MEET YOUR NEW ACTFL OFFICERS
2010 President-Elect
Barbara Rupert has been elected as ACTFL 2010 president-elect and will serve as ACTFL president in 2011. Rupert is principal at Brookdale Elementary School in The Franklin Pierce Schools, Tacoma, WA. She is a passionate language educator with 18 years of experience teaching first year through AP high school Spanish. She developed and implemented a Foreign Languages in the Elementary School (FLES) program in two elementary schools in her district which became the focus of her Master’s thesis. She has provided professional development for school districts in several states and presents frequently at state, regional, and national levels.
Rupert has served on and been president of the Washington Association for Language Teaching (WAFLT), and the Pacific Northwest Council for Languages (PNCFL). Since 2006, she has served as the PNCFL representative to ACTFL. She began her Spanish studies at Western Washington University as an undergraduate student, and that background helped her acquire proficiency more easily when she had the opportunity to study abroad. She subsequently earned her Master of Arts from Pacific Lutheran University and is pursuing her doctorate at Washington State University. The focus of her dissertation is “Designing and implementing a dual-immersion language program in a low socio-economic district.”
Rupert has served as chair of the ACTFL Convention and Professional Development committee since 2007. As program chair for both the 2008 and 2009 ACTFL Conventions and World Language Expos, she and her colleagues on the committee endeavored to keep the program balanced, relevant, and engaging, as well as to continually improve the clarity of the proposal submission process. In her career, she has received the Christa McAuliffe Award for Excellence in Education, the Teacher of the Year Award from the Washington state chapter of the AATSP, the WAFLT Public Awareness Award, and most recently the 2009 Inspirational Leadership Award from WAFLT.
“I have been privileged to serve on the ACTFL Board of Directors for the past four years, and I am awed by the commitment and professionalism that the ACTFL Board and staff collectively demonstrate to accomplish important work in support of language education. The National Standards and ACTFL Convention and World Languages Expo have been essential tools in shaping my work as a language educator. If I were to recommend a sixth ‘C’ for language education, it would be “collaboration.” Over my 25-year career, I have watched our jobs become more challenging and demanding while our roles have become increasingly vital to the future of our students, nation, and world. If we want all children in the United States to have access to other languages and cultures, we, as educators, must work together across languages, levels, and content areas in order to develop sustained language programs, based on best practices, beginning at an early age and extending through the highest levels of education. We each bring unique strengths to language education. As ACTFL president, I will aspire to build on our strengths to achieve the goal of languages for all.”
Members of the Board of Directors
Lynn Fulton-Archer is an elementary Spanish teacher at Richmond Drive Elementary School in Rock Hill, SC, and serves as the Elementary World Language Coordinator for the Rock Hill School District. Previously she taught high school Spanish at Hammond School and then through the Distance Learning Program at South Carolina Educational Television. She holds her undergraduate degree from Wofford College and her graduate degree from Middlebury College.
Fulton-Archer has held leadership positions including chair of the ACTFL Distance Learning Special Interest Group, president of the South Carolina Chapter of AATSP, president of the South Carolina Foreign Language Teachers’ Association and president of the Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT). Fulton-Archer is a strong advocate for world languages, leading the “Year of Languages” celebrations in South Carolina and serving as director of advocacy for SCOLT for four years. She has given numerous presentations and workshops on how teachers can be effective advocates, as well as on other topics, at state, regional, and national conferences. She served on the ACTFL Ad-Hoc Committee for the Discover Languages Podcast Contest and the ACTFL Awards Committee for the ACTFL/Cengage Learning Faculty Development Programs Award for Excellence in Foreign Language Instruction Using Technology with IALLT. She has received the SCOLT Outstanding Teaching Award K–12, several travel scholarships and awards, and has been an invited participant to three summer institutes organized by the language resource centers in Hawaii and Iowa.
In addition to serving regional and national interests, Ms. Fulton-Archer serves educators in South Carolina in many ways. She is a frequent presenter of staff development modules for the South Carolina Department of Education, served on the South Carolina Standards Revision Committee, and was Curricular Project Director for a FLAP-funded project which created an articulated elementary language program for students in grades 3–5, available to all South Carolina elementary schools.
Mary Lynn Redmond is professor and director of Foreign Language Education at Wake Forest University (NC) where she also serves as chair of the Department of Education. Redmond teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in K–12 methodology and research and supervises student interns. Prior to her work at the university level, Redmond taught French in grades K–12 in both public and private schools. She received her BA and EdD at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and her MAEd at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Redmond has held numerous state and national positions, including president of the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina (FLANC) and president of the National Network for Early Language Learning (NNELL). She held the position of executive secretary of NNELL from 2003–2006. A member of ACTFL since 1990, her professional service activities include chairing the Florence Steiner K–12 Award Committee (1999) and nominations committee (2003), participating on the strategic planning committee (2004), and serving as a member of the New Visions project and Teacher Development Group. She was also a member of the task force that developed the ACTFL/NCATE Teacher Standards. Redmond recently served as the external evaluator for the federal grant project on dual language/immersion for the North Carolina Public Schools which led to a K–5 curriculum and teaching licensure in immersion.
Redmond’s contributions to the profession have been dedicated to the promotion of high quality K–12 proficiency-oriented foreign language programs. She is a frequent presenter at state, regional, and national conferences and has coordinated several teacher development institutes at the state and national levels. Her research covers a wide range of topics, and she has published articles in The French Review, Hispania, Foreign Language Annals, Learning Languages, and The Language Educator. Redmond received the 2004 SCOLT Teaching Award and the 2005 ACTFL/NYSAFLT Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education.
Antonia Schleicher is co-director of the first African Languages Flagship Center at both Howard University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also the director of the National African Language Resource Center. Antonia Schleicher is on the Executive Board of Joint National Committee on Languages. She has authored five textbooks and four multimedia CD-ROMs for learning Yoruba and co-authored texts for Pulaar, Swahili, and Shona, as well as African Language Pedagogy: An Emerging Field. She has edited 20 other books and six journals and has authored over two dozen articles in peer reviewed journals.
Schleicher has degrees from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, in general linguistics and much of her current work deals with pedagogical issues in language acquisition. She teaches Yoruba language and culture and methods courses. She also serves as the executive director of both the National Council of Less-Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) and the African Language Teachers Association (ALTA).
In 2006, Schleicher was awarded the U.S. President’s Gold Level Volunteer Service Award for over 500-hours-a-year of devoted service to the cause of promoting less commonly taught languages. Schleicher has been an active member of ACTFL since 1988 when she attended her first OPI training workshop. She received her OPI certification in 1989 and has since participated in various ACTFL workshops and presented at the ACTFL Annual Convention. Since 2002, she has represented NCOLCTL at the annual ACTFL Delegate Assembly. She has also organized an ACTFL OPI workshop at Madison and served on the ACTFL president’s task force on postsecondary issues. In 2004, she served as a member of the ACTFL-MLJ Emma Marie Birkmaier Award for Doctoral Dissertation Research and subsequently chaired the committee in 2005. She is currently on the 2009 ACTFL Birkmaier Award Committee. She has been nominated to be a member of the Foreign Language Annals Editorial Board and she is also a member of the Standards Collaborative Board.
