Our favorite moments from the 12th Annual Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference: “Better Together”
For the last five years, FOHLC Europe has been collaborating with the U.S. Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools. Each October, the coalition holds its annual conference in Washington, D.C., now in a hybrid format, so participants from Europe can join online. Participants learn about the recent developments in heritage language education in the U.S., and (re)connect. This year, several of us from FOHLC Europe attended the 12th Annual Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference: Better Together (October 3 - 5, 2025).
As usual, the two days were packed with eye-opening presentations, discussions, workshops, panel discussions, and networking sessions. The conference is rich because the program not only includes talks from experts, but it also gives a podium to the language communities to showcase some of the things they are doing that are working.
Topics included teaching methods, certification, cultural literacy, heritage language learner identity and agency, parent and community engagement, and professional development of heritage language teachers, including resources. Two issues that sparked a lot of discussion were artificial intelligence and critical language awareness.
Some takeaways from our FOHLC Team
Jessika Rabello
I liked when Tom Welch said during his plenary that we should meet the learners where they are and try to help them improve without labeling them as being “behind.” That is what we try to do at the Brazilian programs: we offer the children a context where they can use the language while learning about a useful or interesting topic. We look at where they are with their language development, and help them expand it.
"I definitely have new inspiration moving forward with helping students."
Tereza Krymláková
This conference was incredibly interesting and many of the talks were very reachable! All of these insights and information can be useful for people involved in this work. It was actually hard for me to decide which workshops to attend because all of the topics were so relevant! I definitely have new inspiration moving forward with helping students who are developing their Czech language.
Gisi Cannizzaro
The annual U.S. conference for me is always a breath of fresh air. I spend so much time urging people to appreciate the work of heritage language programs – and at this conference it’s a given!
For me the highlight was Dr. Jin Sook Lee’s articulate plenary talk at the opening of the conference. She says that heritage language programs cannot work in isolation if they want to reach their potential. They need to collaborate with other programs and local institutions to be taken seriously. I loved to hear this confirmation that what we are doing with FOHLC Europe and HLE Network is so crucial.
Renata Emilsson Peskova
This was such a rich conference. Seeing the example of UCLA National Heritage Language Resource Center and the Online Professional Development Course that addresses the needs of community-based HL school leaves me wanting to set up such training for our heritage language teachers here in Iceland. Also, the comparison of foreign language, native language and heritage language pedagogy and drawing on different needs of HL students was inspiring, something I have thought of before but never saw it put this clearly.
Another thing that stood out to me was the Global Seal of Biliteracy certification. They offer a portable, verifiable, and “stackable” certification that can be really motivating and useful for students´ applications to higher education. In Iceland, we are now looking for ways to improve the system of upper secondary school credits for heritage language speakers, and I think that the Global Seal would be a possible solution. Linda Egnatz and colleagues gave a very strong message that certification of HL competencies in every form is very important for students.
Once again, the Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference reminded us how much strength there is in working together. We return inspired, energized, and full of new ideas to bring back to our communities in Europe.
View the program from 2025’s conference
https://www.american.edu/soe/iie/heritage-language-conference.cfm
View videos from past conferences:
https://heritagelanguageschools.org/coalition/conference