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Anastasia Khawaja
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Riah Werner
| Hello SRIS,
We hope you’re well, wherever you are. We wrote our chair
letter, assuming that we would come together as an interest section in a
few short weeks in Denver, but as the coronavirus has spread around the
world, we learned that that would not be the case. Day by day it’s
become increasingly clear that the socially responsible thing is to stay
home in order to minimize the risk of spreading this disease, but we
will miss the opportunity to see many of you face to face at the
convention, a highlight of each year for many of us. TESOL has been
working to find new ways for us to safely come together, and to maintain
some of the energy of the annual convention through remote
participation. The details of the logistics of moving such a large
convention to a new format in the midst of a global pandemic are still
being finalized, but it was so great to be able to connect with many of
you at our virtual meeting this past Wednesday. For those of you who
were not able to attend, we missed you. We posted the entire recording
in our group on My TESOL. We had an informative and uplifting discussion
regarding new ways to maintain our community as we all shift to
spending more time at home. Many ideas were shared like a virtual social
hour and a virtual book club. There were also several concerns that
were discussed with regard to work load and added stresses of being
home. It is indeed a fine line to walk as we navigate the minefield of
finding ways to connect to be sources of support for one another, and
not just the feeling of adding another meeting to already filled and
overwhelmed schedules. Stay tuned to our various communication platforms
for future virtual gatherings, and please do consider participating if
you are able.
Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, we in SRIS were aware of the
ways the slogan for this year’s convention, “Where the World Comes
Together” were aspirational and out of reach for many of us, whether due
to financial considerations or travel bans barring entry to the United
States. We advocated for more remote participation as a way of
increasing equity and making participation in the convention more
accessible. As schools around the world close their doors and more and
more countries close their borders, we suddenly all find ourselves in
the position of needing remote access in order to participate, and we
are happy to say that the TESOL leadership is hard at working trying to
find new ways of maintaining our international community from afar. In
addition to holding our open meeting online, TESOL has also committed to
finding a way for each IS’s academic session and intersections to go
forward remotely. While the details of moving these online are still
being discussed, we’re excited to share the topics of the SRIS sessions
with you.
In our academic session, Challenges
in Social Responsibility in TESOL: Healing Along Fractured
Lines, SRIS will highlight our four domains as our panelists
explore the topic of fractured lines in ELT. This panel will also be a
wonderful opportunity to hear about the current work of the domains. The
domain structures are one way we can build and maintain community in
SRIS, and we hope it will inspire you to think of new ways of getting
involved around the social responsibility issues that resonate most
deeply with you. Our primary intersection with TEIS and ALIS entitled Critical
Theory and Critical Pedagogy: Bridging the Gap, will explore
how social issues can be explored in applied linguistics and teacher
education, and will highlight the synergies between critical approaches
to theory and practice and the ways teacher education can be a site for
bringing the two into conversation. We also have a secondary panel with
ALIS entitled Pursuing
Social Justice in TESOL will focus on how social justice work
can be incorporated in the work of applied linguists. Our next
secondary intersection is a collaboration with RCIS and ICIS entitled Teaching
Peace Language for Turbulent Times: Empowering Immigrants and
Refugees. In this session, panelists will focus on the role of
peace language in ELT and curriculum development globally. Finally, we
have a special intersection with members of a range of Professional
Learning Networks, exploring how TESOL can better address diversity: Diversifying
TESOL: Working Together Towards Inclusivity. You will hear
from representatives from the LGBT+ PLN, Palestinian Educators and
Friends PLN (PE&F), Black English Language Educator
Professionals and Friends PLN (BELPaF), and TESOL Diversity
Collaborative, who will share their perspectives and experiences
regarding what has been done so far to diversify and recommendations for
next steps.
There are also a number of online platforms for us to stay
connected as an interest section. We have our MyTESOL
discussion board, our Facebook
page, and our Twitter account. The online
platform for the convention is also still up and running, so
you can share powerpoints, handouts or papers for the presentations you
were planning on giving at the convention there. We’re also exploring
other avenues for our members to share our work, so please reach out if
you’d be interested in contributing to a webinar or writing an article
for the SRIS newsletter, or if you have another idea for remote
engagement. While many schools are closed, teachers are still powerful
sources of information, so TESOL has compiled a list
of reliable and accurate materials you can use to teach about
the novel coronavirus and COVID-19.
These are uncertain times, as we all find new ways to come
together and to support each other, even from afar. Yes, the socially
responsible thing is the be physically distant. Yet, even as we find
ourselves physically distant, we hope we can draw from our strength as a
community and find ways to come through this together. The coronavirus
has highlighted the impacts of inequity around the globe, and the needs
for robust systems of social support. We are all in this together, and
hopefully we will come through the other side with a stronger sense of
our interdependence.
Stay well, SRIS,
Riah and Anastasia |
