President's Message

A cordial welcome to all of you that are sharing your language passions with Nebraska students daily. My name is Terri

Wright and I have the great pleasure of having been elected your NEBLA president for 2026. There has been a bit of an

upheaval with our name over the last couple years & I thought you might be curious about the changes. In order to

become more inclusive of all languages (indigenous & international) & language teachers within our state, our original

association name of Nebraska International Languages Association (abbreviated to NILA) was shortened in 2024 to

Nebraska Languages Association (NLA). Two things encouraged us to make a bigger change in 2025: first, we are

becoming a 501(c)(3) LLC to take advantage of tax-exempt status and perpetuate financial stability (being able to

request grants, etc.) and to do so, we were called by the legal side to change our name for incorporation. Secondly, we

had found that NLA was not a unique enough acronym, and potential members were struggling to find us. NEBLA is

unique to us and will be much easier to use for promotion and visibility.

Behind the scenes, we have a wonderful advocate in our Executive Director, Danielle Fulcher. Danielle served as

president of our organization in 2024 and has been with us through the arduous task of applying for our 501c3 status. As

Executive Director, Danielle will provide stability for us as the executive board officers rotate through each year. She is a

stable force behind a wonderful board of people who truly love Language Teaching in the state of Nebraska. Danielle

has re-done our website and is working on our presence on social networks as well.

We are celebrating our board members taking on new adventures & higher leadership roles: Our President-elect,

Hannah Parades, was recently elected to the CSCTFL Board of Directors. Dr. Chrystal Liu has been elected to the NCSSFL

Board of Directors as the Technology Coordinator, and Alicia Shoemaker has been elected to the ACTFL Board of

Directors as the Central States Regional Representative. It is so encouraging to see Nebraska gaining input in these

regional & national organizations!

Finally, I am excited to announce that we will be holding our 2026 NEBLA conference in Omaha this year. Millard South

High School has graciously agreed to host us on Saturday, October 24, 2026. We are collaborating with the NDE and

presenting incredible speakers around the theme of “Biliteracy for All.” In order to be most effective in our

presentations, I asked myself what is the true and complete definition of biliteracy. I researched to expand my

knowledge & I hope this will be helpful to you as well. Biliteracy does not simply mean the ability to read in another

language, but rather an understanding of the grammar systems, cultural influences and use of vocabulary in written as

well as spoken language. One can be bilingual without being biliterate; but all biliterate individuals are bilingual. In

other words, everything we do in our classes to provide exposure to culture, to teach patterns in the target language,

and to help students absorb and compare similarities between native and target languages is moving toward biliteracy.

I once attended a workshop with the creator of Duo-Lingo and he was adamant that Duo-Lingo works much better when

the learner has a language teacher who can answer questions to explain the similarities & differences. We are powerful

for our students in their ability to become biliterate and in their ability to see the bigger global picture of how languages

and cultures interact!

We are developing a track of classes specifically for teachers that provide bilingual education, with the help of President-

Elect Hannah Paredes, in addition to focusing on gathering many fantastic speakers in a variety of categories including all

aspects of language learning—listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary acquisition & culture! We look forward

to a fantastic 2026 and to a phenomenal meeting of the minds at our Fall conference! Happy 2026! Terri

Board Meeting Information

We are currently in search of an Arabic Language Representative, a Dual-language Representative and an American Sign Language Representative for our board! If you are interested, please reach out to Danielle Fulcher (email below!)