President's Message

ATESL is 30 years old and has lots to celebrate! We have grown from a membership of 160 in the first year to where we stand today with over 730 members. We have organized provincial conferences since 1979 and this month we are co- hosting our second TESL Canada conference in the marvellous Banff Centre. This year’s TESL Canada Conference, entitled Weaving Pathways: Interculturalism and Language has accepted over 700 participants from across the country. It is a spectacular opportunity in a spectacular setting for professionals in our field to share their expertise. It is also the site of our Grand 30th Anniversary festivities and I do hope all ATESL members will come out to help us celebrate!

The ATESL board continues to work closely with our government partners at both provincial and federal levels to conceptualize and implement projects that support our mission to encourage the highest standards of teacher preparedness and program delivery. One such initiative is the revision of the current Best Practices document. The first draft of the Adult ESL/EAL and LINC Best Practices will be presented at the TESL Canada conference this month, and I wish to applaud the fine work of Sara Gnida and Justine Light on refining and updating this key document.

Over the years that our provincial and federal partners have supported our intent and endeavours, they have helped many organizations in our sector produce resources, such as the Best Practices guidelines, for use by our profession. The scope of the projects and the breadth of development sites across the province have led us to a current project that will enable ATESL to create a system to manage this wealth of publicly-funded resources in order to make them more accessible to all stakeholders across the province. Watch for more details coming about this exciting initiative in the months to come.

Sadly, this year we lost a very special colleague. Dawn Seabrook de Vargas was instrumental in getting ATESL off the ground in the early years and continued throughout her life to be an important pillar of success and inspiration in the ESL community. Dawn will be sadly missed not only for her excellent contributions to the field but for her infectiously positive embrace of life. On behalf of the LINC Service Providers of Edmonton and with support of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the Edmonton Catholic School District’s CLB/LINC Projects Office is honouring the memory of Dawn Seabrook de Vargas with an award for excellence in her name. This award, which will be called the Dawn Seabrook de Vargas Fellowship, is to recognize outstanding contributions and service excellence in the field of ESL in Alberta. The award is open to both instructors and program administrators who are ATESL members involved in adult ESL in the province. The Dawn Seabrook de Vargas Fellowship will disburse a $1,000 award each year for the next five years. The fellowship will be administered by the Alberta Teachers of English as a Second Language, who will select a worthy recipient and award the fellowship at the ATESL Annual General Meeting each year.

In closing, I wish to thank our current board for their stellar work, to congratulate all former boards, whose good work and perseverance have brought us to this point of pride after 30 years, and to invite all of you connected with the work of ESL to consider a role on the board. Come discover the rewarding opportunities to both gain and give that participation on the ATESL board holds, all in the name of helping newcomers live full and fair lives in Canada. Recall the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." It is the mission of ATESL to ensure that for immigrant adults in Alberta - the sky is the limit!