BPS official wins national award for foreign language education

BOSTON - A Boston Public Schools administrator is the recipient of the 2010 Nelson H. Brooks Award from the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Dr. Yu-Lan Lin, Senior Program Director for World Languages, received the prize for outstanding leadership in the profession.

The Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL) is the oldest multi-language association of pre-kindergarten through university teachers in the country. The conference, which represents 14 states, has recognized one individual for distinguished service and leadership every year since 1968. Dr. Lin will receive the award at the 2010 conference in New York City in March.

“All of us in the Boston Public Schools extend our thanks and congratulations to Yu-Lan Lin,” said Superintendent Carol R. Johnson. “Her pioneering work has helped thousands of Boston Public Schools students discover the power of learning world languages. Dr. Lin is most deserving of this award.”

Dr. Lin has been a teacher and administrator in the Boston Public Schools for 30 years, beginning in 1979 as a bilingual teacher at the Josiah Quincy Elementary School. In 1983, she became the World Languages Department Chair at Snowden International School at Copley, where she started the Mandarin program, the first Chinese program offered in a Massachusetts public school. Dr. Lin became the district’s Senior Program Director for World Languages in 1997.

Dr. Lin is currently the Executive Director of the Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools (CLASS), a national K-12 Chinese teacher’s organization, and serves as an Executive Board member of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Dr. Lin has participated in the development and subsequent revision of the Massachusetts Foreign Languages Curriculum Framework. She has made numerous presentations at local, regional, national and international workshops and conferences.

In 2004, Dr. Lin was selected to serve on the Chinese Advanced Placement (AP) Task Force Committee for the College Board and later served as a content advisor for the AP Chinese program. Last year, she was appointed to serve on the AP Chinese Curriculum and Assessment Development Committee and was appointed by the Certification Council of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) to serve on the World Languages Committee.