Our Spring Conference
The conference this year was truly a collaborative event as each participant contributed to its success! The Spring Conference team met monthly throughout the year before the conference. Putting together our conference is truly a collaborative effort with overlapping and contributing roles.
Here are only a few of the tasks that each member contributed. The Conference Coordinator, Caia Schlessinger, oversaw numerous details of the hotel, speakers, and AV. Our Business Administrator, Gwen Franks, took care of registration, including all of the school purchase orders, and worked with the Technology Coordinator, Marilyn Pongracz, to set up and monitor the conference app. The past president, Maggie Churchill, oversaw the scholarships for the very moving President’s Awards Ceremony. The President, Michelle Land, guided each step of preparation, hosted our scholarship dinner, and announced speakers. LeighAnn Matthews, the Vice-President, was the right hand of the Conference Coordinator and did double duty as a presenter. The Executive Director, Kathy Fernandez, was ever-present during the preparation, introduced and accompanied speakers, and presented workshops. Tina Kern recruited, coordinated, and planned the space for all of the sponsors and exhibitors, including obtaining donated bags, badges, and items for our daily raffle!
Thank you to all of our presenters who contributed their time and expertise to share their experiences and ideas. Finally, we applaud everyone who attended and participated with contagious enthusiasm networking both in-person and on the app. Those pictures were wonderful and it was exciting to see all the meet-ups happening.
If you were not able to attend this year, we hope that you can join us next year, May 29-31 at the Hyatt, New Brunswick. Registration will open in September. We can not do it without you, the members of NJTESOL/NJBE. Please think about presenting next year and inviting colleagues from mainstream content teachers to administrators to join you and learn about our Multilingual learners! Our teaching and organization is a supportive partnership by Strengthening Collaboration!