A Brilliant Beginning: Advanced Methods Kickoff Shines

The Fall 2025 launch of Advanced Teaching Methods: Integrating Language & Disciplinary Content (FRIT 8999 / GSD 8103 / LGTT 8999) brought a surge of creativity, collaboration, and pedagogical energy to the SpeakEasy in Jones 135. Under the guidance of Professor Kate Paesani, graduate students in French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese stepped into the role of teacher-scholars, exploring how multiliteracies pedagogy can transform the way we teach advanced language and disciplinary content.

From the very first meeting, the course emphasized what makes the multiliteracies approach so powerful: its focus on real texts, real learners, and real instructional decisions. Students dug deeply into theory, observed expert faculty, led discussions about teaching their disciplinary specialization, and gradually worked toward the culminating challenge of the semester: designing their own advanced undergraduate course from the ground up.

Courses as Diverse as the Students Designing Them

By the end of the term, the course had transformed into a showcase of fresh, imaginative curricular design. Students created courses that reflected both disciplinary expertise and authentic communicative needs:

• French Comics and Visual Storytelling
• French Poetic Texts and Literary Analysis
• Cinematic Representations of Portuguese Linguistic Diversity
• Spanish Linguistics through Authentic Textual Genres
• Vietnamese for Heritage Speakers to Support Multilingual Identities

Each project included a full syllabus, unit plan, assessment design, and a rationale rooted in multiliteracies principles. Students developed every aspect of their courses–objectives, texts, tasks, scaffolding, and assessments–demonstrating what it means to teach language and content in a truly integrated way.

Pitch Day: Selling the Vision

During the final class meeting, students delivered concise, compelling pitches to “imagined stakeholders”—chairs, hiring committees, program directors, or prospective students. These ~3 minute presentations were equal parts persuasive, polished, and joyful. They featured everything from enrollment strategies to community partnerships, multimodal projects, and digital resources. It was a moment that beautifully showcased the confidence and creativity the course aims to develop. 

A Language Center Collaboration in the Making

This fall’s iteration of Advanced Methods included a special participant: Language Center Director Amanda Dalola, who used the course to refine the design of the LC’s forthcoming open educational resource, Bánh Me: A heritage learner’s guide to Vietnamese and Multilingual Identity. Co-authored with LC Vietnamese Developer Ky Nguyen, the OER draws directly on multiliteracies pedagogy: engaging learners through multimodal texts, identity exploration, and community-centered activities. Dalola’s work in the course directly informed the development of VIET 1015 & VIET 1016: Vietnamese for Heritage Learners I & II, set to launch in Summer 2026. 

A Bright Future for Language Teaching and Learning

The success of this fall’s Advanced Methods kickoff offers a clear reminder: When graduate students are encouraged to think innovatively, work collaboratively, and ground their decisions in research-based pedagogy, extraordinary things happen. The courses imagined in Jones 135 will soon shape real classrooms, real learners, and the future of language education across disciplines.

Here’s to brilliant beginnings, and to many more semesters of bold ideas, multiliteracies-inspired curricula, and transformative teaching.