Dear SRIS members,

It is with great enthusiasm that we, the SRIS leadership team, take this opportunity to introduce ourselves to you.

Our co-chairs this year are Anastasia Khawaja and Riah Werner. Anastasia just defended her dissertation exploring emotions associated with languages that Palestinians use in Palestine and in the diaspora as well as experience and practices with those languages. Her current research engages with peace education and breaking the binary understanding of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict. 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 is finishing her second year as an English Language Fellow at the National Pedagogical Institute for Technical and Professional Training in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, where she has developed a national continuing professional development program for in-service teachers. In the fall, she will begin her PhD in Language and Literacy Education at the University of Toronto. 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.

Our chair-elects this year are Sky Lantz-Wagner and Federico Salas-Isnardi. Sky Lantz-Wagner is an IEP instructor and PhD candidate in Educational Leadership at the University of Dayton (UD). Sky served as a Peace Corps TEFL volunteer in China from 2010 - 2012 where his interest in social responsibility, especially in regard to language testing, began. Recently, he has worked with a TEFL certificate program designed to offer teacher training and career opportunities to Dreamers who have returned to Mexico. Federico Salas-Isnardi is a diversity trainer and consultant, adult educator, and ESL author who has developed and facilitated hundreds of workshops and seminars over the years. Federico's passion is the role of social justice education in empowering communities, and he focuses much of his work on issues affecting immigrants and refugees and interfaith relations. Federico has been a member of TESOL for 27 years and is a former chair of the Adult Education Interest Section (AEIS) and former member of the nominating committee.

Carter A. Winkle is our past chair this year. Carter is an Associate Professor and Program Director at Barry University in the Division of Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Research where he works 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.

Luis Javier Pentón Herrera and Ethan Trinh are the incoming co-editors of this newsletter - TESOLers for Social Responsibility. Luis Javier is currently a high school ESOL teacher and an adjunct professor of TESOL at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and of Spanish at University of Maryland University College (UMUC). In addition, he currently serves as Past President of Maryland TESOL (2019-2020) and as Trustee of the National Museum of Language. His research interests include bilingual education, ESOL/ESL, Spanish, literacy education, and problem-based service-learning (PBSL). Luis holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership: Reading, Language, and Literacy from Concordia University Chicago. Ethan is a Vietnamese transnational ESOL instructor and a first-year doctoral student at Department of Middle and Secondary Education, Georgia State University. His research interests are queer transnationals, ESL/ESOL, Vietnamese Studies, Chicana Feminism, and Writing Meditation.

Our community managers are Katrina Schmidt and Hetal Ascher. Katrina J. Schmidt is an English Language Fellow in Tijuana, Mexico and currently works as a teacher trainer at Universidad Tecnológica de Tijuana. She got her start teaching English to adults in New Orleans and later pursued a master’s degree in TESOL from The New School. Before her current position, Katrina taught at universities both in the US and Colombia and is interested in equitable teaching practices, academic English, and computer-assisted language learning (CALL). Hetal Ascher is currently the English as an Additional Language lead teacher at Dulwich International High School Suzhou in China. She is originally from Minnesota and previously worked there teaching ESL to immigrant and refugee students at a public middle school. She recently completed a MA in ESL Education from Hamline University, St. Paul, and before that received her BA and teaching license in ESL Education K-12 from University of Northwestern, St. Paul. Her interests include literacy for English learners, educational equity, and teacher evaluation.

In addition to our SRIS Leaders, we also have Advocacy Domain Leaders in four different areas.

The first area, EL Advocacy, serves to build a community within which equitable practices and pedagogies are examined from the theoretical spectrum to innovative practical applications. It is co-led by Babak Khoshnevisan and Christine Poteau. Babak is a Ph.D. candidate in Technology in Education and Second Language Acquisition (TESLA) Program at the University of South Florida (USF). He is an instructor of EAP courses at INTO USF. His research interests include teacher education, CALL, idiomaticity, and AR. He sees advocacy as an umbrella term, which involves the sustainable development goals of the UN. He is interested in the UN goals in terms of quality education, as well as in the identity of international students. Christine holds a Ph.D. in Spanish Applied Linguistics from Temple University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at Rowan University with research and pedagogical interests in ESL, EFL, and Spanish Applied Linguistics. She is especially interested in connecting second and foreign language learners in collaborative advocacy for equitable rights and access to education, medical care, and legal counsel in local and global contexts.

The next area of advocacy, Intersections of Identity and Language Teaching, aims to raise awareness and foster dialogue and debate about different conceptualizations and practices of identity among our ELT communities and is led by Hemamalini Ramachandran,Gyewon Jang, and Margo Wolfe. Hema is an Instructor at the University of South Florida; she has also taught & supervised undergraduate theses in the USF Honors College. Her education includes a PhD in Film, MA TESOL, & MA French; she has taught at the university level, in high school, and in community college in different national/cultural contexts. Hema comes into TESOL with an extensive background in cultural studies/theory. Her enduring interest in issues of culture, identity, representation, & equity motivated her to agree to lead the SRIS strand, Intersections of Language Teaching & Identity. Gyewon Jang is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Middle and Secondary Education at Georgia State University. With the concentration on language and literacy, her research interests are linguistic and cultural identity development of immigrant youth students, language and literacy teaching and learning practices in critical intercultural education, teaching English as a second/foreign language, and qualitative research methods. Margo Wolfe, Ph.D. is an instructor at Gannon University in Erie, PA. Her background, aside from ELL, includes teaching literature, speech, theatre, and creative writing. In addition to teaching, Margo writes grants for many nonprofits who serve marginalized communities.

The third area of advocacy, Professional Learning, serves to connect members of the TESOL community who want to unpack specific areas of social justice and equity in education, and includes teacher education, curriculum development and social justice resources. This area is led by Christine Leider and Ayanna Cooper. Dr. Leider is a former ESL teacher and is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Bilingual Education and TESOL at Boston University. Her research focuses on instruction and assessment for emergent bilinguals and her teaching focuses on developing anti-racist pedagogy and critical perspectives with ESL, Sheltered English Immersion, and Bilingual Education teachers. Ayanna Cooper, Ed.D. is an educational consultant, author, keynote speaker and advocate for English learners. As the owner of ACooper Consulting, a small business, she provides technical assistance to state departments of education, school districts and organizations with the goal of improving outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse learners.

The final advocacy area, Global Issues in Education, includes peace, the environment and economic justice, and focuses on understanding how students, administrators, researchers, civil society can foster new generations of citizens who care about global issues. Its co-leaders are Yecid Ortega and Valerie Jakar. Yecid is a Ph.D. candidate in the program of Language and Literacies Education (LLE) at OISE – University of Toronto. Yecid explores how globalization, capitalism and neoliberalism influence language policy decision-making and classroom practices. His current specific interest deals with aspects of social justice and peacebuilding within frameworks of epistemologies of the South. His research looks at how English language teaching policy in Colombia is being understood by the school community (students, teachers, parents, principal, etc.) and how it influences classroom practices and students’ lived experiences. Valerie, now retired, has been the ETAI-IsraTESOL representative to TESOL

for many years. An ethnographer, sociolinguist, and teacher educator, she specialized

in professional development projects such as mentor-training for ESOL teachers, the

promotion of global issues awareness and peace education through content-based

EFL instruction, and counseling and supervising pre-service and in-service teachers of English. One of the founding members of SRIS, she has continued to be concerned with collaboration in a global community, outreach to less privileged communities of practice and the interaction of research and reflective practice for educational improvement.

If you would like to become more involved in the SRIS, reach out and let us know of your interest! SRIS has online presences on myTESOL,Facebook and Twitter, make sure to stay informed and become active in our community.

We are looking forward to another exciting year of Social Responsibility with all of you!

Sincerely,

The SRIS Leadership Team