WVFLTA was founded in the late 1960’s, perhaps during the 1967-68 school year. Prior to that, World Language teachers in West Virginia had been meeting in separate, language-specific groups. The founders wanted to create an umbrella organization that would unite all teachers to promote the study of second languages in our state. We do not have a complete list of this group, but a few of the founders were:

• Marilyn (Phillips) Carpenter, a former French teacher at Parkersburg High School. Marilyn was the first president of WVFLTA and served for six years in that role.

• Ken Haynes.

• Hal Murphy, formerly from Marshall University.

• Joe Renahan, formerly from WVU.

• Beth Renahan.

• And, Helen Saunders , a former WVDE World Language Coordinator.

This group wrote a constitution and established a yearly conference to assure that WV World Language teachers would have a state-wide, professional organization that would support their efforts in the classroom and provide a forum for collegial interaction.

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Since its founding until 1997, traditionally, WVFLTA held a one-day, Saturday conference in the fall at WVU-P in Parkersburg and a two-day, major conference in the spring.  It was decided in the late 90s that in order to meet the needs of our language teacher communities, only one WVFLTA conference would be held in the fall. This decision would then leave the springtime open for the various language groups to hold separate activities during which they would focus on communication in the target language.  This decision is cited directly from the meeting minutes recorded from a WVFLTA business meeting held on September 26th, 1998: “AATs are encouraged to have immersion weekends in the Spring."

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After that change and until the early 2000s, the fall conference was only 1½ days, typically beginning around 4:30PM or 5:00PM on Friday with a dinner, a keynote speaker, and presentation of the Teacher of the Year Award, followed by a full conference day on Saturday.  Currently, WVFLTA holds a two-day conference in the fall and virtual workshops in the spring and early fall.

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For a list of past presidents, from 1996 to the present, see “Past Conferences” under the Conferences tab.

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