| 2009 Fall Meeting in San Antonio |
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The Fall Meeting of the Central Texas AATF was held Saturday, September 26 at the El Tropicano Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio, in conjuction with the Symposium for French Teachers presented by the Cultural Services of the Consulate General of France in Houston. Just over 20 members from the Austin, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio areas attended.
The morning session began with the Symposium for French Teachers presented by Dominique Chastres, Attaché culturel français à Houston, and Marie Maurannes, Attachée culturelle adjointe. Mr. Chastres began with a slide show on France, featuring its cultural and economic importances as well as the natural beauty of the country. He referred us to photos available for viewing on diplomatie.gouv.fr.
Ms. Maurannes continued the symposium with an overview of resources available from the French Cultural Services. These were grouped into four categories: assistantships, grants & scholarships, promotion of French cinema, and teacher and student resources. Some of the links she recommended are frenchculture.org, facecouncil.org, and universcine.com. The final part of the symposium dealt with the promotion of French. Suggested links included theworldspeaksfrench.org, the Francofil newsletter, and espacefrancophone.org . The morning concluded with the presentation by Amy King on her Fullbright-Hays travel and study grant to Cameroon this past summer and the way she is integrating this experience into her French classes. Amy invites you to view her 2 albums of the trip on Picasaweb: Album 1 Album 2 A buffet mexicain luncheon was served, compliments of the El Tropicano Riverwalk Hotel and its proprietor, Mr. James Lifshutz, the Honorary Consul of France in San Antonio, who joined us towards the end of the meal. The business meeting following lunch was chaired by President Janet Lumley. Elections were held to succeed Secretary-Treasurer Heather Alonso, and the job was split between two members. Rosemary Clark was elected Secretary and Helen Guillory was elected as Treasurer, both by acclamation. Rosemary was also confirmed as the new Chapter Administrator of the National French Contest, an appointment that was greeted with enthusiastic cheers from the membership. Rita McKee, the departing Administrator, was presented a gift by the Chapter as a token of appreciation for her long and devoted service, which saw a dramatic increase in contest participation. Due to the efforts of Janet Lumley, our chapter has been approved by the Texas Education Agency as a provider of CPE (Continuing Professional Education) credits, and attendees at the Fall Meeting received certificates for 6 hours CPE credit. A great legacy for Janet to leave us, as her 2nd term as president expires next spring! Two presentations concluded the day's activities. Anne Cirella-Urrutia gave a talk on Francophone children's literature, with a focus on the Congolese author, Dominique Mwankumi, and Helen Guillory made a presentation on the ANVILL Project, A National Virtual Language Laboratory, part of which she manages on our chapter web site, freeware.centraltexasfrenchteachers.org. The project home site is anvill.uoregon.edu/anvill2 |