2002 Annual Report, NCTE/TESOL Committee

The current Chair, Dan Doorn, representing TESOL and the current Associate Chair, Yvonne Freeman, representing NCTE, have completed two-year leadership commitments, but both will continue in their respective roles for another year.

One major activity of the Committee is soliciting nominations and approving featured speakers for the national conferences. This past year, at NCTE 2001 in Baltimore, Marta Dibell led a demonstration session on “Engaging ESL Learners: Technology and Community-Based Language Learning Projects.” And at TESOL 2002 in Salt Lake City, Robin Jacobs was scheduled to present a session titled, “Critical Pedagogy, Helping Students Find Their Voice,” focusing on her work with bilingual elementary children. Because she became seriously ill during the conference week, Dan Doorn led a substitute session for Robin, titled “Helping Students Explore Family and Community Issues.”

For the coming year, the Committee will be sponsoring another two sessions. At NCTE in Atlanta, committee member Pat Irvine will lead invited co-presenters in a session on understanding critical curricular possibilities for improving the academic, cultural, and linguistic well-being of English language learners. At TESOL 2003 in Baltimore, Co-chair Yvonne Freeman will join a group of invited classroom teachers in a colloquium on literacy development and dual language models for English language learners.

The Committee staffed information display tables at the TESOL and NCTE conferences, helping to promote publications and professional development opportunities, to recruit membership, and to collect current issue concerns in serving English language learners.

A core group of members also took time mid-year to assess the viability of our service to NCTE and TESOL. We recognized that in order to sustain our committee, we needed to recruit new members, develop more active roles for all members, and revitalize our approaches to working out our set of major functions. With the aid of four new active members, the Committee has begun developing strategies for taking on new initiatives for more meaningful service to both organizations.  

ODan Doorn, Chair