Affiliate News - 04/10/2020 (Plain Text Version)
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AFFILIATE REPORTS: EUROPE FRANCE TESOL, TESOL FRANCE AFFILIATE REPORT, KEY THEME - UPDATES AND CHALLENGES Jeremy Levin, FRANCE TESOL President, Paris, France
New Structure & Location We have redefined our internal structure and roles. The biggest issue we have faced is that we are still looking for a new headquarters in Paris. Our conference venue of over 27 years moved out of town and cut ties to its partnered organizations massively impacting how we do things. We are currently looking for a new long-term venue partnership with any school in Paris that will welcome us; as of late, we have fallen short. French bureaucracy is tedious, and the political state of the country may not help either. Because of this, we decided to hold our annual colloquium last year in a different city where we have a regional branch. That city was Lille, my home for the past 17 years. We were fortunate enough that my employer, SKEMA Business School, was kind enough to let us use their facilities at no charge. For those of you who do not know Lille, it is at the literal crossroads of Europe, within a 90-minute train ride from London, one hour from Paris, and 50 minutes from Brussels. Its strategic location was key to our decision-making process. After all, it is not easy competing with Paris when it comes to attracting conference-goers! Although it was outside of Paris, the conference was well attended and, overall, a success. Oh the Places We Go As usual, we had people travel from all over the world to speak and attend the event: the USA, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Poland, Ukraine, Japan, Egypt, Morocco, and a few more! Our three plenaries did not let us down. Thomas Strasser, from Vienna, Austria, gave a captivating presentation on the state of educational technology. His slides are available on our website (www.tesol-france.org) under the 2019 colloquium page. Dennis Davy spoke about how the English language has evolved and broke down the processes behind the creation of new words. Pointing out the connection between drones that may soon deliver our every need to our doorsteps and the busy bees that diligently serve their queen. We rounded out the conference with Silvia Breiburd, who came from Argentina. She dazzled us with her eye-opening presentation on how to connect generational theory to the ELT class. Environmentally Friendly This was also the first colloquium where we appointed someone with the task of making our conference as environmentally friendly as possible. Jen Taylor spearheaded this ELT Footprint coordinator role and put in place concrete actions like a carpooling Facebook group, using mugs instead of paper cups for coffee, and including a reusable water bottle in the conference goodie tote bag. At the start of the conference, we even showed a video with Will Grant called the "Four Levels of Action," which explains how we can have a more significant impact on our environmental actions. Building Membership Eco-Friendly On the downside, our current membership is low, and we are thinking of what strategies can be put in place to turn it around. To tackle this head-on, we are updating how we communicate about TESOL France. Physical brochures, to social media campaigns, to revamping our website to give it a fresh look and, most of all, make it mobile-friendly. We are going to also send out some friendly modern-looking e-mail campaigns via Mail Chimp to those who have not renewed membership in the past few years. Although, I think that the main way to rebuild our membership is to make our members feel like they are genuinely involved and part of a community of practice. This is why we are transforming our Spring Day event, on June 6th, into a Nationwide Swapshop. The idea is that everyone brings one lesson to share and goes home with 100. People will be sharing lessons and ideas about what they do in class. There will be small discussion circles about professional development and the types of obstacles that we face. On top of all this, we have confirmed Mary Shepard Wong as our plenary speaker. She has already come up with a tentative title to her talk, "Better Together than Apart: Supportive Communities of Collaborative Practices in ELT," and I think it is perfect with what we are trying to do in France in 2020. |
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