Myles Hoenig

Laura Jacob

Carter Winkle

Heidi Faust

Kimberly Mitchell

Anastasia Khawaja

Riah Werner

Hello everyone,

I am pleased to introduce our SRIS team to all of you.

Myles Hoenig is this interest section’s past chair. He teaches high school ESOL full time with Prince George's County Public Schools and has been active with ESOL for decades. He continues his involvement with TESOL and looks forward to continuing to assist SRIS and TESOL any way he can. This year, we warmly welcome our new chair, Laura Jacob. Laura is an ESL instructor at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California and coeditor of Social Justice and English Language Teaching, one of TESOL Press’s best-selling books. We also have two co-chair-elects: Carter Winkle and Heidi Faust. Carter is an associate professor at Barry University in the Division of Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Research, working with doctoral, graduate, and undergraduate education students. He unapologetically wears the badge of “advocate-researcher” as he explores cultural and linguistic issues around English language teaching and learning. Heidi Faust is the associate director of TESOL Professional Training Programs at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Her research area focuses on equity and diversity in education. Heidi also previously served as the chair for the Intercultural Communication Interest Section in 2015. Also new to the SRIS team this year is Community Manager Kimberly Mitchell, an administrator for the Secondary ESL program for Katy ISD in Texas. She became a second language learner while volunteering as an affiliate coordinator for Habitat for Humanity Costa Rica. That experience led her to begin a career in education teaching English learners at the junior and senior high levels. Kimberly also volunteers with an equine therapy organization that serves children and adults with disabilities.

Finally, your newsletter editors are Anastasia Khawaja and Riah Werner. Anastasia is currently a doctoral candidate in second language acquisition/instructional technology at the University of South Florida, busily writing her dissertation proposal focusing on the emotions associated with languages that Palestinians use in Palestine and in the diaspora. She is also a senior instructor at INTO University of South Florida and has previously taught in Peru, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. Riah Werner is finishing up a fellowship at an Ecuadorian public high school and preparing to move to Cote D’Ivoire, where she will be an English Language Fellow teaching ESP and training teachers at the National Pedagogical Institute for Technical and Professional Training in Abidjan this fall. She uses drama and the arts to help her students address the issues facing their communities and is committed to developing locally contextualized pedagogies with the teachers she trains.

All of these individuals are dedicated to furthering the need for advocacy and social responsibility in TESOL. We very much look forward to their participation in SRIS community development and appreciate the leadership they have already shown.

Our SRIS team is here to partner with all of you as we continue to navigate through the current political climate which has already had the potential to wreak havoc not just in our field, but on us as individuals as we advocate for social justice and social responsibility in our lives. This community is now more important than ever. The future can still be bright as long as we keep fighting the good fight together.

Anastasia Khawaja