You are here: American University School of Education Institute for Innovation in Education Heritage Language Conference Schedule

Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference

Back to top

2025 Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference Better Together

This conference is for program directors and administrators of community-based heritage language schools; members of the language communities involved in these schools; and directors and leaders in public, private, and charter schools who are interested in working with community-based heritage language schools.

2025 In-person and Virtual Options

Friday, October 3, 2025 - 1:00 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. EDT
Saturday, October 4, 2025 - 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT

This conference aims to:

  1. Build partnerships among and across community-based heritage language schools and determine arenas for future action
  2. Help schools create, strengthen, and build their school structures and activities
  3. Make clear the importance of community-based heritage language schools in the language learning landscape and in the lives of language communities in the United States
  4. Develop information about community-based heritage language schools through a national survey of schools
  5. Share and make available resources that will be helpful to schools

Conference Schedule

Important Links

 

Friday, October 3

(Eastern Time)
12:00 to 1:00 p.m. - Participant Check-in
1:00 to 1:30 p.m. – Conference Opening

Saturday, October 4

(Eastern Time)
9:45 to 10:00 a.m. - Participant Check-in

Conference Plenary Sessions:

Bridging Resources and Relationships: Strengthening Community-Based Schools through University-Community Partnerships

  • Dr. Jin Sook Lee, Professor of Education, Associate Dean of Graduate Division, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education

Every Learner, Every Language: Personalizing Progress with a FILL approach in Community-Based Schools

  • Tom Welch, NCSSFL's Neural Network

Workshops for Teachers and Administrators 

  • Working With Parents to Build Students’ Language and Cultural Development 
  • Building and Using Languages Through Oral History Projects, Drama, and Film 
  • Fostering and Evaluating Critical Language Awareness Through Critical Tasks and Project-Based Learning 
  • Online Professional Development Modules
  • Personalizing Progress with a FILL approach in Community-Based Schools
  • Building a Liberatory Praxis in Community-Based Learning: Identifying, Designing, and Implementing Critical Tasks to Foster Critical Language Awareness 
  • Using AI Technology in Community-Based Heritage Language Schools

Registration is now open for the 2025 Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference. Register Here!

The following languages have been represented at the conference in previous years. The National Coalition of Community-Based Language Schools has language representatives for each of these languages who are closely engaged with practitioners working in community-based heritage language programs in their language community and are interested in making connections with other language groups. Language respresentatives serve as liaisons, creating connections between their language community and the work of the Coalition. Check out the Coalition website to learn more about the language representatives and their responsibilities.

Languages represented include:

  • Albanian
  • American Sign Language
  • Amharic (Ethiopia)
  • Arabic
  • Bulgarian
  • Chinese
  • Czech
  • Dari
  • Estonian
  • Farsi

  • Filipino

  • Finnish

  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hindi   
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Lithuanian
  • Lokanu
  • Marathi
  • Osage Nation
  • Pashto
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Quechua
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Serbian
  • Slovak
  • Spanish
  • Tagalog
  • Tamil
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukranian
  • Urdu
  • Uyghur
  • Vietnamese

The 2025 Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference is hosted as a collaboration between the American University Institute for Innovation in Education and the Coalition for Community-Based Heritage Language Schools.

If you are interested in sponsoring the conference, please contact Danielle Sodani: dgsodani@american.edu.

 

2024 Plenary Address

Community and HL Schools Transforming Education

1:01:47

Ken Cruickshank, Ph.D., University of Sydney, Australia

 

Registration

Registration is now open for this year's conference. We are having an early bird sale through August 31. Use promo code EARLY25 to recieve 25% off an in-person ticket. Register here.

2024 Conference Resources

Please find the 2024:

Please note if you do not see a video listed, the recording is not available. 

Conference Planning Team

Coalition for Community-Based Heritage Language Schools

Masako Douglas, Professor of Japanese, California State University, Long Beach; Curriculum Advisor, Oranage Coast Gakuen Japanese Language School

Ana Lucia Lico, Co-Founder and Board Member, Brazilian Association for Culture and Education (ABRACE)

Renate Ludanyi, Ph.D., President, German Language School Conference, United States

Tommy Lu, Department Chair of Information Technologies, Delaware Technical Community College; Advisor, Washington Metropolitan Association of Chinese Schools (WMACS)

Marta McCabe, President, Czech and Slovak School of North Carolina; Global Learning Consultant, Duke University

Joy Kreeft Peyton, Conference Chair, Senior Fellow, Center for Applied Linguistics

American University

Mavissa Beach, Program Coordinator, Institute of Innovation in Education, American University, School of Education

Mark Forsberg, Program Coordinator, Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference

Danielle Gervais Sodani, Director, Institute of Innovation in Education, American University, School of Education