Jorge Torres Almazán, MEXTESOL-TESOL Liaison, Tampico, Mexico

It was my great pleasure to act as Master of Ceremonies and welcome 3,000 enthusiastic colleagues to our 46^th International Convention in Queretaro, Mexico. The theme of the conference this year was “Eclectic Teaching Trends for the ELT World.”

The theme was reflected well with all five plenaries and many of the presentations throughout the conference. Our five plenary speakers shared their expertise with our great audience. Sarah Hillyard told us about how drama is, in itself, an eclectic approach. She says drama involves a rich combination of activity types and does not exclude one approach or another. She gave some examples of how it may work to enhance the effectiveness of some methods, Total Physical Response, and Drilling, for instance.

Jeremy Harmer presented “How to Learn from Communicative Activities.” In his presentation, he mentioned the excitement generated by the arrival of the Communicative Approach years ago and the included attention to activities in which students had a communicative purpose, focused on content rather than language form. He challenged how useful suchactivities are. In his talk, he revisited the concept of communicative activities and tried to see how to re-fashion them so that they are communicative learning activities. “Putting the Human Centre Stage in the Classroom” presented by Mark Almond invited us to look beyond mainstream language teaching methodology and enquire why and how teachers can apply principles found in other areas and adopt a more multi-disciplinary approach in the classroom. He proposed how, through training theatre skills, educators can apply these to their own classrooms to improve classroom climate, group dynamics, teacher presence, and rapport. Simon Brewster examined the causes of teacher burnout, workload, being evaluated, classroom management issues, self-esteem, and self-confidence, which are linked to environmental and personality factors. He also examined different coping strategies that depend to some extent on each individual, but also on support systems available in the workplace. Jim Citron’s presentation invited teachers to reflect, participate, and laugh as they asked, how are culture and language-related, how can miscommunication occur, and what does it mean for today´s English language teacher in Mexico?

This convention also was a special occasion to honor Jorge Vazquez Gonzalez, current National Secretary, who was given recognition for more than 40 years of service to our association. Jorge has served MEXTESOL at different times and posts as volunteer, Nuevo Leon chapter board member, & National Board member. He has attended almost all of MEXTESOL´s International, National, & Local conventions. We are proud of having Jorge as a friend and colleague.

Our renewed readers committee prepared a broad and diverse program in order to fit different audiences and contexts. Featured and concurrent sessions showed their work. We learn a lot from them; the ambiance was friendly and professional; the conference planners did an excellent job. We love to attend and learn new things, especially social programs, an excellent place for networking that can help participants make connections to new people and ideas, too. We are now looking forward to our 2020 convention in Zacatecas!

Jorge Torres Almazán is MEXTESOL-TESOL Liaison. He has taught EFL for more than 15 years, holds an MA in Education Administration and a BA in Pedagogy. He is a teacher at the American School of Tampico. He has been a speaker at TESOL, MEXTESOL, & BBELT conferences and a member of U. S. Alumni Global Community.