BEIS Newsletter - March 2016 (Plain Text Version)
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LEADERSHIP UPDATES LETTER FROM THE CHAIR
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) |
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