Teacher conferences

Updating my CV to include my latest teacher workshop at a teacher conference (the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers) reminded me that in 2012 I hadn’t done many teacher workshops. Looking back, I can see the lack of workshops is correlated with the need to finish my dissertation and my eagerness to spread the knowledge generated from my Ph.D. research at academic conferences. However, now that I am settling back into a more normal rhythm, I look forward to teacher conferences. There I meet practitioners who are active in the field of second language teaching, my fellow Multiplikotaren (facilitators) from the Goethe network and other researchers. I attended sessions of serious interest (Katy Arnett on differentiation) and ones of pure curiosity (Ron Cook on Cree). I believe some academics underestimate the value of teacher conferences, but I for one, have found several I highly recommend: Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers, Canadian Association of Teachers of German, American Association of Teachers of Foreign Languages to name three.