ITAIS Newsletter - March 2020 (Plain Text Version)
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LEADERSHIP UPDATES LETTER FROM THE CHAIR Morag Burke, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
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 |
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