Mark your calendars for free virtual learning with FLAVA throughout the 2025-26 school year! Join your fellow educators for learning that meets your needs. Each FLAVA Teacher Education Workshop delivers one hour of credit toward license recertification in an interactive, welcoming environment. Nationally recognized presenters engage and inform on a variety of topics and offer ideas and resources that you can use right away in your classroom. Register individually for each session using the links below.
Workshops – School Year 2026-2027
Demystifying Grammar in Context: Putting the Students in the Driver’s Seat – Mike Travers
Tuesday, September 15, 2026 5:00PM REGISTER
As teachers grow to be more confident in their ability to teach for proficiency, we are always left with the question of how to best approach teaching grammar. In this workshop, we will take a deep dive into the world of teaching grammar for proficiency and specifically explore ways to present grammar to our students. The ultimate goal is for them to do the heavy lifting to discover, and eventually acquire, the targeted structures. We will explore methods such as PACE, Concept Attainment, and Input Enhancement to help students take ownership of their learning of new grammar.
Bio:
Mike Travers is a teacher at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts and has taught Spanish and French at the novice and intermediate levels. He is an active presenter at MAFLA, NECTFL, and ACTFL, and currently serves on the MAFLA Board of Directors. He is also the co-author of the book Teaching For Proficiency: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency. Mike has a true passion for working with districts and teachers as they make the shift to a student-centered, proficiency-based approach in their world language programs.
Social Media:
@Traversteach.bsky.social
Leverage Customized AI Tools to Strengthen World Language Programs – Lea Graner Kennedy
Thursday, October 22, 2026 5:00 PM REGISTER
Discover how customized AI tools can serve as thought partners to support world language curriculum, assessment, and instruction. In this interactive session, participants will explore practical ways to use customized AI tools to design proficiency-focused learning experiences. Learn how these AI tools can help integrate language functions across proficiency levels and strengthen intercultural communicative competence. Examine strategies for incorporating authentic cultural products and practices to better understand perspectives from a variety of cultures and communities through communicative tasks across the interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational modes. Attendees will leave with ready-to-use ideas to enhance student engagement and proficiency growth.
Bio:
Lea Graner Kennedy is a proven instructional leader, a national instructional coach, and both an independent education and an ACTFL consultant. Through her work, she has led curriculum development, professional learning for K-16 educators, and countless virtual learning experiences for language educators. Her work spans a variety of contexts helping district, university, and program leaders and teachers guide their students to higher levels of proficiency and intercultural communicative competence.
Social Media:
@leagk.bsky.social
How Facilitated Interdependence and Personalization Outshine Standardized Curricula – Ryan Allen
Thursday, December 10, 2026 5:00PM REGISTER
This presentation introduces FLAVA members to Facilitated Interdependent Language Learning (FILL), an innovative approach that replaces one-size-fits-all curriculum pathways with learner agency, proficiency-based goals, personalization, and strategic facilitation. Participants will explore how FILL empowers students to choose languages, set meaningful goals, use technology responsibly, and collaborate in an interdependent learning environment. The session will also provide practical tools, templates, and implementation ideas that educators can adapt either for a designated FILL course or within an existing language classroom.
Bio:
Ryan Allen is a high school World Languages educator, innovator, and department chair at a small rural high school in southern Delaware, where he also resides in the community he serves. In 2024, he first implemented Facilitated Interdependent Language Learning (FILL) as a response to his school’s longstanding limitation of offering only Spanish, despite students’ strong interest in learning a wider range of languages. Through FILL, Ryan works to expand access, agency, and personalized proficiency-based learning opportunities for all students. When he is not at school—or thinking about school—he enjoys traveling, playing disc golf, and spending time with his wife and 4-year-old daughter.
Social Media:
Designing Career-Focused Language Pathways Through CTE Connections – Rachael Aldridge
Wednesday, January 13, 2027 5:00 PM REGISTER
What happens when world language instruction is intentionally connected to career exploration? This session highlights the first year of implementation of an innovative honors-level “Language for Career Applications” course designed to align language learning with district Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathways. Rather than creating industry experts, the course introduces students to six career-focused language units that demonstrate how multilingualism is a transferable, real-world skill across professions. Participants will explore the course framework, sample units, instructional design process, assessment ideas, and strategies for balancing authentic language use with accessible career content. Examples may include health sciences, business, law, education, hospitality, technology, and public service contexts. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for adapting the model to any language program and for increasing student engagement by helping learners see clear connections between language study, future careers, and global workforce readiness.
Bio:
Rachael Aldridge is a 30-year career educator who is passionate about recognizing the linguistic assets of our communities furthering language growth and development. She currently serves on the board for GWATFL and as the Secondary World Languages Educational Specialist for Fairfax County Public Schools. Throughout her career, she has studied and taught in the United States, Mexico, Spain, Colombia, China, and South Korea. She has attended and presented at local, regional, and national conferences, including GWATFL, FLAVA, and ACTFL. She is a mom, has a miniature daschund, and her newest hobby is filling her home with indoor tropical plants.
Social Media:
N/A
Messy Learning, Powerful Communities, and Meaningful Connections: Art, Play, and Risk-Taking in the WL Classroom – Beth Marshall
Wednesday, February 10, 2027 4:00 PM REGISTER
Explore how art, play, and intentional “messy learning” can transform the world language classroom into a space for meaningful communication and community building. Through hands-on experiences such as painting, sculpture, collage, and visual storytelling, participants will discover how creative risk-taking fosters confidence, spontaneity, and language fluency. Grounded in art history and language-rich activities at various proficiency levels, this session demonstrates the power of prioritizing process over perfection. Participants will leave with adaptable strategies that create joyful, memorable learning experiences while strengthening students’ language skills and cultural competence.
Bio:
In her 30th year of teaching, Beth is passionate about advancing innovative, student-centered world language education that empowers learners to become confident communicators and engaged global citizens. As president of the Foreign Language Association of Virginia, she strives to support meaningful, culturally immersive learning experiences that inspire curiosity, creativity, and authentic connection. She is especially passionate about pairing art and language learning to foster engagement, creativity, and meaningful expression in the world language classroom. In her free time, she loves creating in clay and paint, spending time with her family, and exploring the world through her travels.
Setting the Standards: Fostering Clarity and Growth – Rachel Veto
Tuesday, March 3, 2027 5:00 PM REGISTER
How do students know what success looks like in your classroom? How well are they able to describe their own growth and progress? Rachel Veto talks about the work that she and her department have done at an independent school to help students have better language to describe their skills and growth, as well as to take more ownership of their own learning.
Bio:
Rachel Veto teaches French and serves as the Modern Languages Department Head at Beaver Country Day School in Massachusetts. She is a true curriculum innovator who won Best of FLAG in 2017.
Social Media:
@rcveto on Threads
Engage Students and Build Community through reimagined “Weekend Talks” – Beth Pachas
Tuesday, April 20, 2027 5:00 PM REGISTER
Want to reimagine “Weekend Talk”? I have already done it for you! In this interactive session, we will write and talk about our past and future weekends while using a variety of custom templates to keep this activity fresh and engaging so that we continually build our classroom community.
Bio:
Beth is a dynamic and experienced presenter and educator with over 20 years in the classroom. Her conference presentation topics have included music in the classroom, interactive media to explore Perú with nearly 200 videos on her Youtube channel. Now, Beth is excited to present her expertise and her spin on ‘Weekend Talks’.
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethpachas/
www.youtube.com/c/pachasenperu
https://www.instagram.com/pachasenperu
Choosing The Right Tool: Data Leakage – Meredith White
Wednesday, May 12, 2027, 5:00 PM REGISTER
“OK, seriously, who cares?” If you find yourself asking that when choosing a new tech tool you see, or if you’ve ever signed up for something and then found out it was blocked at school, this is the session for you! In the wake of the 2026 Canvas student data leak, it’s more important than ever to realize what access and what information we’re giving to companies, as well as who it affects.
Bio:
Focused on novices, Meredith’s work as a Spanish teacher has focused on proficiency-based teaching, comprehensible input, technology, and helping make learning Spanish fun. In 2023, she added a full-time Instructional Technology support role in order to help more teachers in all content areas with their teaching and technology use (including paring down). In addition to this role and teaching Spanish, she also teaches Technology in World Language Education and Spanish at Kennesaw State University and regularly presents at local, state, regional, and national conferences. She was the 2019 Peachtree Ridge High School Teacher of the Year, the 202 Georgia World Language Teacher of the Year, the 2024 SCOLT Founder’s Award Recipient, and serves on the FLAG, SCOLT, and SEALLT Boards.
Social Media:
@techMEWithyou