Letter from the Editors
Greetings SRIS,
We hope this newsletter finds you well.
It may now be trite to begin letters that way, but as this newsletter is compiled in the first half of February, we have no idea what state our sociopolitical TESOL environment will be as this is published in the lead up to our March 2025 TESOL Conference.
For our US-based/tethered members of SRIS, you surely have been watching the news in horror as each executive order signs over a drastic change in power dynamics and turmoil in the US. We have no idea how the onslaught of US policy changes from the past few weeks will continue in veracity and force, or even the extent that they will affect us as educators.
When we say “us,” we mean all TESOLers.
While those of us presently in the US might be feeling the brunt force in their classrooms—whether English learner, teacher trainee, or TESOL researcher—the effects will ripple throughout the world. For many TESOL and English programs in the US, COVID was the nail in the coffin after student enrollments decreased as a result of prior US policies, due to decreased international migration or learners feeling too unsafe to formally enroll in a course. The fears of immigration officials entering schools is all too tangible now.
Eight years ago, while teaching in Saudi Arabia, I (Sheila) had to call the US Embassy to confirm that I would actually be permitted back into the US, the citizenship country of my birth, because I had visited my Iranian family often after having recently received my Iranian passport. I remembered the additional security checks I had as a seventeen-year-old on my 2004 high school orchestra trip, and the time I had to show secondary identification upon re-entry in 2006. I was largely unaffected by 9/11 Islamophobia as a mixed hyphenated American with only my US passport at that time. But in 2017, as Dutch officials scrutinized my US passport and its many stamps from southwest Asian and north African countries, I truly feared I would not be permitted to board my KLM flight back home to Atlanta. And this was just me, as a US citizen. While I am presently outside the US, I just can’t imagine the stress and anxiety for someone without the security of a US passport, no matter their distance from passport control.
For our next issue, we want to hear from SRIS members who are directly affected by the upheaval both in and outside the US. It’s important to hear directly from educators and students. Whether narrative, pedagogical, research, or another multimodal genre, this newsletter is an outlet for any SRIS member to find community. Please reach out to Sheila Ameri or the future editors if you want to workshop an idea!
As for this issue, we bring you two pieces. Dr. Luis Javier Pentón Herrera brings us Social-Emotional Competencies in ELT: Redefining Literacy for a Changing World, where he advocates for the importance of including social-emotional learning in our pedagogy to prepare our learners for their professional careers. He also notes the importance for us to develop and bring our own social-emotional competency in the classroom—truly a skill we all need more than ever.
We also bring you a piece from keynote speaker and 2024 Teacher of the Year Missy Testerman. In this piece, she documents her journey as a first- and second-grade teacher to becoming her rural K-8 school’s ESL instructor. Her piece is uplifting and provides some hope for us all. Please make sure you attend her Keynote on Wednesday, March 19 from 8:00-9:00.
We wish you all a great TESOL Conference in Long Beach. The conference this year falls during Ramadan and, as usually, during Norooz. Happy Conference, Ramadan Kareem, and Norooz Mobarak!
SRIS Editors,
Sheila Ameri and Nadine Bravo