From the Editors
Michael Lessard-Clouston, michael.lessard-clouston@biola.edu, and Meredith Bricker, meredith.bricker@gmail.com
Welcome to another CETC Newsletter, our preconference edition. We’ve been happy to work with various contributors and to correspond with a number of you who responded to our postings on the caucus e-list concerning recent publications and upcoming TESOL 2008 presentations. As always, we expect that in this newsletter you will find some useful information, a practical idea or insight for your teaching, and some food for thought.
An Update on the Caucus and the Newsletter
Readers who follow the caucus e-list will know that TESOL has decided to close all caucuses, including CETC, as of summer 2008, which Michael Pasquale discusses in his letter in this issue. As a result, the CETC leadership has decided to transition the caucus to an independent “forum” within TESOL, and more information about that is forthcoming as the leadership learns just what that means and what the possibilities are.
As editors, we have been pleased to serve in this capacity and have enjoyed our interactions with those of you who have contributed to or commented on the CETC Newsletter. As we have both already served for 2 years, we feel that the transition from caucus to forum is a good time for us to bow out and let others step forward to lead us into the future with whatever replaces the CETC Newsletter. To help in this transition, we welcome any CETC member who would like to work as a newsletter coeditor to contact us. We would be happy to see one or two people come forward to work with us for another issue or two, and then take over and create the new newsletter that will be independently produced by the forum that replaces CETC (after July). As neither of us is sure of things beyond the summer we hesitate to commit beyond then, but we want potential (co-)editors to know that one of us will likely work with you initially beyond the CETC Newsletter to aid in the transition. If you are a budding editor or think this may be of interest, please pray about the possibility and then e-mail us or talk to us at the upcoming TESOL 2008 convention.
Usually we publish three issues of the newsletter each year, and although we will need to do so by July this year our hope and plan is to do this before the caucus is closed this summer. We are already at work on one more issue but hope that all of you who have been thinking about submitting an article for some time will put your fingers to the keyboard and write up a draft of what you want to share with others and send it to us, so that we can edit and publish two more issues of the CETC Newsletter for TESOL. (Or if you would simply like to be “spotlighted,” please let us know!) If we receive enough submissions, we plan to publish a postconvention issue some time in May and then a final issue in July (TESOL’s final deadline to send out caucus publications). Optimistically, our deadline to receive draft contributions for possible publication in our next issue (hopefully in May) is April 14, and for our final issue in July the deadline will be June 23. But if we receive only enough material for one good issue, that is fine, too, and we will publish it in late spring or summer. We hope you’ll agree that the CETC Newsletter is worth contributing to and will send us an article on your recent research or on a presentation you have made.
In This Issue
This issue includes some familiar names as well as some new ones. The newsletter begins with several leadership updates, starting with a letter from CETC Chair Gena Bennett, in which she introduces the fact that our purpose is forever purposeful. Next, incoming (and final) CETC Chair Michael Pasquale provides an update on the caucus situation and invites readers to join the discussion regarding the future, suggesting the sky is the limit. And as we did last year, we have prepared two lists that we hope will encourage networking among members: Meredith Bricker outlines upcoming CETC events and some presentations that caucus members will be offering at the upcoming convention in New York City, and Michael Lessard-Clouston offers a list with information on some recent publications that members notified us about. Finally, we have updates in our News From CETC column.
Our articles and information section offers a wonderful range of topics, starting with Mary Wong’s thoughts on the use of films as a linguistic, cultural, and spiritual resource in the classroom. This article includes helpful reflection questions, lists of resources, and even a template for using films in a class. As it comes out of Mary’s presentation in the CETC colloquium in Seattle during TESOL 2007, we hope this article will encourage readers who will be at the 2008 convention to join us for our last caucus colloquium in New York City (see the News From CETC column for more details). The following two articles are stimulating reflection pieces, in which Jan Edwards Dormer discusses some of the blessings and challenges of her experience as a teacher educator in Indonesia and Tyson Vincent provides a Christian response to and critique of critical discourse analysis, a topic that is receiving attention in the TESOL literature. Next we present Eleanor Pease’s update on the CELT 2008 conference in New York City and Mary Wong’s CETC bibliography of publications on Christianity and English language teaching, with a focus on spirituality. As Mary suggests in her introduction, we hope readers will add to this list and work to make it an annotated bibliography that can be included on the caucus Web site. We are delighted to share with you two thoughtful book reviews on vocabulary learning and teaching: First Bindu Oommen introduces and analyzes a new teacher resource aimed at middle and high school students, and then Maya Lee provides an overview and critique of a student text for adults. Again we close with our Spotlight on CETC Members, which introduces and shares the backgrounds and perspectives of CETCers located in Canada, the United States, and Indonesia. We’re pleased to share these glimpses into the lives and experiences of several more members in our truly international caucus.
We appreciate each contribution, and we hope that you will consider contributing to the upcoming final issue(s) of the newsletter as well. If you have an idea for an article, an update or some news you would like to share with fellow caucus members, or suggestions or comments, please contact us.
Blessings,
Michael and Meredith
