It has been a challenge to find the words to write over the past few weeks as advocates and activists are faced with seemingly insurmountable tasks as the headlines unfold every day, multiple times a day. However, just as our academic session at the TESOL convention closed with advice from Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, this post convention newsletter opens with it. He said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

These words have become a kind of a daily mantra for us to live by during these fraught times. There are entirely too many heartbreaking stories to list. We have all seen the news. These continuously unfolding events bring opportunities for more protests, more marches, and more advocacy for so many groups of people. In this newsletter, we are proud to bring you helpers whose work exhibit hope, inclusivity, and a call to get involved and come together. In this issue, we continue conversations started at the convention. We highlight not only the work of this interest section, but also we underscore the crucial value many of the social justice related professional learning networks bring to the TESOL organization as well. 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 contrast to the divisiveness that has become so prevalent in the news, the SRIS newsletter focuses on the ways we can create inclusive educational spaces and advocate for solidarity within our professional communities. This issue begins with Riah Werner’s Black Spaces and White Norms: The Importance of BELPaF for the TESOL Community, a reflection on the history of the Black English Language Professionals and Friends Professional Learning Network and the importance of maintaining supportive spaces for underrepresented groups within TESOL. Shifting to focus on classroom experiences, James D. Mitchell draws connections between his research and his life experiences in order to highlight the necessity of inclusive classroom spaces for the success of LGBTQ+ language learners in Invalidated Identity and Foreign Language Anxiety: A Personal Reflection. Focusing on how administrative decisions can affect students, Jennifer Burr’s Social Intelligence Course Implementation for English Learners describes how a school district in Texas designed a course to help newcomer students develop the social and emotional skills they need to be successful in their new environment. Next, in The Neighbor’s Window: A Visual World Foundation Project on Bystanders Becoming Upstanders, Zsuzsanna Kozák and Ildikó Lázár outline classroom activities from a project they conducted in Hungary, which used images from the Holocaust to help students counter the bystander effect and learn to speak up in the face of injustice.

We conclude this issue with Cinthya Salazar’s thoughtful review of Teachers as Allies: Transformative Practices for Teaching DREAMers and Undocumented Students, edited by Shelley Wong, Elaisa Sánchez Gosnell, Anne Marie Foerster Luu, and Lori Dodson, the first selection for SRIS’s book club. Salazar highlights the urgent needs for resources to help teachers and administrators working with undocumented students in the US, and outlines the ways this book fills that gap, drawing particular attention to the way students’ own voices are incorporated into the book. We hope you will join us in reading Teachers as Allies, and participate in online discussions with the editors and other members of the SRIS community throughout August and September. Please check our Facebook page for more information and to share your thoughts about the book.

As our communities continue to be impacted by the continuous barrage of breaking news day in and day out, how do we continue to deal with this? How can we be reminded we are not alone in the fight? Don’t worry SRIS! We have your back;). Our next issue is about allyship! This issue will be dedicated to discussing the responsibility we hold to be allies, as well as advice about self care. Please see the call for submissions and consider contributing to another timely, crucial issue for our interest section and for TESOL.

Just as this letter opened with a quote of hope, allow us to end with the words of the great John Lewis, civil rights icon, American hero, and the United States Congressman representing Atlanta, the site of next year’s TESOL convention. There is truly nobody better to look to during this trying time. Representative Lewis has tweeted several times, encouraging everyone to get out and take action, following his tweets with the hashtag #goodtrouble. “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Well SRIS, let’s make good trouble! Continue to fight, continue to advocate, and remember, we are all in this together.

Sincerely,

Anastasia and Riah

Anastasia Khawaja has been in the TESOL teaching profession for 11 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.

Riah Werner is an English teacher and teacher trainer who has taught in Africa, Asia and South America. She is currently an English Language Fellow based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, where she has designed a national continuing professional development project for in-service teachers. 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.