In February 2025 Miss Porter’s School hosted a one-day professional development event for language teachers. The event, “Transforming Language Learning: Strategies for Lasting Impact,” focused on the concept of comprehensible input and strategies for teachers to implement it into their educational practice. This conference brought together 40 teachers from independent and public schools, as well as education consulting professionals in the language learning field.
Keynote Speaker: Jennifer Degenhardt, B.A., M.Ed.
Jennifer Degenhardt taught middle and high school Spanish for 24 years and is the author of over 100 comprehensible novels written for students learning languages. Jen gave a refreshingly honest and humorous keynote about her experiences as both a language teacher and writer of novellas. She urged us to trust our instincts as teachers and have the flexibility to teach the students we have in our classrooms, meeting them where they are.
Teacher-led Workshops
The conference featured several incredible presenters with a wide variety of expertise in the field, who all share a background in teaching and instruction. It was important for us to have presenters who had experience as language teachers to demonstrate what they have done and are doing in their classes to make language learning more comprehensible.
There were 6 morning sessions and 3 afternoon sessions, where participants engaged in a wide range of activities, from watching demonstrations of classroom practices to brainstorming with peers to reflecting on their own classroom experiences.
The most popular workshop was Olivia Barbieri’s workshop on incorporating authentic texts in the world language classroom. Her room was packed with people as she demonstrated how to use authentic language throughout novice, intermediate, and advanced levels of language study.
Several teachers mentioned that Proficiency through Play, by Miss Porter’s Spanish and French teacher Sarah Archer, as a highlight of the conference!
Unconference and Roundtable discussions
The unconference sessions were open discussions on topics chosen the day of the conference. Participants could move from table to table, depending on what they wanted to discuss. These discussions were facilitated but not formally presented, honoring participants as the experts sharing their experiences.
There ended up being three table topics: one led by conversations around using novellas, the other an open-ended discussion about language teaching, and the other facilitated by Porter’s alumna Cece Menedez ’12 about using AI in the language classroom, which was the most popular session!
For those interested in more unconference style sessions around language learning, Porter’s is hosting EdCamp CT COLT on May 10, 2025, free and open to all language teachers, from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 a.m.
Teacher takeaways all included applying ideas they learned from different sessions right away in their classrooms!
“I enjoyed all of the [sessions] I attended, and I think the most valuable for me was the backwards planning. It was very helpful to see specific examples of task-based communication.”
Interested in more transformational workshops, symposia, and conferences like this for your own professional development as an educator?
Be sure to check out all the different opportunities we have coming up by clicking here.