance Movement, conceived as a means of facilitating communication and collaboration between high school and college language teachers.  The OVFLA is proud that teachers from central and southeastern Ohio continue to communicate and collaborate after twenty-nine years.