One of the ANPC’s committees, the Affiliate Network Year-round Events Committee (ANYrEC) has been given the task of providing more frequent, high-quality ANPC events such as webinars throughout the year for affiliates to have a forum in which to share their experiences and be able to interact and collaborate with other affiliates.

We have thus offered several webinars since October, 2018. On Saturday, October 13^th, Shelly Terrell, gave the first webinar: Hands-on Language Learning with Mobile Devices. In this session Shelly introduced an engaging topic about mobile language learning activities that require no Internet connection. Language learners are encouraged to take pictures, record audio, make a movie, and partner with peers to enhance all four skills—reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This webinar also offered tips for keeping students focused. The webinar can be accessed at https://youtu.be/frxN_LUrfb

The next webinar took place on Saturday, December 22^nd, 2018 and was given by Richard Niyibigira, President of the Association of Teachers of English in Rwanda. The title of Richard’s webinar was: ATER: Advocacy, Impact, Challenges and Take-aways. In this webinar we learned about Rwanda TESOL’s challenges since the government’s sudden 2008 shift to English as the medium of instruction and how their solutions could help other affiliates. If you missed Richard’s webinar you can access it at: https://youtu.be/jERI1FJlGi4.

For the Friday, January 11^th, 2019 webinar we moved many time zones to the east…..to Japan, where Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto gave the webinar titled: The Leader in the Mirror. In this webinar, Barbara addressed the governance issues of why many language teachers don’t join language teaching associations (LTAs) and, more importantly, what these associations can do to get language teachers to join and how to create and support a community of leaders. As we all know, these are not easy tasks for any affiliate or LTA! Barbara’s webinar can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Y_eRzdTAk

 We were also lucky enough to have the former Executive Director of TESOL International Association, Rosa Aronson, give a webinar on The Power of Collaboration among ELT Associations: A Webinar for the ANPC on Saturday, February 2^nd, 2019. Again, the topic was governance related: Designed for leaders of English language teachers’ associations in different regions of the world, including TESOL International Association Affiliates, potential Affiliates, and other ELT organizations, this webinar discussed the strategic importance of collaboration among ELT associations and described the different forms this collaboration can take. Drawing from her experience at TESOL International Association from 2011 to 2018, Rosa also shared some lessons learned. This most recent webinar can be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymXwG06yrg4&feature=youtu.be

You may have noticed by now that we have had presenters from different geographical areas around the globe: the United States (twice), Rwanda, and Japan. Our next webinar presenter will be speaking from Morocco (although he actually works in Qatar), and we hope to have more international speakers from around the world in the coming months. At the moment, we are trying to have speakers that can give their webinars through the TESOL platform and during times and hours which are manageable for the staff at TESOL Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, USA. In the coming months and years we will be exploring other platforms which can more suitably accommodate other time zones. To accommodate a wider audience, we have held three webinars on the weekend, two on Saturday, and one on Friday. The next webinar is also scheduled for a Friday, April 26th, 2019 at 2:30 p.m. USA Eastern Standard Time. The presenter will be Okon Effiong. The title is Africa TESOL: Past, Present and Future Aspirations. You can sign up for this webinar here.

For easy access, the webinars are recorded and are permanently available a couple of days after the live event in the Affiliate Leaders myTESOL Community Library: The Affiliate Network Webinars Folder

We encourage you, as TESOL affiliate and LTA leaders, to share the information about our past and future webinars with the members of your Affiliates’ or LTAs’ Governing Board as well as any interested members and professional colleagues. As we mentioned earlier, the ANYrEC, is expanding the reach of TESOL’s Affiliate Network Professional Council’s work to “create, organize, facilitate, implement, and delegate events and activities that happen outside the TESOL conference dates.”

If you are interested in participating in this program, please contact the ANPC Chair, Ulrich Schrader, or the Incoming Chair Georgios Kormpas