Greetings to all,

As I begin my term as President of MIDTESOL, I want to thank all of the members of MIDTESOL who have helped to bring MIDTESOL to the place we are as an organization today. We have over 400 members and invite others to join us. Over the last few years, several of you have accepted the invitation from our nominating committees and the Executive Board to serve in many elected and appointed positions. Thank you as well. In addition, many other MIDTESOL members worked hard to make the Fall Conference in Lee’s Summit on October 19th and 20^th a great success. Members of the Executive Board as well as others have responded over the past year to help with the many tasks involved in planning and putting on the fall conference. Thank you all (you know who you are) for helping to make the Fall Conference a very real success.

The theme of the conference this fall was "Understanding and Using the TESOL Standards." The pre-conference workshop by Anne Katz and Janet Orr and the plenary by Anne Katz focused on explaining how these standards are being used by teachers and administrators to plan curriculum and assessments for English language learners in elementary and secondary schools. Other presentations during the conference focused on the development and implementation of "standards" for both intensive English programs and adult education programs for English language learners. While the theme of the conference was focused on the TESOL standards, many other presentations focused on a wide variety of different interests in our field from assessment to technology and more. This conference included thirty-seven presentations including three technology workshops. When the final count was in we learned that seventy-five attended the pre-conference and over two hundred attended the conference.

I have been encouraged over the last decade as many of our colleagues in our national organization, TESOL, and some from our own affiliate have worked hard to contribute to the different set of standards (curriculum, program, and teacher education) that have been and continue to be developed by TESOL. While the specifics of these standards can and should continue to be discussed and debated, I feel that as a profession we are in a win-win situation when we come together as professionals to collaborate about the needs of our students, what we teach, and how we assess what our students are learning. I look forward to learning more from these discussions about standards over the next few years, and I want to encourage others in MIDTESOL to do the same, particularly in your individual fields of specialization.

I look forward to working with all members of MIDTESOL during the coming year, and I want to encourage each of you to speak to a colleague about either joining MIDTESOL or perhaps attending one of our future conferences.

Ronald Long,
President