Irene Motyl is a senior associate in German at Barnard College/Columbia University. She has experience in post-secondary as well as primary and secondary school education, adult learning, and teacher training. Her responsibilities include curriculum and program development; teacher training and mentorship. She has developed content-based courses such as "News and Views from German TV", "Fokus ?sterreich" and "Sehen-Verstehen-Sprechen, Understanding the Language through Seeing the Culture", in which conversation, dialogue, and discussion are based on visual images drawn from authentic German video and television, film screenings, and current art shows in New York City (offered by the… Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Goethe Institute and other cultural Institutions). Irene is president of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) New York Metropolitan Chapter and serves as consultant for the AATG Professional Development Program and as teacher trainer for the Goethe Institute Teacher Training Network. She has served on the Deutsche Welle/AATG/Goethe Institute Task Force on classroom use of television and the AATG/Goethe Institute Project "Going the Distance (Long Distance Teacher Training)." She also has directed Intercultural Teaching Practicums for graduate students from the U.S. and the Universities of Berlin, Bielefeld, and Munich. Irene has conducted numerous In-Service Teacher-Training and Faculty Development seminars in New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Montreal, among other cities, and she has lectured at conferences and workshops in North America and Europe.
Formerly of Barnard College, Michaela Sp�inghaus is now back in Germany and teaches DaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache -- German as a Foreign Language) for the Goethe Institute in Heidelberg, Germany.