Dr. Mary Wong, Dr. Geraldine Ryan, and Dr. Michael Westwood attended the TESOL International Convention and Expo in March, in California, USA. Along with thousands of attendees, our faculty had the opportunity to participate in workshops, attend presentations, and network with other TESOL professionals.

Dr. Mary Wong offers her reflections on the TESOL Convention.

Dr. Mary Wong participated in three panels at TESOL 2025 Long Beach. 

• TESOL Research Directions Fair: Equitable Research Partnerships for Multilingual TESOL.

• Advocating for Equitable Research Partnerships: Exploring the Ethics of Knowledging Together.

• Southeast Asian ELTs’ Situated Praxis During Crises and Change.

Dr. Wong reflects, “I most enjoyed speaking on the ‘Southeast Asian ELTs’ Situated Praxis During Crises and Change’ panel.” After the editors of TESOL Journal provided an overview, Dr. Wong and other panel members discussed their articles which will be published in a special issue of TESOL Journal. Dr. Wong writes, “It was great to meet the editors and learn about ELT research and to present my article, Inside the crucible: Resistance and resilience in a decade of crisis and change for English teachers in Myanmar (open access). 

“The most interesting workshop that I attended was Debbie Nelson's talk! Debbie is my former MA TESOL student who has taught in Ukraine for decades. Her session From War-Torn to Empowered: A TESOL-Ukraine Mentorship Journey was well received. The work she is doing to support English teachers in Ukraine is inspiring. She plans to get me in touch with some of these teachers for potential research projects,” writes Dr. Wong.

The TESOL convention is quite intense with hundreds of presentations to choose from each day, each hour. “Last year in Tampa, Florida, USA, the hot topic was translanguaging. This year it was AI. There were several helpful sessions on the topic, including one by my current colleague at APU, Dr. Tasha Bleistein, Building Tech-Confident Teachers, who shared her resources for her course Teaching with Technology.  Also discussed was teacher self-care in these difficult times, and the reminder to take time for ourselves, so we can be there for our students.” 

Thank you, Dr. Wong, for your professional research and networking through the TESOL organization.

Author: Robin Gingerich, Ph.D., MA TESOL Program Director at LCC International University.