American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese
 |
|
| Abbreviation | AATSP |
|---|---|
| Formation | December 29, 1917 |
| Type | Professional association |
| Purpose | Promotion of the study and teaching of Hispanic, Luso-Brazilian, and other related languages and cultures |
| Headquarters | Walled Lake, Michigan |
|
Region served
|
United States and Canada |
|
Membership
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8,800+ |
|
Official language
|
Spanish, Portuguese, English |
|
Executive Director
|
Emily Spinelli |
| Affiliations | ACTFL, JNCL-NCLIS |
| Website | http://www.aatsp.org |
The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese is a language-specific professional association in the United States that was founded on 29 December 1917 in New York City as the American Association of Teachers of Spanish. The name was changed to the present one when Portuguese was added to the association’s mission in 1944.
The organization is composed of more than 8,800 members in 60 chapters across the United States and Canada.
The mission statement of the association is to:
promote... the study and teaching of Hispanic, Luso-Brazilian, and other related languages, literatures, and cultures at all educational levels. Through an exchange of pedagogical and scholarly information, the AATSP encourages heritage and second-language study and supports projects to that end.
The Association was founded in 1917 largely through the efforts of Lawrence A. Wilkins, its first President, who worked with a number of individuals teaching in colleges, universities, and high schools along the Eastern Seaboard. Aurelio M. Espinosa, later the first editor of Hispania, helped Wilkins to unite the previously existing east and west coast Spanish teachers’ initiatives to form the national association. The AATSP was the first association in the United States devoted to the study of a specific modern foreign language, pre-dating the AATI (1923), the AATF (1927), and the AATG (1927).
Membership has always been open to teachers of Spanish and Portuguese and all others interested in the languages. There are Honorary Members and Fellows who represent, respectively, the world of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian scholarship and the world of letters.
The governing body of AATSP is an Executive Council (EC) which consists of an executive director, a president, a president-elect, and the past president. There is an elected representative from the college or university and high school levels. In addition, there is a rotating body of elected members every three years of three members, one from a community college, one from Foreign Language in the Elementary Schools (FLES), and one from Portuguese.
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Wikipedia