53rd - Tidbits from TESOL Tampa 2006

A group of 12 grantees from Medan, Padang, Jakarta, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Malang, Makassar, Manado attended the TESOL Conference in Tampa, Florida, together with Damon Anderson and Kun Herrini. The trip itself was a thick-book-long story to tell, that it will be worth publishing in a blog of its own (being created, I swear). But in short..you can imagine...traveling with 12 different teachers... People said it was easier to travel with 100 students....

Damon opened the session by explaining about TESOL COnference and he also described about how it was organized, the sessions, etc.


















YM Harsono (Your Majesty? No, Yohanes Mujiyo), the TESOLer from Atmajaya University Jakarta followed Damon by sharing around the Writing and Reading Skill sessions he attended. In the preliminary talk he said that in terms of academic level, Indonesian Univeristies were not left behind (if it was, not so much), but maybe in terms of research, yes, we needed to cathch up.



Nida Husna, TESOLer from UIN Jakarta shared about the invaluable experience she learned, academically and culturally. She attended some sessions on leaderships and professional development and she shaed the alternatives of PD one can choose from.

I myself shared more about all the fun we had together, the experience of leading a group of 12 novices and the lessons learned from the conference from the angles of design, administration, roles of each committee, protocol, and others. I really thought that we needed to learn from them, and that there should be a workshop on organizing a conference. I ended up the sharing sessions by promoting and encouraging people to write a proposal and attend the TESOL conferene 2007 in Seattle.

In the session, there were two most important people for the TESOLers 2006 program, those who worked really hard from recruitment up to pre-deperture orientation, Diana and Wahono from IIEF. We used the chance to really express our gratitude. Thanks a lot Di & Wahono. Our thank you is never enough.