Looking Forward to the 2025 TESOL Convention
Patricia Moon, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
It is almost time for the 2025 TESOL Convention! Thousands of TESOL professionals from around the world will gather in Long Beach, California, on March 18–21. Hundreds of educational sessions and exhibits will showcase current trends as well as the latest products, publications, services, and resources in the field.
As we look forward to the conference, I thought I would share with you a preview of what to expect in the Culture and Intercultural Communication strand (CICS). I hope seeing all these topics will inspire you to consider submitting an article to our next newsletter (deadline: May 1) or a proposal for next year’s convention.
The 2025 TESOL Convention consists of teaching tips, dialogue sessions, 30-minute and 45-minute presentations, and workshops. A majority of the presentations and posters are practice or pedagogy-oriented (22). The rest are research (13) or conceptually-oriented (7).
Out of 69 presenters, the following countries are represented: the United States (39), Japan (4), Canada (2), and the Russian Federation (2). Also, we have Turkey, Ukraine, and India (3 each) and Chile, Denmark, Indonesia, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Sweden, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Zambia. These countries have one submission each. Many of the presenters share experiences from within their contexts. While North America dominates due to the location of the convention, we have fascinating presentations from Indian, Japanese, and Zambian contexts.
The topics of the presentations represent varied settings and are targeted to Academic English, Adult Ed, Graduate, Professional, Teacher Education, Intensive English, International Teaching Assistants, Primary School and Secondary School audiences.
Here are some highlights from presenters who are really excited about what they are sharing!
Hillary Bamukunda, President of the Uganda National English Language Teachers' Association, and Fulbright Distinguished Awards In Teaching Alumna 2024 is doing a Pre-Convention Institute titled Integrating Social-Emotional Learning in Project-Based English Language Classrooms on Tuesday, March 18, 2025). The session will explore the intersection of social-emotional learning and project-based instruction to enhance student engagement and holistic language development. He also has a presentation during the conference titled, Access Micro-Scholarship Program: A Model for 21st-Century ELT Excellence. It will highlight best practices and key takeaways from the Access Program, showcasing its impact on English language learning and leadership skills for underserved students.
Judith B. O’Loughlin, Education Consultant for Language Matters Education Consultants, and Brenda Custodio are presenting Supporting Immigrant Students with Trauma Backgrounds. This session reviews how trauma impacts learning and provides specific suggestions to make schools more culturally, socially, linguistically, and educationally supportive for trauma-impacted learners. The presenters will provide examples of several possible observable classroom reactions to stress—fight, flight, or freeze. The presenters will provide research-based suggestions helping students build internal resilience using the “I Have, I Am, I Can” Model (Grotberg, 1995).
Katie Crossman from Bow Valley College in Canada will present on Empowering Language Learners Through Service Learning and Cultural Humility. This session focuses on an Intercultural Service Learning project that was designed for professional and skilled language learners. These learners took part in a course that was a combination of English language training, intercultural education and service Learning placements at various local community organizations. The intercultural component of the course helped prepare them for their placements and make broader community connections. With a focus on empathy and cultural humility, students learned how to recognize bias, advocate for themselves, and see their own diversity as a strength. Attendees will leave with ideas about how to incorporate cultural humility and intercultural communication into their language teaching practices and consider how to take learning outside the classroom and into community service.
Claire Fisher with the New School has a poster presentation titled, Teaching Multiple Englishes through Analysis of 'Paint the Town Red,' a song by Doja Cat. The song reached #1 in 19 countries while Claire was leading an online intermediate class for Russians. One of them asked if they could listen to it together, and Claire noticed it demonstrated several features of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), and used it as an opportunity to teach students about it. Stop by and visit her and you can see all the details she covered in this song and also learn about an important variety of English.
Chris Hasting with Aichi Prefectural School in Japan has a poster Promoting Intercultural Competence With Okinawan Literature in CLIL Classrooms. This poster session outlines how minority literature from Okinawa can foster intercultural competence and how associated materials and tasks were developed. Using a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) framework and Hoff’s Intercultural Reader model, this session demonstrates how extracts from Oshiro Tatsuhiro’s Turtleback Tombs and Susumu Higa’s About My Mother are used to promote critical thinking, cultural sensitivity and reflective analysis. Designed for linguistically diverse classrooms—where students don’t share a first language but use English as a lingua franca—this approach is grounded in CLIL best practices. Whether you’re passionate about Okinawan studies, teaching culture through literature, or innovative approaches to promoting intercultural competence, this session offers practical strategies to enrich your teaching.
Our own incoming chair, Nichole McVeigh, will be presenting a dynamic facilitated discussion along with Fatima Aldajani from the University of Toledo on Equity and Inclusion through Intersectional Pedagogy in the TESOL Classroom. Intersectional pedagogy acknowledges how various social identities (race, gender, ability, etc.) intersect and influence learning experiences. This session will help you to discover strategies to foster inclusive, equitable environments that honor the diverse experiences of your students. Don’t miss this opportunity to reimagine your classroom!
And, finally, other members of our interest section leadership, Leslie Bohon, Josephine Prado, Barbara Lapornik, are presenting Supporting Intercultural Communicative Competence Growth Through Experiential Learning. The presenters will share four distinctive projects for secondary and tertiary students to transform thinking and heighten empathy across cultures. Participants will gain tools to integrate experiential learning towards intercultural competence when designing projects.
I am looking forward to the diversity of presentations that we will see! Here are a sampling of other presentations that have themes from around the world!
- Kavad and Madhubani: Indian Cultural Storytelling Tools for EFL Teaching
- Unlocking Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Challenges in Email Communication: Tips and Strategies
- Using Reading Circles in Visual Teaching Strategies for Ukiyo-e
- Impact of Teachers' Culture on Conceptualization of TESOL in Zambia
- EFL Teachers' Pedagogical Decisions to Revitalize the Mapuche Language
- Fostering Intercultural Communication Competence Through Indigenous Cuisines
- Korean Music Fandom’s Online Translanguaging and Intercultural Competence
- Deepening Engagement Through Second-Year Experiences in Uzbek TESOL Contexts
If you are attending the TESOL Convention, you now have an idea of some of the diverse topics you might see this year. Also, don’t miss the three panels we have organized for the conference. They include an Academic Session and two Intersection Sessions we are presenting in collaboration with the ITA Interest Section and the Social Responsibility Interest Section. Please check the co-chairs’ letter in this issue for all the details! If you are not attending, maybe you will be inspired to submit a conference proposal for the 2026 TESOL Convention or contribute to this newsletter. This is a great place to showcase your work and share your ideas with our community. We look forward to seeing your contributions here and meeting you in Long Beach!
References:
Grotberg, E. (1995). A guide for promoting resilience in children: Strengthening the human spirit. Early childhood development: Practice and reflections. (Number 8.) The Netherlands: Bernard van Leer Foundation. https://bibalex.org/baifa/Attachment/Documents/115519.pdf
Patricia Moon, MA, is an administrator/instructor at the English Language Institute (ELI) at the University of Florida. Her work since 1994 has focused on scheduling and curriculum for students studying intensive academic English at the University of Florida.