Dear members of B-MEIS,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest and involvement in the section and in the TESOL organization. I would also like to wish you the best in your professional endeavors. It is because of members like you that both our interest section and TESOL is, and will continue to be, a force in the education of English learners internationally.

I don’t think I would be revealing any hidden secrets should I mention that we are living in interesting times. For those of us in the United States, November elections in 2016, for example, have given us reasons for both hope and uncertainty, if not despair. On the one hand, nearly three fourths of California voters approved Proposition 58. This initiative will open the doors to the implementation of different types of educational programs where languages other than English will be present, benefitting, in so doing, both English learners and English-only students. Its passage may hopefully lead Californians to value multilingualism as a resource and an asset instead of a threat and abandon the old statement in Paul Simon’s book, The Tongue-Tied American: “The United States can be characterized as the home of the brave and the land of the monolingual.”

On the other hand, the election of a controversial and divisive president has done nothing so far to ensure that the United States strengthens relationships with other countries and respects both American citizens as well as the citizens of the global village. I don’t think it is necessary to bring up here, once again, his continuously pejorative, dismissive, and inflammatory comments about women, Muslims, Mexicans, or journalists, or his erratic national and international policies. The last straw was his selection of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, a billionaire whose credentials include having no background in education or knowledge of the public school system, and supporting school vouchers.

What can we, as B-MEIS members and TESOLers do in the midst of this hope and uncertainty, as I mentioned before? Two things come to mind. The first one is to remain advocating for English learners and to continue to educate them to the best of our knowledge. The second, to remember Viktor Frankl’s advice in his Man’s Search for Meaning memoir: You can’t control what happens to you, but you can choose how to cope with it.

Thank you all

Francisco Ramos,

B-MEIS Past Chair

Francisco Ramos received his PhD in Language, Literacy, and Learning from the University of Southern California, Rossier School of Education. Supported by the Title VII Doctoral Fellowship from the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Learning Language Affairs, he wrote his dissertation on Teachers’ beliefs about native language instruction for language minority students. Dr.Ramos is also a 2nd Place Winner of the 2nd Dissertation Competition of the Bilingual Education Research Special Interest Group, American Educational Research Association. He is currently a Professor of Elementary and Secondary Education in the School of Education at the Loyola Marymount University.