Letter From the Chair

Khanh-Duc Kuttig, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

Dear Members of the TEIS Community,

We are halfway through the year! Where did all that time go?

This newsletter issue comes out during the first months of my service as TEIS chair. At the TESOL International Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, Grazzia Maria Mendoza Chirinos rotated off and left our Interest Section in my hands. I thank you for electing me to serve as your leader for the next year. However, I am not alone in this endeavour - I am joined by two dear friends and colleagues: Bridget Schvarcz as Chair-Elect and Amber Warren as Chair Elect-elect. We also welcome our new community manager, Zeno Benjamin and our newsletter editors are in their second year of service. Grazzia has left really big boots for us to fill, but we are confident that we can continue to serve our IS with the same dedication, expertise and openness with which Grazzia has guided us.

We are devoting this year to community building and focusing on our practice. We would like to engage more with you, our Interest Section members, and encourage you to engage with us. We are planning town halls and networking events where you will meet other teacher educators and have the opportunity to learn from one another. We hope to explore as many themes as possible, related to teacher education. Questions we hope to answer include, but are not limited to: What skills and knowledge do teacher educators need? How does effective feedback look in pre-service teacher education? What are some good strategies for lesson observation? How do we prepare pre-service teachers for their first classrooms? Generative AI is still very much a discussion theme in education, and we have a call for submissions for our Fall issue that focuses on teaching teachers to utilize genAI. If you’ve done something successful in your own program or courses, then do consider contributing to the Fall issue. Further details are in the Call for Submissions.

We hope you enjoy this issue and we look forward to meeting you in our webinars and online meetings over the next few months.

With warm wishes, 

Khanh-Duc Kuttig