Minnesota New Visions: Languages for Life is a group of language teachers who came together initially in July 2002 to identify critical issues within the profession and begin working on plans to address those issues. The group is an outgrowth of the national New Visions in Action process begun in 1998 by the National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at Iowa State University and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).

At the initial meeting in July 2002, teachers from all levels of education and languages worked together to identify a wide range of critical issues in the profession. During the process of prioritizing the group decided that the focus of the current New Visions project would be to:

• Develop a World Language Promotional Toolkit to support the promotion of world languages within schools and districts and
• Create general public relations materials to educate parents, students, decision makers and the larger community regarding the importance of language study.

The Minnesota New Visions group invites other language teachers to contribute to the currently identified priorities and to consider adding their own visions for the improvement of the language teaching profession. Members of the group shared information about the New Visions 2003-2004 Legislative Initiative to add world languages as a K-12 core subject in Minnesota at the annual conference of the Minnesota Council on the Teaching of Languages and Cultures.

Minnesota New Visions 2003 met June 19-20. The participants decided that the most urgent issue within the Minnesota world language teaching profession this year was the omission of world languages as a core subject in the state's new education standards. This group drafted a resolution that world language learning be a K-12 core subject in Minnesota. This resolution, an information packet supporting this resolution and a form for a petition to gather signatures of people supporting it are included in this site. Ways you can help us advocate for this initiative will be added in the near future.

For more information, please contact Anita Ratwik at Anita.Ratwik-1@tc.umn.edu.

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