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Dear ITA Professionals,
As we all now know, the TESOL leadership has made the wise and
anticipated decision to cancel the convention this year. I think I speak
for all of us when I say how disappointing it is that we will not see
each other at the 2020 TESOL convention in Denver. It is one of the
professional highlights of the year for many of us. However, I am
reassured by the ongoing interactions and support that we provide to
each other remotely throughout the year. Additionally, our ITAIS is
already actively working on creating a platform to provide the
opportunity for presenters to share their virtual presentations and
materials. We are ahead of the curve!
This has been an active year in our International Teaching
Assistants Interest Section (ITAIS) Steering Committee. There has been a
lot of positive interaction with TESOL leadership and a genuine effort
to understand the challenges facing our Interest Section (IS). As you
may have noticed, there was a significant increase over last year in the
number of ITA sessions that were scheduled at this year’s 2020 TESOL
Convention. Thank you to everyone who submitted proposals last
year. Your hard work paid off for all of us by increasing our
visibility in the convention programming. Although you will not present
at the 2020 TESOL Convention, you will be able to share your
presentations with the broader ITA community through a virtual format.
I plan to create a virtual version of the ITAIS Business
Meeting that would have been held at the convention. I aim to be share
this with you around the same date as was originally scheduled, pending
any changes or new information from TESOL about transitioning our
Steering Committee.
Over the last two months, Maria Mendoza and I have been working
on an exciting project to bring virtual content to the ITA community,
with the collaboration and support of Rebecca Oreto and Jenny Grill. We
recognize that not all of us are as fortunate in receiving funding to
attend professional development opportunities such as conferences. In
addition, as a community, we are spread across the country, and are
often working in isolation from one another. The idea behind the project
is to provide ITA content to our community in a virtual format to
enable broader access to professional resources and information. We are
asking that some of you may consider creating some online content or a
virtual session or webinar based on your presentations at the ITA Professionals
Symposium in order to increase access to ITA professional
development.
Maria has spearheaded the project by creating a virtual poster
session (see more details in Maria’s letter). Her virtual poster has
been shared on the ITA listserv
and was also shown at the ITA
Symposium in February at UC Davis. In addition, Liz Tummons
and others have begun to experiment with creating and sharing virtual
content. More details about participation will be available in the
coming weeks. I encourage all of you to consider participating in this
project. Currently, this is the plan for moving forward with sharing
content:
ITA Professional Symposium
Jenny Grill, in collaboration with Rebecca Oreto, has
volunteered to work on setting up a platform for ITA Symposium
presenters to share materials. This may be a Dropbox, or another format
that allows us free access. She will share information on this in the
near future.
If you presented at the ITA Symposium at UC Davis this year,
please reach out to Jenny. If you are able to assist Jenny with this
project, I'm sure she would appreciate the help. Here is her email
address:
jgrill@admin.fsu.edu
TESOL Convention
Regarding the TESOL sessions, we will to see if TESOL will be
able to provide a platform for the presentation materials. If not, then
we will go ahead within the ITA community and create our own resources
platform, probably another Dropbox for all the TESOL materials. We would
like very much to provide an opportunity to share our presentations, if
TESOL is unable to do so. This may also be an opportunity for people
whose proposals were not accepted to share with our community as well.
Many of us are on break now, or will be soon, so I believe we
can wait to make any decisions regarding the TESOL presentations,
especially since TESOL plans to hold online town hall meetings on this
topic. This will also give TESOL leadership time to communicate on this
issue. I know that many of us are also scrambling to deal with cancelled
travel plans associated with spring break, new directives to transition
to online instruction, and so on, myself included.
I want to thank you all for your continued support of our
ITA community. Since I transitioned to my ITA role at Georgia Tech in
2013, I have been actively involved with our group. The professional
guidance, support, and knowledge that I have gained from colleagues has
made a profound difference to me personally, and to the way that I am
able to fulfill my position. The networking and knowledge that I gain
each year at TESOL, at the ITA Professionals’ Symposium, on our
listserv, and in other avenues throughout the year continues to enhance
my professional growth. I am sincerely grateful to all of you.
Finally, I wanted to extend my gratitude and thanks to the
2019–2020 ITAIS Steering Committee: Maria Mendoza, Derina Samuel, Diane
Cotsonas, Belinda Braunstein, and Cynthia DeRoma, and a very heartfelt
thanks to Sarah Emory and Laura Murphy.
Thanks everyone for being amazing colleagues!
Warm regards,
Mo Burke
Chair, ITAIS Steering Committee | 
