1. WELCOME to Day Two! 7 th Annual LESLLA Symposium University of Minnesota Minneapolis, USA
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Notes de l'éditeur
Welcome back to most of you, and for those who weren’t with us yesterday, we’re glad you’re here! Welcome. {random announcements??}
Yesterday, I posed a trivia question that I hoped would make you pay closer attention to those sitting near you, and maybe interesting conversations would result. I promised to tell you tomorrow what the answer is--
How often do you get to exchange ideas with other LESLLA teachers in your own city, let alone hear from someone who teachers low-literate Moroccan women in Belgium, or has mostly Turkish learners in Germany, or who teacher Burmese students in western Canada? Well, today is your day. While the languages we are teaching may be different, this conference brings together all the groups who so rarely get to talk together: researchers, teachers, teacher educators, and program administrators. What unites us at this conference is not the language we are teaching – we are united by similar learners. And I challenge you to find another conference that is not organized around a certain subject matter, but instead around a particular learners. It brings ‘learner-centered teaching’ whole new meaning.
I read a book last winter that mentioned a nomadic tribe in Ethiopia called the Afari. I was struck by the story– [read screen]
Classroom teachers-- the premier scholars and researchers of low-literacy second language learners in the world are HERE IN HIS ROOM. And if you are a researchers and teacher educators– you are sitting at the same tables as some of the most talented and dedicated LESLLA classroom teachers practicing today. Everyone take just a moment, and look around this ballroom. Go ahead. Make no mistake. YOU are in the presence of greatness. Today is your day to find others who share the same passion for this work, who are searching for answers to the same questions, and who are as eager as you are to serve our unique learners even better. This conference, this time and this space– this is our Dagu. Use it well. Exchange email addresses, introduce yourself, expand your network, recommend books, and tell stories. Through these exchanges, the field moves forward. This is our Dagu. It is both our opportunity and our responsibility to have GREAT conversations today. And I know our keynote speakers this morning will give us a lot to think about and a lot to talk about. Now I’d like to welcome our own Tina Edstam, a language teacher educator from the University of Minnesota, to introduce this morning’s speakers--
![Trivia question from yesterday ,[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)