President's Message
I hope you've all had an enjoyable summer and are looking forward to new and interesting opportunities in the coming year.
I'm delighted to announce that Tara Holmes was nominated by ATESL and selected by the national association for the TESL Canada Honourary Life Member Award for her significant contributions to TESL at the provincial and national levels. Tara was the focus of the In Conversation section in our last ATESL newsletter, and the award was presented at the TESL Canada Conference in Moncton, NB in May. Congratulations, Tara!
Preparations are well under way for the ATESL 2008 conference to be held in Edmonton on October 17 and 18. Jian Ghomeshi, CBC broadcaster, writer, and musician, will be our plenary speaker on Friday, and Dr. Murray Munro from the Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser University, will be providing insights into the teaching of pronunciation at the Saturday plenary. In addition, there will be over 50 presentations, publishers' exhibits, and lots of opportunities for networking over the two days.
At the ATESL conference lunch on October 18, organizers have created an opportunity for participants with special interests (pronunciation, CALL, etc.) to sit together to discuss issues of importance to you. Those of you who responded to the Special Interest Group survey in April will have been invited to participate in discussions with each other via listserv. We're hoping that these sorts of opportunities will be only the beginning of ongoing sharing of ideas and professional development. We anticipate that groups will start to generate their own ideas for future activities throughout the province, such as discussions of issues, books/ articles, topics for mini-conferences, and so on.
You may have noticed that our newsletter format changed in March. We hope that you'll find the new format appealing. We've also created a special page on our website for posting Funded Innovative Projects. Please have a look at the public reports there to find out about new projects that have been developed to meet the changing needs of ESL in Alberta. Thanks to all the Board members and local committees for their hard work over the past year, and to all our members for their support. I look forward to seeing you at the conference.
Sincerely,
Marian Rossiter
ATESL President