On Saturday, June 26, NMTESOL members gathered at the home of Treasurer Carolyn Kaltenbach and her husband Alexi Castillo (who is also a NMTESOL member) for a potluck picnic and BBQ. In addition to being a pleasant afternoon of good food and conversation with friends and colleagues, the picnic was the official announcement of the new NMTESOL logo. Marcus Furrow, designer of the winning logo and a student at the Digital Arts and Technology Academy charter school in Albuquerque, and his mother joined us. Board members presented Marcus with a check for $100, which was the prize offered in our logo design contest.

Here’s a picture of Marcus receiving his check.

(Post edited 10/3/10 to include photo)

TESOL has just published a volume on Task-based Learning, and our own Jennifer Herrin wrote chapter 7!   That’s  pretty exciting, and we would like to take this opportunity to congratulate her.

The introductory chapter can be downloaded from:

The Board of Directors announces the departure of our founding Vice President Amy Christensen. “I think NMTESOL needs a Vice President that can contribute more to the organization,” she wrote in a message that accompanied her letter of resignation dated May 5, 2010, and “[I] continue to be overcommitted both professionally and personally.”  Amy served NMTESOL since its inception. From the Spring 2008 brainstorming meetings held at CNM to NMTESOL’s incorporation as a non-profit charitable organization in New Mexico and tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status, Amy was there signing forms and applications. As a matter of fact, Amy was the first official member of NMTESOL: her dues payment was used to open our credit union account. Although she isn’t on the Board any longer, Amy is still a member of NMTESOL, and we hope to see her at our events in the future. Thanks for your service, Amy!

So, now NMTESOL needs a new Vice President. If you would like to serve on the Board of Directors, you can nominate yourself to be Vice President. Please contact NMTESOL at nmtesol@gmail.com if you are interested in contributing to building our professional association.

We got an email the other day asking if we were still around, so I guess it is past time to post something here!

I know the end of the semester/year is a hectic time for most of us, but I wonder if we couldn’t generate a little discussion here.  So I was wondering what  types of things you would like to see on this blog.  So far we mostly use it to announce or report on meetings.  But would you like to see other things here, too?  If so, please leave your suggestions as comments here.  We would love to know what you are thinking!

NMTESOL members are cordially invited to attend a symposium to bring together developmental and first-year ESOL writing programs to discuss challenges and innovations.  Faculty from CNM, UNM, and UNM-Valencia will give presentations on Friday, April 2, at the CNM Main campus from 1:00 to 4:00 pm.

The symposium will be held in building KC, room 26 at the CNM main campus in Albuquerque. The tentative agenda is:
1:00-1:15     Welcome & Overview
1:15-1:45     Presentation on ESL Needs & Opportunities
1:45-2:30     Roundtable Discussion
2:30-2:45     Break
2:45-3:15     Presentation on Genre-Based First-Year Writing
3:15-4:00     Roundtable Discussion

Please note that this event is not organized by NMTESOL, however, the organizers welcome all interested NMTESOL members. After the symposium, NMTESOL will host a reception from 4 to 5 pm for all members who attend.

If you want to attend this ESOL writing event, please RSVP to nmtesol@gmail.com by Monday, March 29 so we can inform symposium organizers and plan our reception.

We look forward to seeing you on April 2!

The Board of Directors announces a new Treasurer. Carolyn Kaltenbach has agreed to serve as the Treasurer of NMTESOL for the 2010-2011 term, following the resignation of Krissy Sievers.

Carolyn Kaltenbach is originally from Las Cruces, where she earned a BA in English from NMSU.  She completed the Teacher Education Program at the University of Colorado and earned an MA in TESOL from the University of Kansas. She spent ten years teaching English in Japan, first at a high school in Okinawa and then at three universities in Niigata prefecture.  She returned to New Mexico in 2008 with her husband and two children and is currently teaching at Brookline College in Albuquerque.

Krissy Sievers has served NMTESOL since its inception. From the brainstorming meetings held at CNM in the spring of 2008, to its incorporation in New Mexico and 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, Krissy was there. She represented NMTESOL at the UNM Law Clinic, NM Educators Federal Credit Union, the NM Public Regulation Commission, and other organizations. Although you are no longer on the Board, Krissy, you are still a member of NMTESOL and we look forward to seeing you at our events. Thank you for your service!

We’ve  received  an email from a member asking if anyone is planning to go to TESOL in Boston.  So  I thought I wojuld post  the question here.  If you are going, why not leave a comment so others  can know?

Better late than never, I hope, here are the minutes of the annual meeting, which was held in December.

NMTESOL MINUTES Dec 4 09

Chop! Shop! Chore! Shore!

Anyone looking through the window of Albuquerque’s Northwest Library on October 15th must have been bewildered by the word signs moving up and down to a strident beat. It was the free NMTESOL Fall Workshop and the enthusiastic participants within were practicing exercises to use in their language classrooms. In this latest professional development session sponsored by NMTESOL we were treated to three engaging and useful presentations by Felicitas Coates, Lonnie Dai Zovi and Tom Pierce.

Felicitas Coates, an ESOL, ECME and GED instructor at UNM Valencia, led the group in warm-up and icebreaker activities designed to create bonds and serve as quick language assessments. She shared many activities used in her years of teaching in both New Mexico and California. One of her favorite projects was holding a classroom “Health Fair” to promote topic-based language development. Students dressed in lab coats and acted out the role of health care professionals and patients. They were able to borrow stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs to make the experience more authentic. Students “invented” new medicines and created commercials to promote them.

Lonnie Dai Zovi, an APS teacher and published language instruction songwriter, spoke on the use of music and rhythm to promote language learning. Using samples from her many instructional CD sets including Rocking Rhythms and Rhymes Lonnie demonstrated how to use music to introduce culture, alter mood or emotion, and teach specific grammar features, vocabulary, phrasing, and language usage. We clapped and shouted our way through sound recognition and cloze exercises, and belted out some popular songs that with embedded grammatical target structures. Lonnie’s many language CD and workbook sets which are available for purchase at http://www.vibrante.com.  (Handouts available here.)

Tom Pierce, an ESOL/English Instructor at CNM Community College presented techniques for teaching writing to ESL students. He noted that although the word “rhetoric” has taken on negative connotations, it is important for language learners to master basic rhetoric to meet the demands of college and workplace writing and accomplish different communicative tasks in daily life. Tom demonstrated ways to teach rhetorical forms such as narration, description, comparison/contrast and persuasion to English language learners. Follow the link to learn more. Practice of rhetorical forms, he stressed, should lead to mastery of socially useful and empowering forms of writing. (Handout available here.)

You can reach the presenters by e-mail at fcoates1@unm.edu ; TPierce@cnm.edu; Lonnie@vibrante.com

NMTESOL is already making plans for the Spring 2010 Workshop. If you would like to present, please contact us at nmtesol@gmail.com

We have added a page with links to workshop handouts to make them easier to access.  These handouts certainly can’t replace actually attending a workshop, but they can give those of us who aren’t able to attend access to the ideas presented.   We hope you find them useful!