Hello SRIS!

As we all know, the political climate around the world these days can be fraught, and teaching English is not a value-neutral proposition. For this reason, our incoming co-chairs, Carter Winkle and Heidi Faust, chose ELT and Social Justice in the Current Political Milieu for SRIS’s academic panel at the annual TESOL Convention, which will be held in Chicago, Illinois, USA from 27-30 March, 2018. This panel will be held on Wednesday, 28 March from 3:00pm - 4:45pm and will feature a diverse range of perspectives on how TESOLers are engaging with Social Justice in the current times. Since we know that the annual convention is not easily accessible for all, we chose to mirror this theme for our pre-convention issue, to open up the conversation to all of our members around the world. The articles in this issue, on Social Justice in the Current Political Climate, are an extension of the conversation beyond the convention, featuring projects from a wide range of international contexts. As always our authors’ perspectives are their own, and our newsletter should be taken as a forum for our membership to share their views about issues that are important to them, which may or may not reflect the opinions or official positions of TESOL International Association.

In the first article in this issue, Engaging with Race and ESOL Teaching through a Reading Group, Tracy Iftikar, Andrea Poulos and Parthy Schachter, three ESOL instructors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, share their journey towards deeper engagement with racial issues through the formation of a staff reading group on their campus. They also provide an excellent reading list and encouragement for those wishing to start similar groups with their own colleagues. In From DACA to Dark Souls: Promoting MMORPGs as a Sanctuary for “Los Otros Dreamers,” Steve Daniel Przymus highlights the results of research he conducted about the role of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games in the language and identity development of Los Otros Dreamers, transnational students who’ve grown up in the United States and have since returned to Mexico.

Next, we have two articles that explore the challenges and rewards of international collaborations between teachers in Cuba and the United States. In the personal, reflective piece From the United States to Cuba (but Not Necessarily From Cuba to the United States): The Challenges of International Collaboration in the Current Political Climate, Gloria Ward engages with the impact of the United States’ bloqueo of Cuba and documents the difficulties she and her Cuban colleagues have faced in their efforts to collaborate internationally. Continuing the reflection on the importance of learning with and from our fellow English teachers in Cuba in Professional Growth: Learning Keys to Success from Cuban English Teachers, Shelley Wong recounts the lessons she learned at the 2017 conference of GELI, TESOL’s Cuban affiliate. Together these two articles paint a clear picture of the benefits to be had from international collaborations, despite their challenges.

Shifting focus to the challenges facing teachers in another part of the world, Zeynep Erdil-Moody’s ELT Practice in Turkey: A Brief Look into Challenges and Solutions to Amend the ELT Practice outlines how government policies impact the teaching and learning of English in Turkey, and calls for a pedagogical shift to help create citizens with global citizenship identities. Next, in The Hands Up Project, an article about the international project of the same name that uses stories to teach Palestinian and Syrian refugee children over video, Scott Thornbury describes an innovative model for successfully teaching students who have been displaced by political unrest and describes how readers can get involved in the project. Finally, we have a a review of the book Out of My Great Sorrows, in which Ani McHugh discusses the legacy of trauma passed down to the descendants of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide through the lens of her great aunt, the artist Mary Zakarian, and argues that reading books about injustices such as this helps students and teachers better understand the role of social justice in the classroom.

As we gear up for the 2018 annual TESOL convention and reflect on our first year as editors of this newsletter, we encourage all of you to consider becoming more involved in our interest section. The range of articles we’ve published over the last year, written by a truly diverse group of international authors, have given voice to the importance of reflecting on our practice and integrating social issues into our teaching. Our next issue, Continuing the Conversation, Building Solidarity, about the role of dialogue and community in social justice oriented TESOL, hopes to continue these conversations beyond the convention and include all of our membership, regardless of conference attendance. We strongly encourage you to submit an article and share the work your doing with the rest of our community. The full call for submissions is available here. If you are in a position to attend the convention, we look forward to seeing you in person at our open meeting, which will be held Wednesday, 28 March, 6:45pm-8:15pm in room N132 (and streamed live on the SRIS facebook page for virtual participants). While the time slot is late, it’s important to attend, since being in a room and sharing ideas in real time with like minded SRIS members doing incredible work all over the world, is a truly powerful experience.

Sincerely,

Riah and Anastasia

Riah Werner is an English teacher and teacher trainer who has taught in Tanzania, South Korea, Thailand, Ecuador, and Cote D’Ivoire and trained more than 200 teachers. She is currently an English Language Fellow based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. She holds an MA in TESOL from SIT Graduate Institute. Her research interests include drama and the arts, social justice in ELT, and locally contextualized pedagogy. She documents her projects and blogs about the articles she reads at riahwerner.com.

Anastasia Khawaja has been in the TESOL teaching profession for 10 years. She is a doctoral candidate in second language acquisition/instructional technology at the University of South Florida. Her dissertation research focuses on the emotions associated with languages that Palestinians use in Palestine and in the diaspora. She currently holds the position of senior instructor at INTO University of South Florida and has international teaching experience in Peru, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates.