As
a passionate and enthusiastic educator of Chinese language and culture
with over 20 years of teaching experience in diverse educational
settings, including middle schools, high schools, and
colleges.
She enjoys teaching her adorable Mandarin Chinese students at Cupertino
High School in California. She is also a contributing member
of
Stanford World Language Project’s Leadership Team, where she
collaborates with her peers to continuously strengthen their practice
in the classroom.
Ying’s
commitment to world language education goes beyond implementing a
standards-based curriculum. She believes EVERY student can learn
multiple languages and cultures, including their heritage and
additional languages. Her enthusiasm for the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals (UN SDGs) fosters her belief that the next generation
holds the key to solving many of the world's pressing
challenges.
She consistently integrates the UNSDG principles into her classroom
teaching and aims to instill in her students not just knowledge, but
also a sense of agency, responsibility, and a drive to contribute to a
more sustainable and equitable world.
Ying
served on the ACTFL board from 2021-2023. She has also been serving on
the
board of the Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary
Schools (CLASS) since 2015 and was elected President in 2019 and 2022.
In 2018, Ying received the highest honor of National Language Teacher
of the Year from ACTFL, in 2017 she was awarded Teacher of the Year
from SWCOLT (Southwest Conference on Language Teaching), and in 2017
she was recognized as Teacher of the Year from CLTA (California
Language Teachers’ Association).
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Candidate
for President-elect Milton Alan Turner
Milton
Alan Turner has taught French and Spanish at Saint Ignatius High School
since 1987 and also taught courses at Clark College (Atlanta, GA) and
at Cleveland State University. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree
in French and Linguistics from Georgetown University and two master’s
degrees from Cleveland State University in Educational Technology and
in Global Interactions.
Alan is active in several professional
organizations including the Ohio Foreign Language Association (OFLA),
the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF), the American
Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP), the American
Association of Teachers of Arabic (AATA), La Maison Française de
Cleveland, and the NAACP as a Silver Life member. He has participated
in two Fulbright-Hays Summer Seminars Abroad in Morocco &
Tunisia
and Thailand & Vietnam and in three National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminars and Institutes studying world
literature, Arabic language & culture, and US foreign
policy.
Alan has served as a Reader, Table Leader, and Question Leader at the
AP French Reading as well as a member of the SAT French Development
Committee, the AATF Standards Task Force, the Ohio Seal of Biliteracy
Expert Advisory Group, co-chair of the Ohio World Languages Standards
Revision Advisory Committee, and president of the Ohio Foreign Language
Association. He is a National Board Certified Teacher and he has served
as a National Board Portfolio Assessor and Trainer.
Alan
participated in ACTFL’s Leadership Initiative for Language Learners
(LILL) Cohort 2, served as chair of the 2023 ACTFL Florence Stainer
Award Committee, and currently serves on the ACTFL Committee on
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, the AATF Commission on
Diversity,
Equity & Inclusion, and is a member of La Maison Française de
Cleveland’s Board of Directors. He was also selected as one of ACTFL’s
initial group of Facilitators in Training and is an AP French Workshop
Consultant. Alan has written curriculum guides for the Cleveland
International Film Festival’s French FilmSlam series and is co-writing
the French curriculum for the Arrupe Virtual Learning Institute’s
FLUENCY program. He was awarded a 2000 MBNA Excellence in
Education Grant, named a 2011 Microsoft US Innovative Educator, the
2014 Ohio World Language Teacher of the Year, was listed in the 2017 Who’s Who in Black Cleveland,
and won the Saint Ignatius High School Trailblazer Award in
2020. Since 2021, Alan has hosted the podcast Milton Alan Turner: Worldviews.
Higher Ed – at-large
Candidate
for Higher Ed – at-large Dali Tan
Dr.
Dali Tan is Professor of Chinese and World Language Discipline Group
Chair at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) in Alexandria,
Virginia. She has been a Chinese teacher in the United States for three
decades. Dr. Tan has extensive experience teaching Chinese to
students from 5th grade to college, as well as adult learners and
heritage Chinese school students. She has served as a member of the
Editorial Review Board for the STARTALK project, and on the Board of
Directors for the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign
Languages (NECTFL). Dr. Tan was President of the Chinese Language
Association of Secondary-elementary Schools (CLASS) for two terms.
Currently, she is Chair of the ACTFL Community College Special Interest
Group (SIG).
Dr.
Tan’s project experience includes serving as Director for the NOVA
STARTALK eTower Infrastructure Grant. This project produced several
Open Educational Resource (OER) modules based on a famous Chinese
painting called “Along the River during the Qingming Festival” -- etower.nvcc.edu.
She was also the co-director for a five-year research project entitled
“Language Socialization in Chinese Study Abroad Homestay,” based at the
Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research at
Pennsylvania State University (CALPER). Dr. Tan also served
on
the College Board SAT II Chinese Committee and the AP Chinese
Development Committee.
Dr.
Tan is a frequent presenter at state, regional, national and
international conferences. She has conducted many AP Chinese
workshops and AP Chinese Summer Institutes, both in the United States
and internationally in China and Thailand, since 2006. Dr.
Tan’s
research and pedagogical articles have been published in the United
States, Canada, Great Britain and China. Her recent publications
include: “The Rewards and Challenges of Telecollaboration and Virtual
Exchange: What Worked and What Did Not During a Decade of
Implementation”, The Language
Educator
(2023); “Improving the Representation of Cultural Diversity and
Inclusiveness in Chinese Textbooks through Critical Discourse
Analysis”, International
Journal of Chinese Language Teaching, (2022); “STARTALK eTower: An
Effective OER to Promote Chinese Language Proficiency and Learner
Autonomy”, Journal of
Technology and Chinese Language Teaching (2022).
Dr.
Tan was the 2003 recipient of the Teacher Recognition Award through the
Presidential Scholars Program by the U.S. Department of
Education. She was named the 2021 post-secondary Teacher of
the
Year by the Foreign Language Association of Virginia (FLAVA) and the
2022 Virginia World Language Teacher of the Year by the Southern
Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT).
**************************
Candidate
for Higher Ed – at-large Carmela Scala
Dr.
Carmela Bernadetta Scala holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, which
she earned from the City University of New York. Her primary area of
scholarly focus today centers on Second Language Acquisition and the
promotion of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within language and
culture education. She presently serves as the Director of the Italian
Language Program at Rutgers University and holds the role of Italian
Symmer Study Abroad Program Director. Dr. Scala is further
distinguished as the founder and chief editor of the innovative
publication "Language Teaching and Technology (LTT)."
Demonstrating
her commitment to advancing language education, Dr. Scala has recently
secured two grants from the Ministero Degli Esteri, dedicated to the
development of online professional development courses tailored for
Italian teachers in both the Tristate region and Italy. The first
course, titled "Social Justice, Equality, and Equity in the Language
Classroom," successfully ran last year, with the upcoming offering this
fall focusing on the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within
language and culture instruction, titled "From Foe to Ally: how to
integrate AI in our Language and Culture Classrooms."
In
addition to these accomplishments, Dr. Scala has been recognized with
an entrepreneurial grant for her work in establishing a fully online
Professional Development workshop for Italian teachers. She has also
secured numerous smaller grants to pioneer innovative online language
courses. Her dedication to education was further underscored when she
received the prestigious Ernest E. McMahon Class of 1930 Award from
Rutgers University for the academic year 2019-2020.
Dr.
Scala's contributions extend to the realm of academic publishing, where
she has authored a book titled "From Design to Teaching: Granting Our
Students an Engaging Learning Experience Online" (Cambridge Scholar
Publishing, 2021). She has also penned an insightful article titled
"How to Foster Equality in the Language Classroom," published in
"Rhetoric and Sociolinguistics in Times of Global Crisis" (IGI Global,
2021), and "Replacing the 'melting pot' with a 'colorful mixed salad'
in the Language Classroom," featured in "Global and Transformative
Approaches Toward Linguistic Diversity" (IGI, 2022). Furthermore, she
has edited a volume titled "How To Actively Engage Our Students In The
Language Classes" (Vernon Press, 2022). Presently, Dr. Scala is
actively engaged in the development of a new manuscript focused on the
theme of Social Justice in the Language Classroom.
