The Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL) is a multi-level, multi-language conference of national stature held each year in the spring, generally in New York City. In 2009, the conference will take place April 16-18 at the Marriott Marquis overlooking Times Square on Boardway. The theme is "Engaging Communities."
NECTFL puts out a call for proposals every year in January with a May 15 deadline. A Program Committee of its Board of Directors reads all proposals and selects the best for presentation at the following year's conference (in March or April). The purpose of the conference is to provide outstanding professional development for teachers of language and culture, so selection criteria reflect that priority.
Occasionally, NECTFL finds that it does not have a sufficient number of sessions to attract teachers of a given language or level of instruction. Although the conference is too small to provide sessions in all languages and levels during each of its ten time slots on Friday and Saturday, NECTFL tries to have good representation for the languages that are dominant in the northeastern U.S. and has been quite successful in convincing teachers of Latin to attend the conference and to present sessions. A session on Latin by Ashley Broseker-Tremper was chosen as "Best of NECTFL" last year and sent on to the 2007 ACTFL Conference in San Antonio!
Nonetheless, NECTFL needs to recruit several more presenters for 2009 to ensure a rich, full program of offerings for teachers of Latin at all levels of instruction.
To that end, NECTFL invites Latin teachers to consider submitting a proposal.
Sessions are 75 minutes in length and focus on one of the following categories:
* articulation
* assessment/testing
* communities/workplace
* connections/comparisons
* culture/literature
* curriculum
* diversity
* instructional strategies
* materials
* policy/issues
* professional development
* research
* technology
Sessions may be intended for any level of instruction from prekindergarten through adult/government language schools. They may be presented in English with Latin (and possibly other target languages) providing examples to illustrate. Conference attendees are seeking either a very lively presentation or a hands-on, interactive experience. Attendees do not sign up in advance for sessions, so it is difficult to predict exactly how many will come to any given session, but NECTFL avoids scheduling two sessions during the same time slot on any language with relatively few offerings, specifically to ensure that every attendee who teaches that language will probably go to the one available session. (Of course, some sessions do not focus on any particular language, and there will also have an exhibit hall with a large number of companies promoting materials and services that attendees love to visit.)
NECTFL is a small non-profit, so unfortunately presenters must cover their own expenses and must pay the preregistration fee of $150. NECTFL also charges a nominal fee for certain AV items and technology services to help us defray the very high hotel costs for those items. Presenters choose the equipment they need by checking boxes on the proposal form.
The online proposal form is at http://www.nectfl.net/proposal/proposalsolicited.cfm
NECTFL encourages Latin teachers to have a look and to contact the executive director if you have any questions. If you do decide to submit a proposal, please do so as soon as possible so it can be publicized, in order to encourage more attendance by teachers of Latin.
The point of contact for NECTFL's Northeast Conference is Rebecca R. Kline, Ph.D. Executive Director, Northeast Conference at Dickinson College, Carlisle PA 17013. The website address is: http://www.nectfl.org
