The US Conference Tour

The first conference I attended was the Global Scholars symposium, a small conference for some practitioners and decision-makers who work with this programme around the world. There were people from most of the many cities where the programmes is implemented: from Warsaw to Astana, from Bogotá to Madrid, from London to Barcelona and from Boston, Fort Lauderdale and many other US Cities to Buenos Aires.

Venue of the conference

The event was spotlessly organised and it included guest speakers, panels and there was also a carefully planned cultural component than included visits to the Whitney Museum of American Art and Tenement Museums.




New York City was under the secondary effects of the Polar Vortex hitting most of the country and everyone was very concerned we would be suffering from the cold but, since the coldest days were those when we didn't have to be outside and there were buses that took us from A to B, we didn't really suffer the cold much. Plus, I always think that New York in January without cold if somehow wrong. It does get a little bothersome if there is too much snow, or if it gets so cold that you can't walk around, but neither of these things happened.

A little snow by Central Park

I managed to get a few things into the NY visit as well as the conference.
I spent a couple of hours at the Metropolitan Museum, walking around in complete awe of the number of everyday objects, paintings, pieces of furniture, statues, items of jewelry, even boats and walls that can be seen there from every era and country. I took a thirty minute tour, which is not a crazy attempt to see everything you can possibly see in thirty minutes, but rather a thematic walk to view a small number of items, four in our case, that share some trait that the curator considers interesting.


I had to visit one of my favourite shops of kitchen supplies: Williams-Sonoma.



Near my hotel, there was a shop with some beautiful Lladró.

One of the days I was there I followed a friends recommendation and I visited Sable's, the most fabulous smoked fish shop ever!



As I returned from NYC, I had a couple of days to catch up with things in Davis and I had to go off to Charlotte, NC

to attend the Seventh International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education - "Tranforming Communities through Multilingualism," organised by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the University of North Carolina Charlotte, East Carolina University, and CARLA (The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota). This was a different affair, with nearly 1000 attendees who took over the Westin hotel. I arrived early on the day of the Pre-conference workshops and was able to sneak into the one lead by Fred Genesee and Rosa Molina of ATDLE (Association of Two-Way & Dual Education) on dual language education at the preschool level. It was very interesting to learn about ATDLE and always a pleasure to listen to Fred. From there I went to another pre-conference workshop on the ins and outs of policy making in dual languae education, led by the people involved in this in North Carolina. Very informative and, with many points in common to experiences I have had in the past, but also, many that were new.
And from there the conference rolled on. The following day there were plenaries, symposia, and workshops. It was impossible to attempt to attend even a small portion of what was going on as there were so many things at the same time. But I had to make sure I saw at least a wide range of things: I was in the closing plenary with one other person and I decided early on that my best bet for the content would be to attempt to make some kind of summary of the things that were said during the conference. And that I did. And it seemed to go quite well, so that was a relief.




The stands and book exhibit were, as I anticipated, very low key. You could walk around (or not) and talk to the people displaying their materials. There was no aggressive marketing of any kind, no big flashy displays, no raffles or anything like that.

I was particularly interested in the range of materials for teaching Mandarin that are becoming available and joining the already large supply of materials to teach (in) Spanish.

I took part in a panel about Bridging the gap between K-12 and Higher Education with colleagues from Boston, Utah and Oregon.

And then, I joined Bill Rivers, a colleague who works in Washington on language policy for the closing plenary.

Lunches were also very nice and a good opportunity to meet friends (old and new!)