Meet the current writers for the TESOL Blog. They are English language professionals with decades of combined experience, and they each have unique perspectives and stories to share, across all contexts and levels, to help you improve your teaching, better your student outcomes, and discover a little more about yourself and your journey. Learn about your TESOL bloggers, including their favorite posts, what other blogs they read often, and where you can find them on social media.

Laura Baecher
Professional Development Blog

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Greetings TESOL colleagues worldwide! I am delighted to be able to share ideas around professional development in this blog—it is something I love to engage in and to learn about doing better. I began teaching ESL in 1991 at a refugee center in Washington DC, and fell in love with this profession. I studied in New York to get my master's in TESOL and taught high school ESL in the New York City public schools for years while I went on for my doctorate. I have now been in teacher education in the MA TESOL program at Hunter College, City University of New York for more than 20 years. It's been incredibly rewarding to see generations of teachers grow and move into leadership roles, and to have been part of our wide, vibrant, and passionate global community of TESOL.

Blog post I've written that I'm most proud of: Frolleagues: Why Friendships at Work Matter

• I think when it comes down to it, our work is all about relationships—with our students, of course, but also with our work families. When we have authentic and sustaining relationships with "frolleagues," we can do anything!

An outside blog that I read all the time: tiny buddha

• It has a dropdown menu under "blogs" where you can find a lot of life-development topics.

Darlyne de Haan
STEM in ELT Blog

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I'm an avid cross-fitter, I love athletic challenges, and I love being with the family. I have two grown children who are living their best lives traveling and living abroad, although both are presently living in the United States, which I'm enjoying very much. I have no grandchildren yet, but am anticipating the day I can be called "Nana." In my spare time, I love to create videos and am presently working on a major project converting the family's home photos and videos from 8mm and video cassettes to digital versions so that my children will have them forever. I'm looking forward to retiring in the next 3 years and traveling to all of the places on my and my husband's bucket list.

Visit my websites: Brain Based Science and Neighborhood-Science

Blog post I've written that I'm most proud of: STEM and ELT: What I Learned From My TESOL 2022 Participants

• I feel it's the backbone of what should be occurring in each classroom, regardless of the content area.

Betsy Gilliland
Second Language Writing Blog

I have always been passionate about teaching, since early elementary school when I would force my younger sister and some stuffed animals to sit and listen to me lecture at a small blackboard about whatever I was most interested in at the moment. As I advanced through the levels of French at school, I started realizing that languages were my passion. I finished French and took Spanish and Latin in high school, while at the same time studying Russian at summer camp. By the time I was teaching Russian at the same camp during my university studies, I knew that language teaching was what I really wanted to do in life. Study abroad in Russia and Peace Corps in Uzbekistan solidified my desire to use language teaching as a way to explore the world. And it seems the world agrees with me—I have by chance found ways to continue traveling while teaching language teachers (most recently in Thailand and Chile) and have forged lasting friendships with English language teachers in many countries. I'm glad the TESOL convention is returning to in-person meetings, too, as that's another place where I can reconnect with like-minded colleagues from across the globe.

The blog post I've written that I'm most proud of: Self-Care for Writing Teachers

An outside blog that I read all the time: Concordia Language Villages Blog (bonus: the post I wrote for the CLV blog)

Judie Haynes
Elementary Education Blog

Hi! I'm Judie Haynes, and have been writing a blog for TESOL since April 2014. I'm now retired from teaching elementary ESL. I grew up in New Jersey "down the shore" (as we say in NJ). Living near the ocean and spending time at the beach are important to me. My husband Joe and I have a family of three children (two boys and a girl) and two grandsons. My daughter is a special ed teacher, and one of my grandsons works in the Boston Public Schools. The other grandson is graduating from college next Spring.

When I'm not at the beach, I live in Northern NJ and love to attend Broadway plays and operas in the New York City area. This has been difficult during the pandemic, but it's something I hope to get back to in the spring. I also spend a lot of time with my mother, who is 102 years old. Writing is one of my passions—as well as supporting teachers who are working with multilingual learners of English.

The blog post I've written that I'm most proud of: 8 Books to Read About Teaching MLLs

An outside blog that I read all the time: Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day and Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo) and Valentina Gonzalez’s Serving Multilingual Learners of All Ages

Naashia Mohamed
Multicultural Education Blog

My passion for languages and for teaching began early. I must have been barely 5 years old when I started teaching English. These early classes were aimed at my toys, who sat obediently around the bed as I put on my best teacher performance. I acquired English alongside Dhivehi at home in the Maldives, prior to beginning school, and later became fascinated with other languages I encountered. Many of the things I enjoy doing are language oriented. I can lose myself in a crossword puzzle, become fiercely competitive about Scrabble, read everything I can get my hands on, including the dictionary, and make sense of the world around me through writing. My ideal way to relax involves a combination of long walks in nature, family time, and lots of good food.

Blog post I've written that I'm most proud of: Supporting Muslim Students During Ramadan

An outside blog I read all the time: Cult of Pedagogy (they also have a great podcast)

Spencer Salas
Teaching Reading Blog

Hi, Teachers! For 15 years, I've been a professor of TESOL in the Department of Middle, Secondary, and K–12 Education at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. But, I actually began my career in 1991 at the American Language Center in Casablanca, Morocco followed by a decade with the District of Columbia Public School System, Washington DC as an ESL teacher (1994–2001). Along the way, I've been a Fulbright Fellow to Romania (1998), Guatemala (2007), and South Africa (2013); an Erasmus Fellow to Germany (2017); and a Senior English Language Fellow to Peru (2001–2003).

These days, I write for a broad range of audiences with recent feature manuscripts in The Urban Review, Equity & Excellence in Education, and The New Educator. I also coedited Vygotsky in 21st Century Society (Peter Lang, 2011), U.S. Latinos and Education Policy (Routledge, 2014), Education in the New Latino South (SUNY Press, 2017), and The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, First Edition (TESOL, 2018). I'm excited to be writing for the TESOL Blog! It's been a terrific way to reconnect with old colleagues and to make new ones!

Blog post I've written that I'm most proud of: Reading the Sun, Moon, and Stars: Intergenerational Literacy

• I wrote this post about intergenerational literacies for my dad's 90th birthday.

An outside blog I read all the time: I love to learn from my colleagues.

Brent Warner
Educational Technology Blog

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I'm Brent and I've been in the TESOL field for…getting close to 20 years! When I'm not teaching (or talking about teaching), you can usually find me exploring coffee shops or taquerias around southern California. Before everything crashed and burned, I also liked to travel. I've been around the world by plane and by boat, and I had a plan to travel around the world by train, but that's on hiatus until the world learns to catch its breath. Plans to pogo around the world were permanently suspended with my entry into middle age. I'm a fan of bad 80s action movies and even worse 80s horror movies, as well as the occasional high-brow art film. I also recently took up guitar, so if you have any tips on how to be a better shredder, let me know!

Blog post I've written that I'm most proud of: 5 No Prep Activities Using Photo Apps

An outside blog I read all the time: I don't read a lot of blogs lately, but I love James Hoffmann's YouTube Channel