Introducing K–12 Associate Editor Pamela Benton: Plus More on Hispania's Short-form Article Section

With this issue of Hispania we continue to move forward on the publishing initiative introduced in March 2019. Gaining momentum and diversifying the content of this section of the journal, we are proud to publish two more short-form essays. This recently debuted short-form section of Hispania makes it possible to share perspectives on emerging technologies, curricular debates, pedagogical experiments, and more in a way that the traditional research article may not. Our ongoing call for short-form article submissions points out that these will be editorially reviewed rather than peer-reviewed, and that they will be somewhat more brief than our research articles, falling somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 words. In this issue we are also enthusiastically announcing the result of the call for a K–12 Associate Editor of the journal.

Hispania's newest Associate Editor of the journal is Pamela G. Benton, PreK–12 World Languages Specialist at Pinellas County Schools in Largo, Florida. As Editor-in-Chief of the AATSP's flagship journal, I am particularly glad to have someone of Pamela G. Benton's caliber joining the editorial board in this role. She holds a BA in Spanish and Education from William Jewell College, an M.Ed. degree in Curriculum and Instruction from National-Louis University, and the Ed.S. degree in Educational Leadership from National-Louis University. Beyond her extensive experience as a recognized language educator, supervisor, and consultant, she was selected as the 2012 Teacher of the Year by the Florida chapter of the AATSP! Her record as president of the Florida chapter of AATSP 2008–2011 makes her a particularly good fit for this role in our association. In our conversations, Pam and I have connected on the idea that the short-form section of the journal will be one way among many of involving K–12 educators in the association more intentionally. She and I have been working, along with Managing Editor Jen Brady and the Hispania Editorial Team to vet the short-form essays received—including those additional readers necessary for conducting an editorial review of submissions. We have been receiving a number of interesting submissions that we hope to publish in future issues, and in line with the internal conversations we have been having, we encourage those who are presenting at the AATSP in San Diego during July, 2019 to think about turning their talks into a short-form submission. The best way to submit a short-form article for consideration is still to email that to me directly at bfraser@aatsp.org.

The first short-form article published in this issue is "Unplugging to Reconnect: Using Oral Proficiencies to Strengthen Interpersonal Communication Skills," authored by Alanna M. Breen of the University of South Carolina and Christine Guedri Giacalone of Stony Brook School. Here the co-authors reference ACTFL's Proficiency and World Readiness Standards in order to contribute to the growing awareness that the presence of the Internet, social media and apps in classroom instruction cannot displace the need for peer-to-peer interaction in language learning. The second is "VoiceThread: Del aula a la comunidad," authored by Ignacio D. Arellano-Torres of Stony Brook University. Arellano-Torres explores a project integrating the VoiceThread cloud application at the intermediate level that won his university's Professional Development Award for Inclusion and Equity. Our hope is that these topics and the possibility of their practical application to classroom instruction will encourage further short-form submissions that speak to the full range of K–20 members of the association. Readers will notice that we seek to prioritize these short-form contributions by placing them at the front of the journal's content.

Our research articles cover an impressive range of topics. "Recepción de la literatura de Roberto Bolaño en Corea" by Kyeong-Min Lee dovetails with the prominence of transnational approaches within literary studies. "Performance y clasismo en los cuentos de Silvina Ocampo" by Clara Mengolini engages the theme of performance as a tool for understanding three of the author's short stories. "As...