We, Carolina Piacenti and Evania Netto have
just attended the Braz-Tesol Conference in João Pessoa, AL. It was a great
conference: well organized, in a great site (Escola Internacional Cidade Viva)
and in a beautiful city. Furthermore, the quality of the presentations were
fantastic and there wasn´t a single talk or workshop that we didn´t like or regretted
attending.
However, as the topic of our own presentation
was “generations” and the way that different generations of teachers can
benefit by working together, we started paying attention to the mix of
generations that could be seen and heard in the event. To start with, we
browsed through the program and realized we could choose from a workshop given
by one of the most renowned ELT senior representatives from Brasília-Sara
Walker, watch the plenary session given by the brilliant Jeremy Harmer or feel
touched by the emotional session about getting older given by Jane Revell. It
was not only the senior generation that made presence in the conference,
though. Looking again at the program, we could easily verify that the Baby Boomers
and the members of Generation X were also active, bringing innumerous
contributions to the field with names such as Ben Goldstein, Paul Seligson and
Jeff Stranks.
On the other hand, if one preferred to see the newer generation
of speakers, they would not be disappointed as they would be able to check CTJ
world-wide technology expert Carla Arena, an academic session about gaming and
gamification used in teaching and learning a second language given by Janaína
Weissheimer or the fantastic J.J. Wilson talk about teacher development. Nevertheless,
due to the amount and variety of choices, one would not be able to see everything
and would have to choose something related to their own field of interests
which would turn out not to make attendees less enthusiastic but to enhance their
social networking and ability to reflect upon their careers as they could see themselves
working in pairs with Scott Thurnbury, Steve Taylore-Knowles, Élcio Souza or
just a novice teacher who had just graduated from college.
So, as you can see, Braz-Tesol was a fruitful
and enriching professional experience where different identities met to form a
mosaic of generations that by collaborating could help each other achieve the
goal that the older, the middle or the younger generations of teachers have in common - to teach English in effective
ways.
