ACTR Holds 2009 Professional Development Seminar for Teachers of Russian

During Columbus Day weekend in October, ACTR conducted a Professional Development Seminar for teachers of Russian. Nineteen teachers, representing different regions of the country and a variety of educational settings, joined facilitators Betsy Sandstrom and Natasha Ushakova, and American Councils staff, for the four-day event.

The attending teachers were given a first look at exciting new resource-sharing tools that will soon become widely available on Russnet . Over the past several months, the multimedia team has been developing a comprehensive media management system that will be used extensively in Russnet, and made available to American Councils’ programs and other websites. The new system will serve as part of a broader resource-sharing model on Russnet that will allow teachers to share media, lessons, and activities with one another.

Using the new media management system, participants developed lesson plans centered on a media clip of their own choosing. In creating their lesson plans, participants focused particular attention on several key elements: they identified appropriate performance assessments for their lessons, learned how the same media clip can be used to spiral learning from higher to lower-level Russian, and created reading, listening, writing, and speaking activities appropriate for all levels. Throughout the process, they gained experience in using the new Russnet resource-sharing tools to place their work in a common area for other teachers to use. The ACTFL Standards and Guidelines, as well as the National Standards for Russian, aided workshop participants as they produced lessons grounded in the Standards, and suitable to their local conditions.

As a follow on, the nineteen workshop participants have been given the opportunity to participate in the initial piloting phase of resource sharing. As members of the pilot cohort, these teachers now have access to a new version of the Russnet Lesson Planner, which allows them to upload and tag multimedia files (images, audio, video, and text) into a searchable database. Any lessons that they create will be available to other teachers in the resource sharing pool.

Participants included:
[First row left to right] Lucy LaVallee (Buckingham Browne and Nichols, Cambridge, MA), Jillian Lehman (Parkdale High School & Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Riverdale and Greenbelt, MD), Vera Skortseskul (St. John of San Francisco Orthodox Academy, San Francisco, CA), Vlada Jackson (Vineland High School, Vineland, NJ), Anna Wilson (Russian School Olympus, Potomac, MD), Larissa Valouiski (Russian School Olympus, Potomac, MD), Natalia Ermakova (Saint Cyril and Methodius High School, San Francisco, CA).

[Second row] Irina Yurchenko (Salem High School, Salem, NJ), Natallia Shamshyna de Adler (Forest Part Senior High School, Woodbridge, VA), Margarita Dale (Saint Cyril and Methodius High School, San Francisco, CA), Anna Borodina (Thornton High School, Thornton, CO), Tania Gordeev (Marlboro High School, Marlboro, NJ), Nataliya Ushakova (Facilitator) (Staten Island Technical High School, New York, NY), Masha Lekic (American Councils, Washington, DC), Ken Petersen (American Councils, Washington, DC).

[Third row] Olga Nazarenko (Russian School Olympus, Potomac, MD), Dan Davidson (American Councils, Washington, DC), Julie Steimel (Broadneck High School, Annapolis, MD), Elizaveta Temidis (Parochial Russian Orthodox Holy Virgin Protection Church School, Nyack, NY), Natalia Billings (West Babylon Junior High School, West Babylon, NY), Michelle Quackenbush (Walt Whitman High School, Bethesda, MD), Veronika Maslyukova (ABC Language School, New York, NY), Betsy Sandstrom (Facilitator) (Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA), Camelot Marshall (American Councils, Washington, DC), Tatiana Blumenthal (Roland Park Country School, Baltimore, MD), and Evan Villemez (American Councils, Washington, DC).