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A Colorful Account of the 2005 TESOL Conference

- By Mike Dunphy -

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It’s spring in San Antonio. It’s warm, the leaves have sprouted, the flowers are blooming, and formations of ducklings trail after their mothers in the river.

Another sight of spring this year is the flocks of ESL teachers that have landed in San Antonio for the 2005 International TESOL conference. On March 29th, 2005 approximately 9,000 of them converged on south Texas from all parts of the world. It was a linguistic buffet to say the least.

I was there as the representative of the Boston branch of my school. My mission, which I chose to accept, was three-fold:

1) Meet my counterparts from our California branches.

2) Professional development (To show the powers that be during our accreditation period this summer)

3) Get as much free material as possible.

I had never been to Texas before and in all honesty, I never wanted to. I grew up in Burlington, Vermont and had Howard Dean for a governor and Bernie Sanders as a congressman.

Need I say more?

Nevertheless I was more than filled with glee at the prospect of not teaching and getting out of Boston for a week. I’d get some nice professional development, and the whole thing was paid for by the school. But ultimately what excited me the most was the weather forecast for that week in San Antonio that week, sunshine and more sunshine. In Boston it was a ‘wintry mix.’

I flew Continental to Houston, which is about a four hour flight, too short for a movie, but long enough to be exceedingly tedious. Coming from the land of John Kerry, it was very uncomfortable to hear we were landing at George Bush airport. I quickly hopped on the plane for San Antonio and began looking for any signs of Texas-ness. I was immediately rewarded by the man who plopped into the chair next to me on the plane. It wasn’t his size or accent that displayed his Texas-ness so well, but rather the giant box of pork ribs and barbecue sauce he brought with him.

 

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