Rebecca Blouwolff has taught French at Wellesley Middle School in MA since 1998, but fell in love with teaching middle schoolers while serving as a Fulbright teaching scholar at a collège in Saint-Omer, France. Novice students inspire her to create engaging, age-appropriate lessons focused on global awareness. Together with her husband, she speaks non-native French at home to her own two children. She earned a B.A. magna cum laude in American Civilization and Judaic Studies at Brown University, and an M.Ed. in Teacher Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a National Board Certified Teacher, 2019 MaFLA and NECTFL Teacher of the Year, and 2020 ACTFL Language Teacher of Year.

Meiching Chang teaches Mandarin Chinese in Glastonbury Public Schools after starting her teaching career at elementary schools in Philadelphia and Chinese heritage schools in Pennsylvania. Meiching was named the 2020 Teacher of Year by the Connecticut Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. She has been involved with the Glastonbury STARTALK program for over a dozen years.

Katrina Griffin is a German teacher and department chair at North County High School in Glen Burnie, Maryland.  She was named the ACTFL Teacher of the Year in 2017 and received the ACTFL Leo Benardo Award for Innovation in K-12 Language Teaching in 2017. Katrina is also a founding member of the STEM magnet program at her high school, where she initiated an annual German STEM Immersion Day for local students and developed STEM resources for language teachers. She holds a Master’s degree in German from Middlebury College, a B.S. in Secondary Education from Bloomsburg University, and B.A. degrees in International Politics and German from Penn State University. Additionally, Katrina is an AP College Board Consultant, an AP German Community Moderator, and a workshop presenter and keynote speaker on topics such as proficiency-based language learning, student engagement strategies, and developing leadership skills.

Rosalyn Rhodes is a sixteen year Spanish teacher in Charlotte, NC. She is the World Languages Master Teacher for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and a frequent presenter at district, state, regional and national-level conferences. She is also the Program Director for PDS STARTALK, a Chinese teacher training and student language program, where she works with teachers on best practices in lesson planning and delivery. She has served on the board of FLANC (Foreign Language Association of NC) and was their 2015 K-12 Teacher of the Year.

Laura Terrill is a nationally recognized independent consultant who recently worked as the senior associate for professional development for the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland. She taught French at all levels for 21 years before becoming the coordinator of foreign language and English as a second language and then director of curriculum for a school district in Missouri. She has taught methods courses in St. Louis and Indianapolis and continues to present at the local, state, regional, and national levels. She has served on the board of directors for the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and ACTFL. She coauthored the second edition of The Keys to Planning for Learning: Effective Curriculum, Unit, and Lesson Design. Ms. Terrill holds a BA in French from the University of Missouri and an MA in secondary administration from Northeast Missouri State University.

Mike Travers is a Spanish teacher at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts and has taught learners both Spanish and French at the novice and intermediate levels. Mike is very active in professional learning communities through MaFLA, NECTFL, and ACTFL, where he presents, facilitates or participates in conferences and workshops to continue learning more about proficiency-based teaching. Mike is a member of the MaFLA Board of Directors and NECTFL’s advisory board and the winner of multiple awards for his presentations at MaFLA and NECTFL.