Affiliate News - May 2021 (Plain Text Version)
|
||
|
In this issue: |
INTERMOUNTAIN TESOL: MAKING CHANGES TO IMPROVE OUR AFFILIATE Maria Ammar, Intermountain TESOL (ITESOL), Salt Lake Community College, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Intermountain TESOL (ITESOL) is a TESOL affiliate that has about 150 members who are located in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. The ITESOL board consists of educators and administrators from various educational institutions from the region. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a year of change and growth for ITESOL, and it was a time for responding to the needs of its members and its community. 2020 included having to cancel the in-person ITESOL Spring 2020 Mini-Conference, offering ITESOL’s first free pre-recorded webinar with presentations from ITESOL members, and planning and conducting ITESOL’s first live virtual Fall Conference. ITESOL: 2020 - 2021 The ITESOL Spring Mini-Conference is an event that is offered every year by the ITESOL interest sections. Generally, the event has different formats; these include having conferences that may have guest speakers, or presenters talking about useful teaching tips, or having workshops on certain topics. For 2020, the ITESOL interest sections had carefully planned everything out for the event, including the presentations, the location, catering, advertising, the event program schedule, and other items. The 2020 Spring Mini-Conference had to be cancelled for March, when event planners had to start making changes because of new pandemic guidelines, especially when considering large gatherings. During the summer, the ITESOL board discussed offering its first free webinar to ITESOL members and the community. A call for submissions was sent out for possible presentations, and five ITESOL members volunteered to each record individual presentations and submit them to ITESOL to post on its YouTube Channel. The five presentations can be viewed at the following link: https://bit.ly/3iuJi8s. ITESOL is very grateful to volunteer presenters Andrea Lobb, Jean Kleinhaus, Nitia Islam, Ekaterina Arshavskaya, and Jared Sell. They all did a great job talking about ideas to help educators with online and remote teaching. In October 2020, ITESOL had its first virtual Fall Conference. The theme for the conference was, “Hindsight is 2020: Examining the Foundations and Envisioning the Future of ESL. The Fall Conference in the past has always been in-person, so planning for a virtual conference was a new experience for the ITESOL board members. Working together, the board members organized a successful virtual conference filled with inspiring keynote speakers Dr. MaryAnn Christison, former TESOL president, and Dr. Anna Krulatz, presentations from ITESOL members and community members, updates, and news from ITESOL, and virtual networking opportunities. On April 10, 2021, ITESOL is planning to have the Spring 2021 Virtual Mini-Conference April 10, 2021. It will have keynote speakers Dr. Lynn Henrichsen, who will speak about “Unorthodox Oral Expressions”, and Carrie Drake Sanderson, who is presenting, “Power Up Your Instruction by Becoming Stress Resilient”. Also, there will be two breakout sessions focusing on mental wellness and teaching in the time of COVID. Also planned for 2021 is ITESOL’s Fall Conference on October 8-9, 2021, which is currently planned to be in-person at Snow College at Ephraim, Utah, USA. The theme for this year is, “A Quest for Excellence”, and the plenary speakers will be Educational Technologist Dr. Justin Shewell. For anyone interested in joining or learning more about ITESOL, more information can be found at ITESOL’s website: www.itesol.org Biodata Maria Ammar is the associate dean of ESL at Salt Lake Community College. She is the past president of ITESOL. She is also chair and community manager of the Higher Education Interest Section at TESOL. Her interests include higher education, program administration, teacher education, and intercultural communication. |
|