Report from the Field and Call for Proposals

From Tina Hargaden:
Hi Ben,
I am hoping that you can help me network on behalf of COFLT (the Coalition in Oregon for Foreign Language Teaching).
I just finished helping with the COFLT conference and we have opened our call for proposals for our 2016 fall conference.  I was appointed vice-president of COFLT and that means that in 2017-18, I will be serving as the president.  My mission as president is to get a more vibrant TPRS/CI community growing here in the Northwest.  I know there are small groups doing great things, but I want to bring them together to share ideas and inspiration.  My goal is to organize a CI Strand at the 2016 fall conference, so that a participant can go from one CI session to another and have a full two days of CI training and sharing.  This is a lofty goal, and I need presenters to make it a reality!
Presenting at our conferences is low-stress.  You do not need to bring the research unless you want to.  You can just focus on the HOW, the practices that make language acquisition work.  We can have sessions on beginning skills as well as for more experienced folks.  I would love to have a coaching room (like the war rooms I have heard about) too.
Could you please pass this on to the PLC? There are such great brains there, and such awesome ideas, that I am hoping that someone would want to visit Oregon in October of 2016.  The conference is October 14-15 at the Sheraton hotel in Portland.  I will take anyone from this group out for as much happy hour as they can stand, if they come out here and share their knowledge.
Thanks Ben and I hope you’re doing great!  Your classroom looks awesome in the photos.  It looks very calm and focused.  I just watched a video Diana Noonan made of your kids in Denver and I was super-touched by their comments.
[ed. note: here is that link: http://vimeo.com/48665148
I am doing well, still really enjoying my new job, the eighth graders are dutifully working through the books and still doing FVR daily, and the district just agreed to let me organize a CI/TPRS job alike monthly meeting to offer an alternative to the the language-specific meetings that have been offered in the past.  I am psyched about that and hope that the scattered folks using CI and TPRS can come together to support each other in the district.
Tina