Our AFLA Board
President
2024-2025
Nelressa Faye
Nelressa's TEFL career is a global journey in culturally responsive education. She began in East Orange, New Jersey, introducing calming practices to a multicultural student body. Her path led to South Korea, where she trained teachers and taught young learners. In the UAE, she established SABIS English programs.
In Saudi Arabia, she helped to establish Vocational Colleges for Girls. A Master's Scholarship led to her commitment to decolonize education and promote social justice due to the violence against African Americans. She pursued a TESOL Doctor of Education in Dubai, presenting her insights at the TESOL Conference.
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Heading the ESL department in China, Nelressa continued to grow. She immersed herself in Indigenous culture in the Arctic, promoting culturally responsive education and language reclamation. A full PhD scholarship in Teacher Education for Social Justice and Diversity with a focus on Indigenous pedagogy followed in 2021 with the University of Lapland.
As an Indigenous content writer, she developed resources for US territories including Hawaii and Guam. Leading teacher training in Zimbabwe, she embraced modern learning techniques using drones, 3D printing, and coding, while decolonizing curricula. Currently, she's engaged in Indigenous Teacher Awareness CRE with the Knik Tribe of Alaska. In the Mat-Su School District, she supports diverse students and creates content to advance transformative education using cross-curricular, holistic, project and land based CRE approaches.
President-Elect
Dr. Nicole Ayers
Nicole Ayers was born in Texas but landed in Alaska 15 years ago; when what began as a short-term stop became home. After arriving in Alaska, Nicole transferred into UAA where she earned a Bachelors in French and Masters in Teaching. Upon graduation, she started a job as a teacher for the Anchorage School District, first at Goldenview Middle School, then at Chugiak High School, and currently at Bartlett High School. Over her career with ASD, Nicole has primarily taught French, but, like many world language teachers, she has also taught in other areas including English, Family and Consumer Science, and in the Cyber Center with a credit recovery focus. Currently, Nicole teaches French and is the World Langauge Department Chair at Bartlett High School.
While working for the Anchorage School District, Dr. Ayers also taught French at the University of Alaska Anchorate before deciding to continue her studies. She completed the Doctorate in Education (Ed.D.) program through Indiana University in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education in 2024. Her dissertation work focused on short-term study abroad and the impact on secondary students’ development of intercultural competence.
Nicole lives in Eagle River with her husband, 2 cats and dog. She gets out into nature whenever she can, whether hiking, biking, climbing, or camping.
Past-President
Carla Swick
Carla teaches Japanese at Palmer High School, her alma mater, where her true love of language, other cultures, and people began as a student.
A three-week home stay and high school exchange to Palmer’s Sister City, Saroma, Japan ignited a desire to explore the world. After high school she studied in Gnosjo, Sweden for one year as an AFS exchange student. She then majored in Secondary English Education and minored in Japanese Language at the University of Wyoming. Her junior year of university, she studied as a Rotary Scholar at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. After university graduation she was invited to return to Saroma to teach English in the town's middle schools and work as an educator and translator for the local school board. She taught in Japan for three and a half years and is now in her 27th year of teaching Japanese in Mat-Su. In addition to teaching world language, Carla loves growing new teachers. She also teaches Educators Rising, which is a career pathway for students interested in education.
When Carla isn’t in school, you can find her playing in Alaska's outdoors with her husband Lance, eleven-year-old son Billy, and dog Cici. She loves hanging out at the cabin in Talkeetna, hiking, playing hockey, floating the Kenai, watching Kansas City Chiefs football games, and traveling the globe.
Dr. Watson grew up in the Fairbanks area with her extended family. She is the granddaughter of country musician Johni Naylor, the daughter of Connie Greco and the late Robert Watson, the mother of Danika Watson, Kendra Watson, Samantha Paskvan, and the wife of Robert Mannherz.
Dr. Watson holds an Ed.D. in Multicultural Education and Second Language Acquisition from the University of San Francisco. She published her thesis, titled Equity In Language Programs: Revitalizing Indigenous Languages In Secondary Schools In Anchorage, Alaska, in 2021.
Dr. Watson’s background is in teaching Japanese language and culture, second language acquisition methods, and teacher education. Her core goal is to continue serving and working at the intersection of language advocacy, equity, and intercultural competence.
She serves as a World Languages department teacher expert for the Anchorage School District, supports ASD’s K-12 immersion and world language programs and is an adjunct professor of curriculum, instruction, and assessment at Alaska Pacific University. Her recent work at Alaska Pacific University includes teaching literature courses anchored in Indigenous authors and artists to Alaska Native students.
Outside the classroom, she hikes in the beautiful mountains, runs the trails with her husband and 2 dogs, reads, and spends time with her family and friends.
Treasurer
Will Kimball
Will Kimball was born April 15th 1964 at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, Washington and has been a Nor'wester all of his life. Will grew up in Eugene, Oregon, where he attended the University of Oregon and received a BA in German Language and Literature with a minor in Biology in 1987.
Will received an MA in German Language and Literature from Oregon in 1990.
Will has lived in Russia, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, England, Japan, Norway, and Finland. Will has visited the rest of Scandinavia, Italy, France, Austria, Mexico, and Canada. Will's father is a professor of Russian History at the University of Oregon and his mother was a painter. Will's sister sings in the Eugene Opera and his brother-in-law is the principal bassist in the Eugene Symphony, but also sits in jazz combos.
Will teaches German Language and Biology at West Anchorage High. Will's wife, Jenny, is also a teacher at West High. Jenny is also an endurance athlete and outdoor enthusiast. Will has competed twice in the US Olympic Trials marathon in 1996 and 2000 and has run a 2:16:53 marathon at the California International Marathon in Sacramento in 1993. Will enjoys all outdoor pursuits, especially fishing, running, skiing, snowshoeing, horses, hiking, and biking. Will is especially proud of the fact that he has caught all 5 species of Pacific Salmon on the fly, but hasn't yet done that on the same day.
Regional VP - Interior
Chisato Murakami
Chisato Murakami teaches various levels of Japanese and pedagogy courses at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She studied Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Chisato has a full-certification of American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview Tester of Japanese. She is a recipient of a mentor award from Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Activity at UAF.
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Prior to coming to Alaska, she taught all levels of Japanese, Business Japanese, and Specific Purpose Japanese at universities in the U.S. and many intensive summer courses in Japan. Her research interest and publications are on second language acquisition, reading process in Japanese as a foreign language, and proficiency assessment. When she has free time, she enjoys hiking with family and friends. She also loves cooking, reading, traveling, and spending her time with two dogs. Alaska gave her the experiences of keeping honey bees and raising chickens in free range. And it will give more!
Webmaster
Charles Beattie
Charles Beattie teaches German and Mathematics at Dimond High School in in the Anchorage School District. He's an energetic member of the German community even though he describes his German degree as "an accidental degree due to taking too many classes for fun while pursuing a mathematics Bachelor".
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While he teaches in Anchorage now, his past teaching experience includes working at the Martin-Andersen-Nexö-Gymnasium in Dresden, Germany. He is also the treasurer of the Alaska Chapter for the American Association of Teachers of German and is the 2019 inaugural recipient of the Jo Sanders Teacher of Energy and Passion Award.
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Member At-Large
Michele Whaley
Michele Whaley has been teaching Russian to all ages for more than 30 years. She shares her passion for language acquisition at national conferences and workshops, and supports teachers through social media. She was twice the World Language Teacher of the Year (ToY) for Alaska, the 2016 Pacific Northwest ToY, and a finalist for the 2017 ACTFL ToY. She transitioned from public school to university and online company and college Russian lessons, then added Spanish for a private independent school. When not teaching, Michele plays recorders in a Baroque music ensemble. She also likes to be rowing, Nordic skating, skiing, or hiking with her family and their antisocial sled dog.
Member At-Large
Amanda Edgar
Originally from southern Spain, Amanda moved to Alaska in 2014 where she taught Spanish and Social Studies at Mirror Lake Middle School (Spanish Immersion) and then at Teeland Middle School. In 2022, Amanda made the move to high school and is currently a Spanish Teacher at Wasilla High School. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in English (as a second language), as well as a Master’s degree in Advertising and Public Relations (Communication) from the Universidad de Cádiz, Spain. Previously, Amanda has taught English as a second language in Spain to elementary, secondary, and college level students at a private language academy. Amanda enjoys international travel with her husband and their four daughters.
Member At-Large
Rebeca Maseda Garcia
Rebeca Maseda García is Professor of Spanish, and Spanish Coordinator, in the Department of Languages at the University of Alaska Anchorage where she teaches language and culture classes focused on topics related to gender violence and cinema in Spain, historical memory and the Spanish Civil War, and contemporary Latin American and Iberian cinemas. She has an extensive record of publications (as well as grants, conference presentations, guest lectures, etc.) on film, media and gender. Her last publications include two co-edited volumes with prestigious publishing companies: Gender and Violence in Spanish Culture. From Vulnerability to Accountability (Peter Lang, 2018) and Gender-Based Violence in Latin American and Iberian Cinemas (Routledge, 2020). She has been an associate investigator on two R+D projects: ‘The re-signification of women as victims in popular culture: implications towards representational innovation in the construction of vulnerability and resistance’ and ‘Mediatization of Women’s Rage: Intelligibility Frameworks and Strategies of Politicizing Transformation.’ Dr. Maseda is also the co-author of ‘Finding Your “Spanish” Voice Through Popular Media: Improving Students Confidence and Fluency,’ published in the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Volume 14.3 (2014).