It is a great pleasure to speak with you through this medium. I hope that for everyone, regardless of the corner of the globe that you might be in, that the past break from teaching was well spent and that you are invigorated as another semester takes off. Every year around this time, the new chair for TESOL’s TEIS takes the platform to introduce her/himself and to talk about common interests.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the camaraderie that you have shown to our fellow teacher educators on our e-list. I have been pleased to see how responsive people have been to some of the issues raised, especially the one on teacher retention. We are certainly a vibrant community!

I am also very pleased by your willingness to participate in the proposal review process. More than 100 of you offered to review proposals. Though some of you did not get to start or complete the review (systems glitches and lack of information on the correct IS), I was exceedingly grateful to those of you who did and by those who jumped on board at the last minute to help out. Catherine Curtis, Lisa Dyson, and the folks at Head Office were also of great assistance in helping us to complete all our proposals in a timely fashion. Thank you all so much!

This year we received 273 proposals. Thanks again to all of you who submitted one! Now here is the tough part. We are allocated only 66 slots (based on our membership and the total number of slots). Our IS acceptance rate was approximately 24 percent. It is also important for you to know that all those proposals accepted achieved scores ranging from 26 to 30 out of a total of 30 points and each proposal was rated by at least two raters. Our conference chair and her team will be releasing the results soon. My sincerest congratulations to those of you who got in! We look forward to excellent presentations in Philadelphia!

If you would like to participate in the leadership decision-making process for our IS, please note that nominations are now open for all our positions. Our incoming chair after me is Anne Walker from the University of North Dakota, and our chair-elect-elect is Jenelle Reeves from the University of Nebraska. Julia Austin is currently our outgoing chair, a position I shall assume after our conference ends next year. We encourage all of you who are interested to let me know forthwith and to send me your purpose and bio statements. These need to be at TESOL Head Office by October 31. Elections will take place the first two weeks in November. I shall be posting special e-mail reminders in due course but do consider volunteering or recommending someone who represents dynamic leadership!

I have not talked much about myself in this newsletter. I thought it was more appropriate to discuss important IS matters first. I think many of you know a little about me. I was your TESOL Conference Chair for Denver (2009). Remember the snowstorm? Yes, that conference! I am a native of the Bahamas, studied at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto in Canada, taught in Hong Kong for 12 years, and am beginning my ninth year in the United States at Georgia State University in Atlanta. My department is one of the largest at Georgia State and one of the most diverse in terms of faculty ethnicities and countries of origin. I am the unit leader for our Language and Literacy Unit and also the coordinator for our ESOL Endorsement Program. I teach ESOL, language, and literacy courses to our master’s and doctoral students.

If I had to tell you in a nutshell the focus of my research currently and over the years it would have to be “teacher professional development.” My passion is impacting classroom teachers so that they in turn maximize their students’ potential for learning. I am happy when I hear from my teachers that they are doing well and remember me for something positive. I term that “impact.” I love being a teacher educator professor (except when NCATE reports are due, and we have three different teacher education reports due now). I believe that the buck stops with us and I believe that some of what ails teachers is because of us and some of what causes teachers to prosper is the positive impact of our work. This is all I want to say about me.

What is your passion? What is the focus of your research? Please use our newsletter to help us do more collaboration within and across borders. Tell us who you are and what moves you. Let’s work together to make our teacher educator lives less miserable and more stimulating by the conversations we have and the collaborative work we engage in as a result of our members. Let’s talk. I really want to hear from you and to connect.

Looking forward to ongoing exchanges on our e-list and via our newsletters!

Sincerely,

Gertrude Tinker Sachs