Spanish teacher Margot Riemer attended the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching for Spanish teachers in Dallas on March 27-30, which allowed educators from nine different states to share activity ideas for their language classes, listen to a keynote speaker and attend workshops. The conference served as a prelude to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, a larger scale conference for language teachers being held in Washington D.C. later this year.

Reimer and Head of World Languages at Oakwood School Sue Biales presented a breakout activity they created at Southwest COLT. Spanish students participated in the activity, which is similar to a scavenger hunt, in the beginning of the school year.

“We developed that activity and showed it first at a local conference in October in Anaheim,” Reimer said. “Then, we got good feedback on that, and we thought we would take it to another conference [and] the next one on our radar screen was this one, Southwest COLT.”

The conference incorporated teachers sharing different teaching methods, activities like Reimer and Biales’ and ideas for how to improve the classroom experience of students in their schools. Riemer said she attended two sessions on reading to increase her students’ understanding of reading assignments in class.

“These two sessions I attended about reading gave me a lot about how to judge if the readings I put in front of my students are appropriate for them and how to pick well or pick better than in the past,” Reimer said.