I am honored to be serving as your 2017–2018 chair in the Teacher Education Interest Section (TEIS) and eagerly anticipate reconnecting with you at the TESOL 2018 convention in Chicago. We have been gearing up for a wonderful conference experience, hoping to gather at the conference with as many teacher educator colleagues as possible. TESOL International Association is launching a myriad of new initiatives to offer fresh resources and a convention experience that will be more closely focused around attendees’ specific interests.

Steering Committee Credits

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the 2017–2018 TEIS Steering Committee, whose every member has been steadfastly organizing and contributing to the success of TESOL’s initiatives. The organizer of the 2018 TEIS academic session is our Chair-Elect, Dr. Kate Mastruserio Reynolds. Our incoming Chair-Elect, Dr. Kristen Lindahl, has been especially productive with the Teacher Education blog; Kristen has also taken charge of organizing several of the InterSection panels. We have our Newsletter Editor, Fatma Ghailan, to credit for the past six issues of the TEIS News. The invitation is open to all of you to contribute articles for future volumes. Dr. Nikki Ashcraft has led TEIS in many roles over the years; most recently, she has been our community manager on my.tesol.org, which we hope you are following. Although this platform is a fairly new addition, the teacher education community has more than 2,200 members, who have posted hundreds of discussions. We are also active on Facebook with more than 700 followers. The steering committee has been fortunate to benefit from the guidance of the immediate Past Chair, Dr. Laura Baecher, whom TESOL members recently elected for the 2018–2019 Nominating Committee. Congratulations to Laura! Dr. Angela Bell, the 2015–2016 TEIS chair, has returned to the United States from Belgium, and has been serving TEIS in an advisory capacity as well. Another new leader to congratulate is Dr. Faridah Pawan, whom TEIS members elected to be the incoming Chair-Elect-Elect. Although her term officially starts at the Annual Business Meeting in March, she has been actively participating on the TEIS Steering Committee and has been a contributor to the interest section’s transition plan for TESOL’s Communities of Practice initiative.

Report on the TESOL 2018 Proposal Reviews

We are indebted to all of you who spent many hours volunteering for last year’s massive proposal review effort. TEIS received 340 presentation proposals for the TESOL 2018 convention. The median rating for the proposals was 4.0. (Very Good) of 5.0. Our slot allotment was 62. With a slot equaling 45 minutes, any panel or workshop that is longer than 45 minutes counted as two slots and any teaching-tip session as half a slot. We accepted 14 practice-oriented sessions, 18 research-oriented sessions, 3 dialogues, 2 teaching tips, 9 panels, 4 workshops, and 15 posters. The overall acceptance rate was 19%. However, the acceptance rate for poster presentations was a whopping 88%, while the acceptance rate for dialogues was only 14%. In cases when sessions tied for ratings, preference was given to the session with multiple presenters.

Based on last year’s reviews, I would recommend for future proposal writers to follow the reviewer rubric closely and to keep chiseling at the proposal until it can rate in the 4.5–5.0 range. Even relatively small errors and inconsistencies become evident to readers who are scrutinizing excellent proposals side by side. The descriptions of research sessions and dialogues can easily give the impression that the project is unfinished and the promised results are unsupported. It makes good sense to hold the proposal until the research project is complete and the full results are clear. Consider joining with copresenters even for 45-minute sessions. When in doubt either about the currency or wide audience interest in the topic, a poster session would be a more feasible choice.

I am thankful for all of the proposals we received; I recognized merit in each one of them. I do feel regret that we could not accept more, and I would like to strongly encourage everyone to resubmit for TESOL 2019 in Atlanta after seeking feedback and mentoring from other TEIS members. I am also inviting every proposal writer to apply to become a proposal reviewer to gain insights into the features of projects that best fit the TESOL convention audience. I am confident that the reviewers made outstanding choices when selecting this year’s program. I welcome you to browse the accepted TEIS sessions and plan ahead in order to reap the most benefit from conference attendance. We have a fully searchable program available where you can browse the teacher education sessions. Please feel free to add these sessions to your own schedule and share them on your favorite social media platforms.

Invitation to the Annual Business Meeting

We invite you to attend the Annual Business Meeting on Wednesday, 28 March 2018, 5 pm–6:30 pm, Room 230a at the McCormick Place Convention Center (North Building) in Chicago. Besides the opportunity to meet with the members of the steering committee, you will be able to discuss the plans for our transitioning to a new form of interest section, one that will conduct its activities year-round as a professional network. We are counting on your input and suggestions for enacting the new, proposed TEIS mission. For more on this, please read the article in this issue, Proposal for a New Mission and Goals for the Teacher Educator Interest Section. Your feedback on these plans is most welcome regardless of your presence at the convention or the annual meeting. Please send comments to Andrea Hellman.