AATSP American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese
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Carta de la Presidente |
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Greetings from the AATSP Alabama Chapter President’s corner February 6, 2009 Dear Members, Greetings! ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. May the New Year bring happiness and prosperity for you and your family. Welcome to the 2009 Alabama Association of Foreign Language Teachers Conference. I am pleased to welcome Dr. Linda Maier as our guest speaker at the Desayuno Literario. Dr. Maier is an Associate Professor of Spanish and has been the Foreign Language Department Chair of the University of Alabama at Huntsville since 2005. Also, I also welcome Wendy Padilla-Madden, Juris Doctor from the firm Balch and Bingham, as our guest speaker. In addition to enjoying their presentations, I rest assure you will have a wonderful time this weekend as you meet with old and new friends. The sessions presented at this conference will provide you with new materials, methods, ideas, and opportunities to language teachers, and technology that will be; I am sure, of great benefit to you and your students. It is hard to believe that a year has passed since our last Annual Meeting in Montgomery. We had a busy year diligently working to ensure growth and prosperity of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Alabama Chapter. I would like to thank our immediate past president Lourdes Sanchez-Lopez for the service she provided for the Chapter, and my most sincere appreciation to Jessica Ramos-Harthun and Sherry Latham, 1st and 2nd Vice-President, respectively, and our Secretary/Treasurer, Donna Speaker for all the help they have provided as we prepared for our annual meeting. We continue to improve our AATSP-Alabama Chapter web page, www.aatsp-al.org Please continue to send your news, jobs vacancies, photos, etc. to our webmaster jmirellahodges@yahoo.com. AlaHispania will be placed on our web site twice a year, spring and fall. I am happy to announce that new chapters have been added to the list of the Sociedad Honoraria Hispánica this year. The National Spanish Exam dateline was January 31st. I hope many of you provided your students the opportunity to register for the exam. If not, there is still time to register with a $2.00 late fee penalty from February 15 – 28th. Just go to www.nationalspanishexam.org/registration. The Chapter Constitution and Bylaws have not been revised since 1999, so we took the time to revise them this year and amendments have been made. A copy of the constitution was sent to the list of members available and we will be voting on the changes during the AATSP Business Meeting. In conclusion, many of our members have retired since last year and our membership suffered a decline. I urge you to be an advocate and help us with recruitment. We continue to need your support, since without you; our chapter cannot be as strong as it has been. If you have not registered as an AATSP member, please take a minute to register on site at the AATSP table. Membership in the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese is for one calendar year only. I thank you for your dedication to the teaching of world languages. Best regards, Mirella Hodges President, AATSP, Alabama Chapter Ider High School Ider, Alabama 35769 256-632-2302 |