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President’s Message, June 2007
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In my March 2007 presidential message, I communicated my commitment to help TESOL increase its effectiveness as a global association while meeting the professional needs of its diverse membership.
What better way to start this process than to attend TESOL-SPAIN’s 30th Annual Convention? At 3:00 on Friday afternoon on March 9, 2007, I arrived at St. Patrick’s English School in Donostia-San Sebastián to register for the convention. I was greeted by John Phillips, the head of English in the school, and a group of students who showed the convention participants around. As a first-time visitor to a TESOL-SPAIN event, I relished the opportunity to watch this affiliate actively serving its members.
Before the convention I had been in touch with Kate Marriage and Catt Boardman, who are regional coordinators and were the speaker coordinators for the conference. Utilizing their knowledge and TESOL-SPAIN’s excellent Web site (http://www.tesol-spain.org/), which was designed and is maintained by Past President Enda Scott, I was able to learn a great deal about their history, their organization, and their interaction with their members. However, it was by speaking with the participants, the board members, and the other members who worked at the convention that I felt how exciting it was for everyone to meet in Donostia-San Sebastián in the Basque-speaking region. It was a risk to meet so far from the center of the country, but the board wanted to emphasize the importance of the association’s regional structure. Would the members come? They definitely came! There were over 700 attendees at this conference, many coming from the local area.
Because English teaching in Spain has traditionally emphasized the four skills, the board was taking a chance with this year’s theme: Content and Language Learning—Two Birds, One Stone. However, in this linguistically diverse country many schools teach content in more than one language. St. Patrick’s English School, the school at which the conference was held, teaches in English, Basque, and Spanish. Across Spain the public schools are beginning to teach some of their curricula in English. Therefore, this year’s theme was pertinent for Spain’s language educators. I met content teachers who are being asked to start teaching their content in English, program administrators who shared the ways in which their schools are teaching content in English and other languages, and many teachers eager to learn more about content and language teaching.
This experience in Donostia-San Sebastián showed me how one TESOL affiliate is meeting the diverse professional needs of its members. The theme of its next conference, in March 2008, is Global English: Local Perspectives, which, I believe, is both interesting and relevant.
Sandra Briggs
TESOL President, 2007–2008
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