About CASLT

Our Archives

Our Awards

SEVEC Award of Merit

On December 1, 2000 SEVEC recognized its sister association with its Award of Merit. The following is the speech given by John Beatty, Chair of the SEVEC Board of Directors to CASLT President Helen Coltrinari.

The SEVEC Award of Merit recognizes outstanding efforts and exceptional contributions made in the promotion of exchanges among Canadian youth. This year, for the first time, the Board of Directors of SEVEC has chosen to honour a Partner Association with this Award. I am very pleased to announce that the 2000 SEVEC Award of Merit will be presented to CASLT - the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers. We are pleased to have with us Helen Coltrinari, President of CASLT who will accept the award of behalf of the Association.

CASLT is celebrating their 30th anniversary this year it seems that our two associations have shown each other mutual support for most of that time. Our Executive Director was a member to the CASLT Board of Directors, at least two former CASLT Presidents have been members of the SEVEC Board of Directors and one, Don Mazerolle is actually Past-President of both Associations and a recipient of both the SEVEC Award of Merit and the CASLT Prix Robert Roy.

Last year we signed a formal Partnership Agreement and since then we have worked on two major joint projects. The first, when we were also joined by the Canadian Association of Immersion Teachers and the Second Language Center of the University of New Brunswick was the National Colloquium: Bilingual Child: Global Citizen held in Fredericton, New Brunswick last November.

Our most recent project is the joint SEVEC/CASLT Website:
http://sevec.ca

The Website came about because SEVEC wanted to help teachers of French as a Second Language, who organize exchanges for their students, prepare for those exchanges in the classroom. Although we have an Organizer's Manual which gives many details we didn't feel that we had the expertise to prepare actual lesson plans so approached CASLT to see if they would be interested in developing a joint project.

With financial support form the Language Acquisition Development Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage, SEVEC and CASLT have developed an interactive Website which focuses on the communicative and experiential approach to preparation for an exchange in the FSL classroom.

A team - all members of CASLT and veterans of several SEVEC exchanges over the years - was chosen from across the country to develop these teaching units.

Helen Lockerby a CASLT Board member from PEI designed the template for the units according to CASLT's principles and worked very closely with Marc Bourgeois and our Website designer Mike Donnelly. Other members of the CASLT team were Blaine Myles from Newfoundland, Marlene Ladouceur from Saskatchewan and three former SEVEC Award of Merit winners - Ron Mastine from Quebec, Louise Farquhar from Ontario and Corine Thomson from B.C. (You see how the cooperation is between the two Associations!) They all spent several months working on the development of the individual lesson which make up the site. Canadaexchanges.org is now fully operational and I urge you to visit it.

We were delighted to be able to work so well, so closely and so often with CASLT and today, by awarding the SEVEC Award of Merit to CASLT we wish specifically to recognize the many contributions the Association has made to SEVEC.