This year in Portland BEIS celebrated 40 years of Bilingual Education in TESOL. To commemorate this event, Sandra Mercuri, Chair, and Dawn Wink, Chair-Elect, worked on two important tasks:

a) Reach out to other organizations to establish a relationship for recruitment of new members for BEIS. As a result, four members of the Board and staff of Dual Language of New Mexico (DLeNM) became members of our Bilingual Education Interest Section. In addition, the leadership team established an electronic communication system with DLeNM’s executive director David Rogers and attended DLeNM’s November conference in Albuquerque. Our goal was to promote TESOL at sessions and at the booth provided by Mr. Rogers and enhance our recruitment efforts through their national and international community, which includes members from Canada, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Qatar, Japan, and others. While based in New Mexico, DLeNM engages, contributes, and is relevant in the national and international scope.

b) During the past year the leadership team worked hard to organize an academic session to honor those in TESOL who have contributed to the field of bilingual education. Among our academic session honorees and presenters were Jim Cummins, Maria Brisk, Yvonne and David Freeman, Virginia Collier, Wayne Thomas, and Joan Wink. In addition, BEIS had two important intersections and fifteen presentations by its members.

1. BEIS Academic Session - "A Celebration of 40 Years of Multilingualism Within TESOL" presented by Maria Brisk, Yvonne and David Freeman, Virginia Collier, Wayne Thomas, and Joan Wink

2. Teacher education and BEIS Inter Section Session -"Cultural Context in Teacher Education" presented by Sandra Mercuri, Jenelle Reeves, and Dawn Wink.

3. Elementary Education and BEIS Intersection - "Explore Common Core, Sustain Successful Strategies, Renew Academic Literacy" presented by Judie Haynes, Sandra Mercuri, and Aida Nevarez-LaTorre.

Moreover, Sandra Musanti, currently Chair Elect-Elect of the IS, presented “Mathematics Discourse Communities: Advancing Latina/o mathematics learning and academic literacy”in the general session.

Sandra Mercuri, PhD
BEIS Past Chair
Associate Professor and Chair,
Language, Literacy and Intercultural Studies Department
College of Education
University of Texas at Brownsville