Affiliate News - 04/10/2020 (Plain Text Version)
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LEADERSHIP LETTERS LETTER FROM THE PAST PRESIDENT, DEBORAH HEALEY Dr. Deborah Healey, TESOL Past President 2020-2021, Portland, Oregon, USA
Hello everyone! On behalf of the TESOL Board and staff, I hope you and your families and friends are all healthy. I know that many of us are struggling with concerns about COVID-19 and its aftermath. For many people, that involves a move to online teaching and other activities. TESOL has created a COVID-19 Resources forum on MyTESOL that anyone can join with a free login at https://my.tesol.org/communities/community-home?CommunityKey=80115161-470c-46be-bd23-849d1e8302a4. In that forum, you will find suggestions from teachers about moving online, links to free resources, and generally the opportunity to share concerns and challenges. TESOL’s Teacher Resource Center (TRC), a member benefit, offers more resources for online teaching. Sometimes, it’s just good to know that others have similar struggles, and that there are ways to deal with them. We are still planning a virtual convention this year. We hope that it will be sometime this summer. If you had registered for the Denver convention, you should have received email with options: get a refund, use the money toward another TESOL offering, or donate all or part to TESOL. The convention is TESOL’s primary source of revenue for the year, so we are hoping that there are some TESOLers who are willing to support our association with a donation, while we know that others simply cannot. The Conferences Professional Council has been feverishly working to provide a range of options for our virtual convention. In addition to presentations, a virtual TESOL Bookstore is planned, as is a virtual exhibition hall. Please keep an eye on the TESOL website for details. I am hoping to be able to deliver my Presidential plenary, "Teaching with Play: Games, Game-based Learning, and Gamification." You can see a short video intro for it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR4lUl4Bh3Q. In non-convention areas, I have been delighted with the progress of the Affiliate Peer Advisory Program (APAP). This new initiative started last year with the goal of better linking affiliates to the Affiliate Network Professional Council and to each other. We hope to see this initiative continue to connect individual Council members to each affiliate. If you need more information about APAP, please contact ANPC Chair George Kormpas at georgekormpas@gmail.com. TESOL is looking to the APAP to help us in doing more outreach and advocacy with our affiliates. TESOL's Advocacy Action Center (https://www.tesol.org/advance-the-field/tesol-advocacy-action-center) was launched last year and has been a great resource for US-based advocacy. US members can easily contact their members of Congress on current legislation that affects English language teachers and learners. For those outside the US and in the US, the Advocacy Action Center includes a new area called "Let TESOL Know about the Policies Impacting You the Most." We are hoping to get information from our members globally so that we can create and share advocacy resources for everyone. I am hoping that the ANPC and the APAP will mobilize support among members and leaders to respond to this call for information. Are there government policies that are particularly helpful or ones that create issues? It would be wonderful, for instance, to know about visa policies when hiring English language teachers (in Indonesia, for example, visas are only available for those from six specific countries). Do textbooks have to be approved by a government agency? I am sure you can think of many other areas where your work is affected by policies outside your institution. Thank you for all the work you do to help your affiliate and to help TESOL achieve our vision: to be the trusted global authority for knowledge and expertise in English language teaching. We are better together! Let me also add my earnest wishes for good health for you and your families in this difficult time. |
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