ACTFL 2022 in Boston

Dear AATG Members,

As the academic year winds down, we have been busy at AATG hosting our first ever virtual Tagung, which we held on Friday, April 29th and Saturday, April 30th. We had a wonderful turnout; over 300 attendees tuned in to our six panels which included such topics as teaching, advocacy, diversity, equity and inclusion, study abroad, and cultural programming. We kicked things off on Friday evening, with a keynote from Magda Tarknawska Senel (UCLA) who gave a talk entitled “Transformative Pedagogy and Student Empowerment in the Language Classroom.” Dr. Senel provided us with plenty of food for thought, ranging from new pedagogical theory that takes a critical view towards the communicative approach, as well as practical suggestions for how we can address the climate emergency, social justice, racism and LGBTQIA+ issues as early as the beginners' German classroom. Based on the discussion afterward, it became clear that while a lot of this work is already being done at the post-secondary level, K-12 teachers are in need for practical suggestions and materials that can be used in their local contexts.

Looking forward, with this need in mind, AATG and the Herder Institute of the University of Leipzig have been initially approved for a 3year, large-scale grant to study diversity in the DaF curriculum of the United States and Europe. The first phase of the project will be a transatlantic expert-seminar in the summer of 2023. Applications will be open to DaF experts from the US at all levels of instruction with a focus on Diversity and Social (In)Justice in German Studies. The summer seminars of years Two and Three will target American teachers of German as a foreign language at schools and universities, especially multipliers with tasks in teacher training, mentoring, professional development or in the supervision of other teachers. Read more about this forthcoming opportunity for AATG members on the AATG website: https://www.aatg.org/page/divdaf

At the Tagung, we had representation from across the country, including members from the following states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

We had international speakers from Germany, Switzerland and Egypt.

If you missed any or all of the talks at the Tagung, we have made the videos of the panels available on our website in our GETMAPP database, which you can access here after you log in: https://aatg.box.com/s/sgd8a7yyi1d0sna79cqc hjaqsxjz5ktx.

I am thrilled with how well this Tagung went. It was heartwarming to see teachers sharing their insight, debating best practices, learning new approaches and sharing resources. This is the kind of community we hope to support at AATG and it would not be possible if it were not for the engagement of our members, including our Board Members who helped choose the papers and moderate the panels. Thank you for volunteering your time and labor. And thank you to Mike Shaughnessy and the AATG staff for their support. For those who attended the conference, we encourage you to follow-up on the conversations that started at the Tagung, either via email, on Zoom or perhaps even in person. For those of you who missed Dr. Senel’s talk, she graciously shared her bibliography with us. You can request the bibliography by emailing Marisa Minard at the national office (marisa@aatg.org). The AATG Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee has established a special section in the AATG newsletter, Aktuelles, called DEI Corner. In 2021, Chiann Tsui was elected the chair of the newly-formed DEI Committee and the committee began its work assessing the climate of the organization to identify areas where we can improve. Check out the DEI Corner of this issue to get to know the faces of the committee, and look out for their content in future issues. The DEI Corner will a place for the committee to share its activities, resources, and "all things related to DEI and AATG"!

On behalf of the AATG Board of Directors, have a wonderful summer hiatus!

Priscilla Layne

AATG President Professor of German University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill layne.aatg@unc.edu