Boise State Concurrent Enrollment Program (CEP) French instructors Emily Blackburn and Madelynn Ruhter visited New Orleans, LA for the 2025 American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Annual Convention and World Languages Expo. The Boise State CEP provided a financial contribution to make the visit possible.
Blackburn, from Mountain View High School, and Ruhter, from Capital High School, co-hosted a roundtable presentation called “Making Reading Fun: Using Authentic Texts to Engage Language Learners” on Nov. 22. The presentation focused on engaging and interactive reading activities for high school students learning French.
“Emily and I took away ideas from those who attended our session that we want to implement in our classrooms moving forward,” Ruhter said. “I think that I always take away something valuable when I discuss strategies and activities with other language teachers.”
Being the only two CEP French instructors, Blackburn and Ruhter naturally began collaborating and sharing best practices. They’ve also collaborated with Boise State Professor and CEP French faculty liaison Mariah Devereux Herbeck through CEP professional development meetings. She encouraged both instructors to integrate more reading into their curriculum so students feel more prepared for college rigor.
This inspired Blackburn and Ruhter to not only add more reading opportunities in their classes, but to join forces and share the practice to local, regional, and national audiences.
“We decided to build a unit around an authentic French novel,” Ruhter said. “It was received so well, we decided to share it as an Open Educational Resource (OER) at (the Idaho Association of Teachers of Language and Culture conference) in 2024. We received a lot of positive feedback after sharing, so we decided to create another (OER) for a unit around comic books. We shared these two units at Anchorage, AK for (the Pacific Northwest Council for Languages (PNCFL) conference) earlier this year.”
Following the ACTFL conference, Blackburn and Ruhter will present again at the 2026 PNCFL conference in Portland, OR this spring. Ruhter said they are currently working on more units they hope to share next year as well as creating a website to host all the OER resources they create.
“Attending sessions this year reminded me of the importance and benefits of being a lifelong learner,” Ruhter said.
Learn more about studying French at Boise State with the Department of World Languages web page. Learn more about the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages with the ACTFL website.