Kansas TESOL

It is an honor to preside today over the June meeting of KATESOL/BE members. Our organization now has 208 members in 32 Kansas counties. Our members recently had a positive influence on achieving in-state tuition for immigrant Kansans, writing e-mails and making phone calls to persuade lawmakers in Topeka that this law would improve the lives of many of our students and also the law will have a positive economic and social impact in the state of Kansas.

I hope we will continue to remember the advice we got from Rebecca Kopriva and others at the meeting in Hays several months ago--she said we need to know we are a political force that can have a positive effect on the policies which impact our students and our schools.

We had a meeting of the executive board yesterday. There was a solid quorum (5 of 7 board members) and I had a good discussion with Kristin, our 1st VP; Chris, 2nd VP; Debra Stevens, our new secretary/treasurer; and Stephanie McGinley, our new member-at-large. We were also joined by Don Blackman, our Migrant/MIDTESOL/NABE liaison; and Edith Palmberg, sociopolitical liaison and KATESOL historian.

I'd like to report to you on one or two items we discussed, and also give Debra a chance to briefly report on the status of KATESOL/BE accounts, and let Kristin share some fresh news about next spring's conference.

Let me first say that another of our non-board liaisons is Barbara Rouse at Dodge City. In the recent newsletter, you can find her contact info. I've asked Barbara to make a serious effort to find out which voices in KATESOL/BE are not being heard and to advise the board on new policies to ensure fuller participation of all members and greater relevance of KATESOL activities to the needs of our members across the state.

In this vein, the board endorsed yesterday a tentative plan to do outreach to potential new members in counties where KATESOL/BE currently is not involved, as well as a request to all current members to speak with colleagues about joining our organization and joining all of us in advocating for language learners everywhere in the state of Kansas.

I hope each of you will strive to expand the KATESOL network by sharing information with your fellow educators--they can find a membership form to print out at www.fhsu.edu/katesol, or just type "KATESOL" in a search engine. I believe we can reach a membership total of 400 by this time next year and I invite you to join in this challenge.

There are two more items I need to tell you about, as quickly as possible, before we hear from Debra and Kristin.

First, the board yesterday approved a motion to draft a letter from KATESOL/BE to the Teacher Education and Licensure (TEAL) Office at KSDE in favor of adding a required ESOL course to the regular licensure system for all undergraduate programs in teacher education.

Chris Renner and I will collaborate in writing this letter, with guidance and approval of the board. Please contact us or board members directly to contribute your input to this communication event. We expect the dialogue on this issue to be an extended one, possibly without immediate concrete results. But we feel it is important to move the discussion forward.

The last and most immediately important item I want to mention--before Debra reports our accounting and Kristin starts the ball rolling on a bigger, better 2005 conference--the one remaining item I want to share is that the board has asked me to draft a template for letters to the editor in support of Topeka lawmakers--Republicans and Democrats--who bravely and wisely passed HR 2145, the bill giving in-state tuition status to children of immigrant Kansans.

These courageous lawmakers now face strong opposition campaigns this summer and fall from opposition candidates funded by out of state anti-immigrant and hate groups. We encourage every KATESOL/BE member to participate in local discussions on this issue, write your own letters to the editor and point out the benefits to our students and our state from this new law.

The template letter will be shared with all of you via e-mail and in the hard-copy August newsletter. But please begin today to fight to protect this new law and to protect reasonable approaches to our changing demographics and our growing immigrant Kansan populations.

O.K.., let's see if there is anything any of you would like to add, before Debra tells us how we're doing financially and Kristin reports from the first meeting of the conference planning committee.

Prior Messages from KATESOL Presidents