Hello, I’m Dudley Reynolds, President of the TESOL International Association and also a professor of English at Carnegie Melon University in Qatar and I’d like to bring you greetings from Qatar and also the worldwide community of English language teaching professionals.
Congratulations to MEXTESOL on your 43rd Annual International Convention and in particular on the 40th volume of the MEXTESOL Journal. I’m proud to serve on the Editorial Board of MEXTESOL Journal and I know that to reach forty is a significant milestone. It shows the commitment of your association to informed practice, critical reflection, and most importantly, reflection. Particularly noteworthy is MEXTESOL Journal’s dedication to mentoring those that are new to our profession, new to publishing, maybe still developing as researchers. As a field, we all profit when we seek both excellence and inclusivity.
TESOL International Association celebrated its 50th anniversary this past March. We're now embarking on our next half century and we’ve been thinking a lot this year about the need to prepare for the future of our profession. Your conference theme, Dynamic teaching: New trends in ELT, speaks directly to this need.
I’d like to let you know about some other opportunities to think about the future as well. One of them is coming up this coming February in Athens, Greece. The TESOL International Association is sponsoring a summit on the future of the TESOL profession. I know that it probably won’t be possible for you to join us in Athens, but I do hope you’ll join us as an online participant in the discussions around the summit. These online discussions will begin in early December. They are free to participate in, but you’ll need to register and so I that hope you’ll have time to check out the Summit website.
Secondly, I hope that you may be able to join us in person in Seattle, Washington, next March when we celebrate our 51st annual convention. It’s called TESOL 2.0. In closing, let me just say again congratulations to MEXTESOL and MEXTESOL Journal. Enjoy your time in Monterrey. Learn, reflect and go forward in your commitment to excellence in our profession. Thank you and best wishes.