The Cardinal

Abby Arace, OFLA Beginning Teachers Chair
French Teacher, New Albany Middle School

The OFLA Beginning Teacher Committee is working hard to connect with new teachers and to support them in becoming excellent, innovative, resourceful, and long-lasting world language teachers. Our goal is to provide a network of resources, strategies, and tools for new teachers. We want new teachers to know they are not alone and that OFLA is here to help them. To this end, we will interview new teachers throughout the year and highlight them in The Cardinal. Kendal Smith is in her 3rd year teaching French at Johnathan Alder High School in Plain City, Ohio.

Implementing Luvvoice AI into Your Interpretive Listening Activities

Samantha Colby, OFLA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee Chair
Spanish Teacher, Toledo Technology Academy of Engineering

In an effort to give my students more authentic listening opportunities, I began searching for a text-to-speech platform that would bring variety and depth to our lessons. I wanted my students to hear more than just my voice narrating texts—I wanted them to experience a range of voices and accents that reflect the linguistic diversity of the Spanish-speaking world. After a Google search, I discovered Luvvoice, a free text-to-speech platform, which completely changed how I approach listening activities in my classroom.

Jonathan Harris, OFLA Early Language Learning Chair
Spanish Teacher, St. Gabriel Consolidated School

In my previous article, I provided a list of apps recommended by NNELL, the National Network for Early Language Learners. As an early language teacher for nearly the past twenty years, I have been routinely asked by parents for ways that their children can learn language at home. I love hearing these questions since they show both a passion for learning the language (in my case, Spanish) and a willingness to practice on their own time. Their advocacy committee recommends the list below with their descriptions. Please feel free to use any of the websites below, and if you know of a great one that isn’t included, please notify me (in the comment section) with a brief statement explaining why you like it.

Aligning Practices as a Tool in Increasing Program Enrollment

Dawn N. Michael, OFLA Recruitment & Retention Chair
Reynoldsburg City Schools

This is a follow-up piece to my October article entitled “Where Did All the Our (Language) Students Go? Examining Systemic and Classroom Factors in Program Decline.” I am sharing some of our experiences and choices in the hopes that it is useful to other departments as they approach the problems of maintaining student enrollment and administrative support for their language programs.

At the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, the world language teachers in my district were able to meet to discuss alignment of curriculum and assessment practices. The goals set out were to examine what and how students were being taught at each level in each language, to compare assessment practices, and to reach an agreement on common curriculum and assessments so that students would have an equitable and comparable experience across the district. We divided into small groups by language (French and Spanish) and dove into our work.

Supporting our Scholarship and Grant Fund!

Nicole Hanlon, OFLA Scholarship Chair
French Teacher, Buckeye Valley High School

Did you know that every year at the Conference, we host a raffle to help fund our scholarships and grants? Participation in the raffle helps us provide scholarships to beginning and pre-service teachers to attend the conference and to fund our teacher grants for individual projects. Raffle tickets are available: 1 for $1, 6 for $5, or your (or a friend’s!) arm span for $20. We will draw raffle winners at the keynote on Saturday!