Music City Vs. The Big Guava

Every year, spring conferences bring us to new cities for professional development, team building, and a chance to showcase everything we've been creating and releasing, including new content and courseware.

This spring, Ellii hit two cities in one week, with COABE in Nashville taking place right before TESOL in Tampa! It was a whirlwind of a week, and I thought it would be fun to compare the two conventions in one reflective post. (Scroll to the bottom for the video highlight!)

"The period following a conference is essential for translating the enthusiasm and ideas from the event into actionable steps."

~ Ixchell Reyes, Beyond the Buzz: 5 Ways to Cultivate Convention Connections

COABE – the Coalition on Adult Basic Education

Together in Harmony

It was Ellii's first time attending the COABE National Conference (and my first time in Nashville). While the venue was intimidating, I knew it was going to be a successful conference when the first visitor to the Ellii booth, an ESOL instructor from Owens Community College, arrived with a sunny smile and some live #Love4Ellii. 

"I love Ellii! I don't even bother looking anywhere else!"
~ Duaa Mustafa Ali

We loved handing out I love Ellii T-shirts to all of the subscribers who visited our booth, and we often spotted people wearing them throughout the week.

COABE attendees loved Ellii for several reasons, including our: 

• alignment to CASAS competencies
• pronunciation videos
• foundational content 
• ease of student onboarding

Unlike at TESOL, not all of the attendees at COABE were focused on English language teaching. However there was no shortage of attendees looking for a solution like Ellii. These topics were of outmost interest to ELT attendees:

1. CASAS STEPS assessments that have replaced the Life and Work series
2. English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) 
3. Integrated English Training Courses (IET)

Ellii has new initiatives coming soon related to all of the above thanks in part to the feedback and requests we received at COABE! It is going to be an exciting year of new releases for Ellii.

COABE sessions

The sessions I found most useful at COABE were about the updated CASAS tests. We've been following the updates closely and are excited to be in close connection with CASAS as we continue to develop content that is useful for skill-building and skill-using in preparation for these assessments. 

Nashville & the Opryland Resort  

The Gaylord Opryland Resort was enormous and not easy to navigate! Even after three days at the resort, finding our way around was difficult and we missed a few sessions due to getting lost in the labyrinth. We were grateful for the complimentary snacks that were often placed right in front of the Ellii booth.

As for Nashville itself, the Ellii team spent some time with locals rather than venturing into the tourist areas. We loved Urban Cowboy for its cozy atmosphere, live music, and delicious hot cider, and Lockeland Table for it's great pizza and cool vibe. The highlight was American Legion Post 82, where we got a real flavor of Nashville for Honky Tonk Tuesday. The hospitality (including friendly Uber drivers) in Nashville was possibly the best I've experienced in all of my years of attending conferences in the US. I look forward to returning for a holiday in the summer!

 

TESOL Convention 2024

Tampa Bay, Florida 

As a TESOL sponsor it was fun to arrive at the Marriot to find Ellii represented on the hotel key cards! 

 

"Go meet someone who will change your life." 

~ Shelley Taylor, TESOL President

The TESOL setup was a long day for Lise and Ashley with the rest of our team finishing up at COABE, but like every convention season, it's all hands on deck at Ellii! (And smiles all around.)

TESOL always offers sessions on a wide range of topics, and we were curious if Emily's ELT Trends post was on target for 2024. Here are some topics that seemed to be getting a lot of interest at TESOL this year:  

• Integrating AI 
• Building community
• Storytelling
• Academic vocabulary
• Visual literacy

We attended sessions on all of the above and more! Here are some useful sources that were shared that we want to learn more about:

• The Manchester Academic Phrase Bank
• Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers
• Microsoft Speaker Coach 
• Jungle Chase (Brain Break)
• Text Inspector from COCA

Ellii's CEO Ben Buckwold gave several presentations that were well-attended, including a session on Ellii Polls, our new FREE interactive feature.

Some requests we received in our own sessions and at the booth included: 

• a need for high-intermediate Real-World Reading lessons
• a higher-level lesson on Supporting Details
• an additional How to Cite a Source in English lesson that focuses on APA instead of MLA
• higher-level grammar lessons
• more Mini-Debates
• more lower-level That's News to Me lessons 
• the ability for teachers to edit Ellii Polls
• sentence frames in the Stop & Discuss area of Ellii Polls 
• the ability for administrators to create their own Study Packs
• more accented voices in our audio and video
• standardized test prep content

Tampa & the Convention Center

TCC was a great venue for TESOL! It was located right on the gorgeous Tampa Riverwalk (ideal for someone like me who is training for a marathon). I even saw a dolphin during a boardwalk coffee break!

The lovely Marriot hotel, where some of the sessions were located, was just a few minutes-walk to the convention center, with good restaurants within steps of our room, including the delicious Mexican restaurant, Lona. We also enjoyed the Cuban bread at Columbia Cafe and a windy dinner on the hotel patio with our new Canadian friend Johnny, founder of Roshi! 

The TESOL Expo Hall felt a little too big for the number of exhbitors this year, but we were happy to meet so many teachers and administrators like we do every year! 
 

In addition to meeting subscribers and those who want to learn about Ellii, it is always lovely to chat with friends who we network with throughout the year! This year we got to meet Shey and Anna from our favorite ELT podcast, the Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast. 

 

To celebrate a successful week, we attended a stand-up comedy show at The Gimmick Comedy Club and walked through the lively downtown streets following a vibrant PRIDE parade. The ride back on the free TECO streetcar with new friends from a UK publishing team was a fun way to end a great week!

Ending with a Full Circle Moment 

While COABE was a great new experience and felt like the right place for Ellii to be, the highlight of the week for me was in the last few moments of TESOL, listening to our CEO, Ben, deliver the speech before the closing plenary. Ben had us in stitches and then almost in tears as he described the full circle moment of being in Tampa for TESOL as a top sponsor, the same city where our TESOL story began back in 2006. Here's the video recording. Thank you to everyone who reached out to say they loved this moment too!

We hope to see you next year in Dallas, Texas, for COABE 2025 and Long Beach, California, for TESOL 2025! 

~ Tara & Team Ellii
 

PS. A special thank you to the TESOL attendee who delivered my purse safely to the information booth when I got a little too excited at an active storytelling session and left it behind. Though I may never get to thank you properly, this simple act of kindness left me full of gratitude (and gave me a story of hope to share with my Uber driver on the way home to Canada).