By Stephen MacKay
In Motion Staff Writer
Educators from throughout Florida found themselves in the ballroom of the Mori Hosseini Center of Daytona State College’s home campus Feb. 12 to take advantage of professional development opportunities with a focus on world languages,
The 4th annual Living the Language Conference featured presentations by local and statewide respected members of academia, who have a special interest in the glue that keeps us together: language.
In a rapidly globalizing world, the topic of language is increasingly important as people from far-flung regions that in the past would never have been able to communicate with each other. Now, they are as close as a mouse-click or touchpad press.
Dozens of attendees — as well as members of the academic community, who traveled from neighboring states as far away as South Carolina — took part in the language conference hosted by DSC’s School of World Languages and Speech.
Orchestrated once again by Senior Professor and department chair Professor Raymond Cornelius, the conference featured a broad array of presentations covering exotic and varied locations, ranging from Tanzania to Argentina and with topics varying from “Discover Panama: the Panama Canal” and “El Camino de Santiago: History and Modern Day Pilgrimage.”
John Hussey, who attended college and lived in Madrid for numerous years, was the presenter on “El Camino de Santiago.” The pilgrimage runs from the ancient road between Paris and Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela in Spain and covers thousands of miles. Year ’round, pilgrims still take on the challenging task of completing the trip on foot. For their effort they have traditionally received a free passage through Biblical Purgatory from the Catholic Church. But most modern participants do it just for the spiritual experience, including professor emeritus Casey Blanton, a former Daytona State College English faculty member.
“I still maintain correspondence with many of the people I’ve met on the trail,” said Hussey, who has made the trip three times. “They are like a family to me.”
During his fascinating presentation he said that every day of the year, a Pilgrim’s Mass is still held in the original cathedral as it has for a thousand years. One particularly touching event was when he was traveling the road through Portugal, he said. There, a couple asked him to give “the saint a hug for me” for someone dying of breast cancer. Giving the saint a hug is believed to bestow blessings in believers.
According to Cornelius, the primary goal of the conference is to provide professional opportunity opportunities to local educators at no cost. In addition to setting up the speakers and inviting the college community, The School of World Languages and Speech secured financial sponsors for the event so that it could be offered at no cost.
In a time of tightly-constricted education budgets, the lack of an admission charge for the event greatly increased the impact of the conference on neighboring communities. By reducing the barriers of entry to include teachers whose schools may not be able to afford conference attendance, the event was successful in that alone, said Cornelius.
At least one teacher spent one of their personal sick days to be able to attend the conference, but in Professor Cornelius’s words: “They don’t have to pay, they just have to come.”
After the conference’s conclusion, Cornelius expressed his contentment with the outcome.
“I knew the conference was a success when I saw all the faculty members interacting and sharing ideas throughout the day, but especially because I really had to pull them from their conversations after each break to introduce the next speaker.”
In addition to free registration, breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks were provided and secondary school teachers received Continuing Education Unit credits. The conference was sponsored by Daytona State College, Florida Foreign Language Association, Florida American Association of Teachers of French, Florida World Languages in Colleges and Universities, the University of Florida Center for African Studies, Cambridge University Press, Vista Higher Learning and Cengage publishing.