FLAVA Advocacy Report
Thomas Sones, February, 2011
Everything you need to know about advocacy including ideas and resources can be found at
http://www.discoverlanguages.org and http://www.languagepolicy.org. We want to collect information
about and photos of your Discover Languages, Foreign Language Week, or other advocacy type
activities for some upcoming events and the bullet or web page. For more information or to submit
your events, please email them to me at advocacy@flavaweb.org.
Discover Languages Month and National Foreign Language Week: February was Discover Languages
Month and March 7-13 in National Foreign Language Week. In support of these two events, on January
14 2011, VDOE Superintendent issued a Superintendents' Memo (#009-11) with info about each. It can
be found on the VDOE web site.
Social Networking and Advocacy: There are many online opportunities to spread the word about
language learning and the Discover Languages campaign. You can "like" or "friend" FLAVA, Discover
Languages, ACTFL, and other organizations on FaceBook. Add the Discover Language button to your
profiles pics on FaceBook and Twitter.
JNCL-NCLIS has formed a committee and is in the middle self assessment to plan for its future.
It will conduct a survey of member organizations to gauge member's opinions and interests pertaining
to the organization's relevance, performance, organizational structure and fiscal stability. In
particular, it is trying to plan for the retirement of the current Director. As FLAVA's
representative, I intend to attend the Delegate assembly in May and will be visiting congressional
offices in D.C.
Congress and Educational Funding:
You can track Virginia General Assembly Educational actions at http://www.doe.virginia.gov/boe/legislation.
Nationally, there's been little recent movement on the ESEA Renewal Act or the Holt Excellence and
Innovation in Language Learning Act (H.R. 6036). However, On In February, House Republicans and
President Obama have introduced a new spending bills or budgets that could have major impacts on
federal educational spending. Please contact the White House and your Congressmen to voice your
opinion on spending matters.
The International Research and Studies (IRS) program fiscal year 2011 competition that been announced
in the Federal Register at the following link:
http://origin.www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-01-13/html/2011-681.htm. Please note that the US
Department of Education is using http://Grants.gov for this competition and that all attachments must
be in .PDF format. Other types of files will not be accepted. The Opportunity Number for Research,
Surveys and Studies is ED-GRANTS-011311-001. The Opportunity Number for Instructional Materials is
ED-GRANTS-011311-002.
Additional Resources:
Get ACTFL SmartBriefs: weekly email of language education news. Sign up at http://www.ACTFL.org.
ACTFL has a new Language Learner Registry for all language learners. Members could earn cash for
participating.
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