Dear ICIS Community,

Last year’s letter by Past Chair Dr. Ramin Yazdanpanah nicely began with the thought that change is the only constant in life.

This year, we will start with his thoughts, adding that continuity can well be spotted in all the changes and that the intercultural thread that has animated our interest section continues on.

Following the TESOL Convention, we transitioned into a reorganised interest section (IS) or community of practice. To consolidate and enlarge our community, we have appointed two new newsletter co-editors, a new community comanager, and a new member-at-large. We are also eagerly awaiting the strands’ regrouping and selection of cutting-edge topics, which will surely enliven our yearly TESOL Convention in Atlanta and make our profession even richer, more diversified, thoroughly engaging, and culturally more aware.

But to turn to practice, what are our detailed plans for the coming year?

We are proposing the following for the TESOL Convention in Atlanta:

First, an academic panel about reflexivity and its value within language teaching, research, transformative learning, and institutionalised practice. The first InterSection panel with English as a Foreign Language IS is on intercultural secondary and higher education models, which deeply analyse the first and other cultures. The second InterSection proposal, with the Teacher Education IS and Assessment Issues Professional Learning Network (PLN) will focus on assessment: The analysis will include transformative intercultural learning, Deardorff’s process model, and the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale.

Moving on, other activities include our webinar series, started last year. The next speaker will be Dr. Adrian Holliday, one of the major European interculturalists and theoreticians in our field. We have also in mind a webinar for teacher trainers and directors, and we are working on several cowebinars organized in cooperation with other ISs.

To continue, a series of short teaching tips regarding intercultural competence and communication will be published on our Facebook account, hopefully leading to a rich online discussion. Through social media, our leadership will also focus on issues of major intercultural interest, on research, inclusive pedagogy, and diversity.

We plan as well to establish new and closer links with other TESOL affiliates and international organizations and be present at other conferences, which will be reported in the next issues of InterCom.

Finally, we would like to invite you to participate in the events we will be organizing, to add your voice, expertise, and interests. A dialogue with you represents for us a precious bridge of shared knowledge amidst so many different contexts, which make us all grow.

Barbara Lapornik

ICIS Chair, TESOL

Barbara Lapornik, MA, comes from the city of Trieste, Italy, where she is currently the European project manager, vice-principal, and EFL exam tutor at the Liceo Scientifico-Državni znanstveni licej “France Prešeren.” She has extensive experience in organising and coordinating E.U. international projects, student exchanges, and E.U. competitions. She holds an MA in literary and cultural studies from the Universities of Venice and Urbino. She speaks at conferences in the European Union, the United States, and China and is a worldwide traveller. She focuses her present research on intercultural student education in diverse studying contexts and on critical awareness.