|
Dear BEIS Community,
With this newsletter, I want to celebrate and thank the
wonderful opportunity my colleagues gave me when they elected me for
BEIS office. Being BEIS chair-elect and then chair has been a wonderful
learning experience. At the 2015 TESOL convention in Toronto, Canada we
had 25 exciting presentations that contributed to the continuing
assertion of the important role that our IS has in TESOL. I had the
honor to introduce a terrific academic session with remarkable scholars
such as Maria Brisk, Sylvia Celedón-Pattichis, Gisela Ernst-Slavit,
Margo Gottlieb, and Sultan Turkan. Their reflections helped us grapple
and deepen our understanding of the opportunities and challenges English
learners face in the times of standards. I believe the topic of this
session is at the core of BEIS’s mission to support and promote
bilingualism and multilingualism, as well as approaches to teaching
that, despite restrictive educational policies, build on the strengths
of students’ home languages and cultures.
I am proud to report that BEIS hosted/cohosted two
InterSections that were very well attended and tackled two very relevant
topics. One session focused on the significance of multilingualism in a
globalized world, and the other one on how to develop literacy across
the curriculum for emergent bilinguals. For 2016, BEIS received 38
excellent proposals. I thank all the reviewers who volunteered and
dedicated time to read and comment on each proposal. I hope next year we
receive many more proposals to keep growing our IS, and, hopefully, we
will continue to have so many committed BEIS members to sign up for the
reviews.
Our newsletter keeps getting better! My special thanks to our
wonderful editors: Andrés Ramírez and Alsu Gilmetdinova. This year’s
special topic, Voices From the Field: Tensions and Promises in
Assessment and Instruction of Bilingual Students, brings to
the forefront practitioners’ and educators’ voices sharing their
experiences and insightful reflections. We will learn from them!
Another great accomplishment this year has been the creation
and launching of our BEIS Facebook
page. My special thanks goes to Alsu Gilmetdinova, whose
initiative, time, and dedication made this possible. Please, visit
us!
We’ll soon gather in Baltimore, Maryland, USA to
celebrate the 2016 TESOL convention. Join me to congratulate our new
officers for 2016–2017: Chair, Francisco Ramos; Chair-Elect, Helen Berg;
Incoming Chair-Elect, Juliet Ramos; Secretary-Historian, Laura Ramos;
and Members-at-Large,Traci Bellas and Sandra Mercuri. BEIS will keep
growing and benefiting from the work and service of such a wonderful
group of dedicated and committed educators!
Last but not least, we hope to see you at our featured 2016
academic session and InterSections! Francisco Ramos, our chair-elect,
has organized a timely Language, Culture, and Identity Roundtable. Sandra Mercuri continues
to contribute, organizing an InterSection with EEIS titled “Additive
Bilingualism in English-Only and Bilingual Settings”, and BEIS will join
TEIS and EEIS to present “Transcending Borders: Teacher Education
Practices to Empower Bilingual Elementary Learners.”
If you have any suggestions for the BEIS, we would love to hear
from you! I can be reached at sandra.musanti@utrgv.edu.
Sandra I. Musanti
BEIS Chair (and soon to be Past Chair) |
