Let's start with an intention
At the beginning of my yoga class every Tuesday, my favorite teacher, Leanne, invites us to start with an intention. I am always amazed what a difference this can make to my practice.
Heading to Long Beach, California, from Windsor, Ontario, for TESOL this year, I felt like I needed to set myself up for success in an intentional way.
The first thing I did was buy a book at the Detroit airport. Inciting Joy by Ross Gay jumped out as if to say "pick me," so I did. The bookseller smiled and said, "Great choice. The world needs more of this right now." Yes, I thought to myself, my TESOL 2025 intention is joy.
"My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and predictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that solidarity might incite further joy...and...noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive."
~ Ross Gay, Inciting Joy
I had been thinking about The Joy of TESOL after a sneak peek of the presidential keynote via The Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast. In Episode 65, Debra Suarez reflects on walking into TESOL for the very first time—a sea of flags from all over the world taking her breath away—and how she felt she had finally found her place in the world. A place where like-minded people share a passion for teaching and language learning.
Meanwhile, back in Canada, Ellii's CEO, Ben Buckwold, seemed to be tuning in to the same sentiment. Before leaving Winnipeg, Ben picked up a box of US-Canada pins to share with any TESOL attendees who wanted to express solidarity.
Below are 10+ joyful highlights from my 15th year at TESOL.
Delightful sessions
Regrettably, I missed Tuesday's opening keynote about Hip-Hop, so Missy Testerman's keynote on Wednesday morning was the true start of TESOL 2025 for me.
Missy, from Tennessee, was the 2024 National Teacher of the Year. Her sunshiny voice lit up the room and her stories about her young ELs and their families were touching and uplifting, setting conference attendees up for an inspiring day. She talked about little Adrian (11 going on 37), who is eager to get married after learning about tax codes, and of her teacher's pet, Anna, who loves school so much she dreams of stealing the flip chart. Missy reminded us that English teachers often spark a language learning journey for an entire family, especially the moms working in the home.
"Teaching is the only career that guarantees every other profession."
~ Missy Testerman, TESOL 2025
It is always a joy when you attend a session full of useful tips and ideas that relate to your own work in ELT. This year we attended sessions on:
- CASAS eWorks
- teaching literacy (Google the "flyswatter vocabulary game" for some fun)
- inquiry-based learning
- service learning
- job skills of the future
- AI for personalized learning
One noteable session was a talk on Positive Education by George Kokolas. The speaker shared simple, yet powerful reminders about the impact of positivity in the classroom. If we don't feel positive ourselves, we can't expect our students to arrive ready and eager to learn. He focused on the importance of developing character strengths and suggested creating "inner-strength" groups to help students develop their strongest skills.
"Decide to be a positive educator and embody it. Positive education is not taught, it's caught."
– George Kokolas
Another excellent session was Techniques and Materials to Teach Basic Literacy Level ESL Learners by Gretchen Bitterlin. This session was full of useful tips for using the Early Production Technique and gave us some inspiration for growing our English Basics section.
We learned three words in Mandarin and got a feel for how much repetition is needed to own a new word (an average of 20 passes for recognition and 60 for production). She recommended following this formula when introducing new vocabulary:
- nonverbal statements (Show me the pencil.)
- yes/no questions (Is this a pencil?)
- or questions (Is this a pencil or a ruler?)
- wh- questions (What is this?)
Gretchen also recommended focusing on listening, pointing to research suggesting that listening without oral repetition in the earliest language learning stage actually improves an EL's pronunciation over time.
At a session called AI in Materials Development, Brent Warner shared the publishing statistic that it takes about 6–8 years to publish a course book. He walked us through a fun way of using AI to generate personalized stories that started with surveying ELs about their favorite celebrities and activities.
In an NGL session titled Future-Ready Skills for the Global Workplace, Caitlin Thomas, a dynamic speaker, talked about AI fluency being the new digital literacy. During the talk, I jumped over to Basecamp to share this thought-provoking quote with Ellii's creative Publishing team.
"AI won't replace humans, but humans who use AI will replace those who don't."
~ Caitlin Thomas, National Geographic Learning
Ellii's CEO, Ben Buckwold, also gave three presentations that were well attended, including a session on Ellii Polls, our FREE interactive feature. We enjoyed hearing fun stories about names, parenting styles, and tipping, and were thrilled to see how our interactive feature could inspire so much conversation with just a few questions.
Our happy place (the Ellii booth)
Back at the booth, the Ellii team was impressing teachers with ready-made, breaking-news, multilevel lessons about the NASA astronauts that had been stuck in space for nine months.
It was impossible not to to feel happy as our team handed out chocolate and T-shirts, especially to anyone who popped in to see what's new or who said the magic words (I Love Ellii). Ellii sponsored TESOL's Day 1 coffee hour in the Expo Hall, delivering some liquid life to a long line of thirsty TESOLers!
As they gathered up stickers, pens, and more fun swag, Ellii subscribers shared what they are excited about this year, including:
- our NEW CASAS practice tests
- our Pronunciation videos (Lise was there in person and felt like a celebrity!)
- AI feedback tools
- Ellii Polls
- Ellii's upcoming partnership with Cambridge University Press —Ventures (more info coming soon)
Lovely Long Beach
It was my first time in Long Beach, and even though it was slightly warmer at home in Canada, the sun was shining most of the week! Getting a chance to run on the beach at the crack of dawn with a new colleague was a joyful way to start each day.
Our team had a lovely stay at the Hyatt and enjoyed local sushi, Greek, and Thai food. Besides the orange cranberry muffins that tasted like creamsicles, the food that brought me the most happiness was a loaf of olive bread on the patio at Sevilla!
Wendy, Ann, Lise, Ashley, and Tara from Ellii at TESOL 2025 in Long Beach, California
Exciting announcements
Just like every year, our team arrived at TESOL with some exciting announcements.
On Thursday, we celebrated the release of English App by Ellii, our new language learning app for students available in the App Store and on Google Play! After months of building, curating, and designing in preparation for this exciting launch, it was almost hard to be away from Ellii HQ that day!
On Friday, Ben, Wendy, and I shared more exciting news at a TESOL session focused on an upcoming partnership between Ellii and Cambridge University Press. Over the years, we have learned that many Ellii subscribers use Ventures as their core text, and we're excited to offer some supplementary support for this popular CUP series. More on this development coming soon!
Real-time requests
You know what else brings me joy as the head of an agile publishing team? Requests from teachers! Last year at TESOL, attendees asked for many items that we have since checked off! Here are a few:
- an additional How to Cite a Source in English lesson that focuses on APA ✓
- higher-level grammar lessons ✓
- more lower-level That's News to Me lessons ✓
- the ability for administrators to create their own Study Packs ✓
- more accented voices in our audio and video ✓
- test prep content ✓
This year we had a few new requests that I hope we can tackle before Salt Lake City:
- pronunciation lessons and videos that go beyond the vowel and consant sounds (suprasegmentals)
- more Phonics Stories
- the ability to create your own Ellii Polls
- lower-level, shorter Ellii Polls that can be done faster
- other fun activities like Ellii Polls
- work-related videos with real people in real-life scenarios
- more Real-World Readings
- even more Grammar Stories
Wherever we go these days, we always get a lot of love and requests for our videos! As one speaker mentioned, students light up when you put a video on, especially when they are in a class with a no-cellphone rule and seem to be starving for screen time.
I'm more of a giraffe chandelier gal than a cat person, but still, whenever this video came on at the Ellii booth, it brought me so much joy.
Friends of Ellii
Last year at TESOL, we got to meet Shey and Anna from our favorite ELT podcast, The Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast. This year we got to hang with them again and also celebrate being their podcast sponsor! We can't wait for their TESOL 2025 recap.
Speaking of sponsorship, you may remember Diego from coffee talks with TESOL experts or from our very own Ellii Con coffee talk about AI (How Fast Is IT Moving?). Ellii sponsored Diego's time at TESOL this year, and, at the booth, Diego and I did a deep dive into Ellii's new AI feedback settings. We looked at Ellii's new Grade Feed and how Ellii Bot was leaving feedback for his students. I helped Diego switch his settings to the recommended middle ground so that he could review and adjust the AI ratings and feedback before submitting it to his students. An interested teacher passed by to listen to our conversation and instantly wanted to learn more about why teachers love Ellii. There's nothing better than live testimonials and demos by real Ellii users at the booth. Thank you, Diego!
Did you attend TESOL 2025 or a recent conference or webinar? What brought you joy?
Next week, we will be off to Dallas, Texas, for COABE 2025. We hope to see some of you there for a little more joy!
~ Tara & Team Ellii
Fuzzy egg chair to relax in before a presentation? Pure joy!