ICIS Newsletter - March 2023 (Plain Text Version)
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LEADERSHIP UPDATES LETTER FROM THE CHAIRS Andrea Eniko Lypka, Pinellas Education Foundation, USA
Dear Intercultural Communication Members and Friends, Welcome to this edition of the InterCom Newsletter! As we near the end of our service as co-chairs of the TESOL Intercultural Communication Interest Section (ICIS), we find ourselves inspired not only by the vibrant and at times challenging, emotional professional discussions and reflections we have shared over the last year, but also the meaningful connections we established with many of you on myTESOL, Twitter, Facebook, and Zoom sessions. We are re-energized and excited to hand over the baton to the incoming ICIS Co-Chairs for 2023-2024, Leslie Bohon and Josie Prado. We are thrilled that Leslie and Josie have agreed to oversee the growth of our ICIS. We also want to express our gratitude to the presenters who have dedicated their time and expertise and the ICIS TESOL leadership team – Roxanna Senyshyn, Amina Douidi, Sharon Tjaden-Glass, Daniela Silva, and Ramin Yazdanpanah— we are grateful for your comradery, selflessness, and dedication to support our professional development events this year. Our leadership team continued the monthly virtual meetings and professional events that included webinars, coffee hours, as well as the voices from the classroom and lightning talks event series. Our Coffee Hours and Voices from the Classroom events have grown in popularity and become a platform for intercultural communication enthusiasts and practitioners to discuss interculturality, winter solstice readings, mindfulness, wellbeing, DEI, StoryStitch, and equitable pedagogy in a friendly environment. Many of our events have revealed that teaching English through a critical lens is vital in extremely challenging situations, including areas affected by war. To the presenters who joined the first-ever virtual forum series, Voices from the Classroom: Teaching in a Time of War on January 26th and February 3rd 2023 – you have demonstrated the value of humanistic, intercultural teaching approaches in the language classroom; and the importance of teacher wellbeing to support learner wellbeing. Over 110 people have attended these two events and many others have watched the recordings of these sessions. We have received a great number of positive comments from the attendees, and many have expressed their professional reinvigoration as a result. The recordings of these events can be viewed on our new YouTube channel-https://www.youtube.com/@ICIS_TESOL/ Our final event before the TESOL 2023 Convention is a webinar by Manuela Maria Guilherme from the University of Coimbra, entitled Glocademics, glocal languages and intercultural responsibility and how they can be relevant to TESOL. This webinar will be held on March 10 at 12 pm EST. For the upcoming TESOL 2023 Convention, and to continue the tradition, the ICIS team planned academic and intersection panels in collaboration with the Computer-Assisted Language Learning Interest Section (CALL-IS) and Reading and Vocabulary Interest Section (RV-IS). The academic panel, Storytelling and Interculturality addresses different approaches, tools, and methodologies related to intercultural communication and language teaching. Our panel with the RV-I, Open Windows to the World: Developing Intercultural Understanding through Reading, will focus on anti-biased and inclusive language education. Our third panel is in collaboration with CALL IS, Teaching Intercultural Competence in the New Global Techno World. Please consider joining us for these three sessions. Sending out this letter to the InterCom Newsletter will be our last function as co-chairs of the ICIS. While we remain committed to continue to serve our community of practice we would love to see our Interest Section grow and thrive. If you are interested in leading a coffee hour, webinar, or submitting a newsletter or becoming part of our leadership team, we would encourage you to attend the annual ICIS business meeting that will be held during this year’s Convention on Thursday, March 23rd. You are warmly invited to stop at our ICIS stand during the newly-proposed TESOL fair, on Wednesday afternoon, the 22nd March 2023, from 6.00 to 7.30 p.m. It is the involvement by our members that drives the mission of ICIS TESOL. We look forward to continued interactions with you at the Convention and other activities. Andrea Lypka and Barbara Lapornik 2022-2023 ICIS Co-Chairs Andrea Enikő Lypka, PhD, is the Co-Chair of the Intercultural Communication Interest Section of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (ICIS TESOL) International and the President of the Sunshine State TESOL. She is passionate about digital equity, student identity, storytelling, intercultural communication, and identity. You can contact Andrea at alypka@mail.usf.edu Barbara Lapornik, M.A., is the Co-Chair of the ICIS TESOL. She comes from the city of Trieste, Italy, where she is currently the vice- principal, the European project manager, the EFL exam tutor and English literature teacher at the bilingual high school Liceo Scientifico Statale- Državni Znanstveni licej “France Prešeren“. She has a twenty- five- year experience in organizing and coordinating EU projects, student exchanges and civic and citizenship competitions. Her main interests are intercultural student education and the interlink between theoretical principles and professional practice. She can be contacted at: barbara.lapornik@gmail.com |
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