One of the best parts of being a TESOL member is connecting with like-minded English language education professionals from all over the world. Understanding more about our field happens one conversation, one relationship at a time. For U.S.-based ESL teaching professionals, our vision of the field can become myopic, and we can forget that we make up but one small part of this global enterprise that is English language teaching.

Affiliate relationships offer unique opportunities for interchange that can shape the work of our own local TESOL associations. In some cases, talking with affiliate members helps us to see what we have as common challenges and how to overcome them in ways we hadn’t thought of before. In other cases, affiliates are in such different contexts, face such distinct challenges, and bring so many unique strengths, that we come back to our own local contexts refreshed, renewed, and with our field of vision expanded.

On L: Larissa Lopez, Vice-President, PR TESOL
On R: Carmen Diaz, Vice-President, Advocacy, NYS TESOL

Over the course of the past year, we at New York State TESOL (NYS TESOL) have nourished relationships with two TESOL affiliates that have important connections to our local context: the Dominican Republic TESOL (DR TESOL) and Puerto Rico TESOL (PR TESOL). Both groups have deep, historic ties to New York and have contributed immensely to the social, cultural, economic, and educational landscape of New York. In fact, the legal mandate that governs access to Bilingual education in New York City--the Aspira Consent Decree of 1974--is a result of political activism by the Puerto Rican community. And New Yorkers know that Dominicans came in large numbers during the 1970s but may not know that the first Dominican came to New York in 1613!

Our TESOL community in New York is not only made up of many educators of Puerto Rican or Dominican heritage, but we serve students of these backgrounds in ESL classes all across our state. Understanding more about each other’s school systems, standards, and expectations helps us in the broader TESOL community better serve our learners and support our teaching.

For these reasons, we are looking forward to shared resources, professional learning opportunities, and leadership collaboration on behalf of the members of our three TESOL affiliates. At TESOL in Atlanta, we celebrated the signing of our affiliate agreements with joy and gratitude for the forum that TESOL provides us, and all of us affiliates, to connect and expand ourselves personally and professionally.

Left to Right: Juan Omar Valdez, Executive Director of DR TESOL, Ravneet Parmar, NYS TESOL Past-President, Laura Baecher, NYS TESOL President-Elect, and Guadalupe Sigaran, President of DR TESOL.

Laura Baecher is Associate Professor of TESOL at Hunter College. Her research interests relate to the professional learning of English language teachers, including content-language integration, teacher leadership, the use of video for feedback, and practicum and supervision in teaching English learners. She is currently the president-elect of NYS TESOL.