Ixchell Reyes 0:00
Ready to present at conferences, but don’t know where to start. We’re here to guide you through the ins and outs of getting your name on the conference program.

Brent Warner 0:08
You welcome to the DIESOL podcast, where we focus on developing innovation in English as a second or other language. I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL, and I’m here with the wonderful ishchell Reyes, award winning educator in innovation and professional development. Ishchell, how are you

Ixchell Reyes 0:38
I’m doing well, how are you I am doing okay,

Brent Warner 0:44
all things considered. Still, kind of still kind of on a coming down from TESOL we talked about on the last episode, but it’s still like, okay, there’s a lot of good stuff going on there. Yeah,

Ixchell Reyes 0:52
and they already set. I think the call is out for submissions, right for 2026 right? 2026 we just finished, what is going on.

Brent Warner 1:03
So if you’re thinking about it, that’s so we decided to talk about today’s topic. Because of that, it’s like, oh, okay, hold on. I gotta be on top of it. This is a hard thing, very hard for me. I don’t know if it’s hard for you to, like, remember when all these dates are coming up and being like, you know, when I start thinking about a conference, I’m usually kind of, my brain is, you know, four or five months ahead of it, but if that’s way too late, right? And so unless you’re really sharp and kind of keeping on top of things, the their their kind, a lot of conferences are like a year out, right? The preparation for everything, including including TESOL. So if you want to go to TESOL in 26 you gotta start preparing right now,

Ixchell Reyes 1:43
That’s true. Yeah, I, of course, I always submit, like the week before, and I’m always panicking, because you always leave it till later, later, later, later, later, and then June’s going to be here soon, and I believe that’s when they’re asking for submissions. Yeah,

Brent Warner 1:58
yeah. So, so we have a little bit of time, I guess we have but, but that time sneaks up on you and you’re like, Okay, I’ll do a little bit later. So like you’re saying. So with all that in mind, we’re kind of coming back to, Ixchell, if you can believe it, 2019, episodes, 100 and 116 episodes. Back we talked about going to conferences, how to get the most out of conferences, a little a little bit about how to apply. I think, I don’t totally remember, it’s been a long time, but the conversation was, we got a lot of new professionals in the field. We got a lot of awesome teachers doing fun stuff and so, but a lot of them also feel, I don’t know if people came up to you during the conference, they started saying, like, things like, Oh, it’s so cool that you you know, like, how do you present it? So, you know, it’s like, you know, it feels like a different world for some people, like, it’s like a pseudo, I don’t want to say it the wrong way, but it’s like, kind of like, you know, there’s like a little celebrity feeling of, can

Ixchell Reyes 2:53
I say that? People kept saying, You guys are rock stars, you guys are also and it’s like, I’m just sharing what I love to talk about, and I want to encourage others

Brent Warner 3:03
well, and I think part of that is trying to convince people. Not convince is the right word, but, but you know, we’re all regular people, right? We’re all normal people, and part of the joy of our job is –

Ixchell Reyes 3:15
I’m not regular, I’m extra weird (laughter)

Brent Warner 3:18
True, fair enough. We are all human beings in this world, for the most part. (laughter) And so, you know, just trying to encourage people to say, like, hey, we can all do this thing, right? And so we wanted to share a little bit out with everybody who’s kind of thinking, hey, maybe next year I could be a presenter, right? Or maybe, or, How do I kind of look into these ideas? Or what what do I need to know for it? And so we’re going to share a little bit just about that is like, how do you prepare? How do you submit, you know, all of those kinds of things. So, alright, let’s do it. Okay.

Ixchell Reyes 3:57
Alright. Well, first of all, I think everyone needs to remember that you definitely have good ideas. The thing that I hear all the time is, well, I just don’t know what I would share. Well, I just don’t have anything to share. Well, I don’t know if anyone would be interested in what I’m what I want to talk about. And the reality is, sometimes I feel that way too. Yeah, I feel like everyone’s covered everything already. What do I have to share? But we forget that there are new teachers and new people coming into this field all the time, and there are teachers who have never attended, who are going to benefit for the first time from anything you have to share. So you know, I always have this, this dream of having my teacher trainees present with me, because that would be amazing. And I constantly don’t think about this. You have this great idea. You have a wonderful gift for doing this. And I usually get well, I don’t, I don’t think I have anything good to share, or I don’t think I’m good enough to share. It’s like, No, this is exactly why we have to do it. Because you do, you. So remind yourself of that if you are one of those people who have attend, who has attended conferences but hasn’t thought about presenting, you absolutely have good ideas. Yeah,

Brent Warner 5:10
yeah, 100 percent.

Ixchell Reyes 5:11
So that’s the place to start.

Brent Warner 5:12
That’s for sure. Yeah. Can you are? You are good enough for sure, and you got, you got great ideas. Your students appreciate you in the classroom, and so therefore you can just transfer that over to to the presentation side. Too, wonderful. Okay, so my first one here is, you know, we look at, you know, TESOL or ISTE, or any of these big, you know, organizations that are doing these kind of massive ones, right? And I could totally understand where those feel intimidating. And perhaps, you know, you might be in a situation. I remember ill when we were at USC, you know, the kind of these types of proposals were going around, and there’s so many teachers in there, and everyone’s talking about, oh, I presented, oh, I didn’t make it in, oh, I did make it in, right? And it almost felt like a, I think it was good at that school, because people were supportive of each other. If they didn’t get in, they’re like, Okay, cool, you made it in, right? That kind of thing. But it could also be the other way around, where it’s like, cutthroat competition feeling or like, how hard is it? But what I would say is, if you’re not sure, or if you haven’t presented before, you can get your feet wet by presenting, you know, practicing, really, at local workshops. So almost all of these big organizations have smaller local ones. We’ve talked about them all quite a bit on the show, you know. So if we’re looking at TESOL, for example, and you’re in California, you could look at CATESOL, but even more local than that, you could do like, you know, in my Orange County affiliate, or the Los Angeles affiliate, or whichever one it is, right? And so the more you kind of niche down to presentation opportunities at the closer to you scale, the more likely it is that you’re going to be able to get in and start getting some presentation skills going with everything. So I highly recommend trying, and I still do present at local conferences all the time. Like, it’s kind of, I don’t know. It’s almost like the like, the comedian going to the local clubs and, like, keep, you know, practicing their lines and seeing what gets laughs and what doesn’t, you know, and then before they go on their big tour, it’s kind of the same thing is like, Okay, I think I maybe want to present on this. Let’s see how it goes. And then you kind of check on yourself,

Ixchell Reyes 7:22
It’s just fine tuning, because I did the same thing. A lot of the topics I I pitch are, some are something that I’ve already presented to a smaller audience, and then I get a feel for like, oh, okay, I may. I didn’t think about that. Why don’t I add this to my final version? And so that way it’s not something that you’re diving in, you know, into the cold water, that you have something that you started from already, and it’s just fine tuning, like the final presentation, right? Yeah,

Brent Warner 7:53
yeah, perfect.

Ixchell Reyes 7:55
Okay, so another way to get ready is to read the rubric. Many, many people maybe don’t remember that you could actually, you know, you have to address what’s in the rubric. And one of the things that I noticed in the last year, of course, with, you know, having AI as one of our tools now, is a lot of conferences have a little box that asks you if you used AI for your submission. And there may be something that says, you know, because we we recognize AI as a tool, but we want to stay as authentic as we can. So we want you to use your own writing, which is fair, I believe, and but I think that a useful, something useful to do is to upload the once you’ve written your proposal, upload the rubric into AI and ask AI to check to see what points you can strengthen and whether you met all the points in the rubric. I did that, and it gave me areas where I needed to strengthen what I what I had written. And again, this is very, very useful, especially when you you’re supposed to have or you it’s nice to have a peer review your submission, but your peers are just as busy, right? And so oftentimes, if you’re waiting till the last month, or if you don’t have enough time to give it to a peer to review, this is an excellent way to get some feedback, and I think that that’s absolutely helpful. You could also, if possible, search for a program for the previous year and download the PDF so you can see the descriptions that way, it gives you an idea of what people who who got accepted, what it what it sounds like in writing, just so you have an idea of what the conference looks for. Of course, you have to keep in mind that they may it’s like a year old, perhaps, if it’s a yearly, an annual conference. So the the interest in the topics may have changed, but the content and the way that it’s written is relevant.

Brent Warner 10:00
Yeah. And I want to go back to the AI bit that you were sharing there, just, just for a minute here, because it’s not, you know, again, we always have to have these AI conversations, and it’s like, what’s authentic, what’s real, right? But the other thing is that, like, I think, for you and me on this last one too, it also helps us fine tune and say, like, like, for our actual presentation, right? It’s not just about getting the acceptance. It’s about going, Oh, okay. Like I can then make sure that I’m talking about XYZ, right? Or I can also update, you know, some of my you know, this information is going to be relevant for people to understand contextually when I’m presenting, what’s going on and so, so I just want to encourage people to think of that, you know, again, AI is such a good reflection tool because, you know, it’s giving you advice. It’s giving you ideas and things to think about that you might not have considered, you know, just on your own. And so really take a look at that as a possibility. Okay, so next, this one’s a little kind of sillier and maybe a little bit more fun, but make a punchy title. You know, there are so many just boring, academic, overly academic, right conference titles that are like, what is that? Right? You know, a broad case study on the application of, you know, wonderment and such and such a setting. It’s like, okay, like, Who is this going to apply to, right? And so I think that so many, especially like Professor types, right, get into like, oh, okay, this is, this is an academic conference, and therefore I must be academic, and that’s the appropriate thing to do. And it’s like, well, everybody who’s coming here are teachers, right? They’re classroom teachers. They want to, for the most part, they really want to kind of apply something to their classroom. And so hit that punchiness, right? You got to kind of mark it a little bit, really, get it clear about what your presentation is about, just in the title. Because the other thing is, so many of these conferences, you know, the way that they’re put together online, the only thing you can really see about the presentation is the title, right? So I had complained about this before, but TESOL uses Cvent, which is a terrible, terrible platform. And I can’t blame TESOL, because there’s a lot of a lot of these organizations use event, but one of the things I hate about it is that it doesn’t tell you who the presenter is, or where that presenter is from, or what their setting is. So it’s really just the title, and then you have to, like, click into it to go and see, okay, is this something that I want to see? And so really, you are selling the book by the cover, right? And so, so if you have a good title, if you have something that’s going to capture people’s attention, they might want to look into a little bit more. They might want to find out. So just like we tell our own students on writing their essays, spend time on that title, make sure that it’s going to it’s going to capture the attention. It does matter.

Ixchell Reyes 12:58
Yeah, it matters. And particularly, I want to mention that at the last conference at TESOL, there were so many sessions on AI that I just couldn’t distinguish what would have been something I’m interested in, because they all sounded they all sort of blended and sounded the same to me. So

Brent Warner 13:17
“Using AI in the classroom,” “Classroom use of AI”

Ixchell Reyes 13:20
Yeah “AI for language learners”

Brent Warner 13:21
“AI for my students.” Okay. Like, I mean, yeah, don’t get me wrong. Like, yeah, we could start with if, if the impression, if the idea was that, like, you know, two years ago, if you had said that, you probably, you know, you would have been the only one, right? And so, but now it’s literally, it was half the conference. And so how do you distinguish that for sure?

Ixchell Reyes 13:42
Yeah, and which one’s helpful for me? So that kind of ties into the next one, which is, know your why? Why are you submitting? Why are you presenting? What is it that you’re presenting? Why that thing? Is it to help other teachers? Is it because your school will pay you to go if you present, is it because your program or your professor is asking you to present the research as a as part of your your requirements? I mean, is it going to be truly helpful for someone? What I always think when I start writing is, this is what I want to write up. This is what I want to present. But so what? So the teachers are going to leave with saying. So what do I do with this now? So what can I do with this now? So what part of this will I be able to apply now? So if you’re thinking about your your topic, or the thing you want, that you’re passionate about what you want to share, and you’re asking yourself those questions, and you have to be able to answer. You have to be able to answer with Well, after attending this session, you will know one more strategy to help unmotivated students learn to write thesis statements. Or after attending my presentation, you will be, you will be you will have. Three new ways to help students apply idiom usage in a more natural way. So you’ve gotta know why if you cannot answer that question, it doesn’t mean Leave it, leave that topic and abandon it. It just means you’ve gotta leave it alone for a while and think about the answer. Write it out. You’ll come back to it, because if you’re doing this in the classroom and it’s successful, there is a why, and there is a so what,

Brent Warner 15:27
yes, so figure it out. Figure out why you’re doing it. This is kind of making me think. Over the last couple of years, I’ve gone to several conferences that, I guess purport to be more academically focused or something like that, Ixchell, and I saw so many of these things. It’s like, I think I’ve kind of bemoaned this a little bit in the past, but it’s this idea of like, okay, well, I did this tiny little sample survey with my students, and I’m turning that into, like, a little research project with like, six or seven people total as my subjects, and then I’m turning that into a presentation. And to me, that’s like, one of these things where it’s like, well, where’s the value in that? Like, is that actual it’s like, to me that that, see, that seems to me like just playing the system of, you know, university. It’s like, university requires you to publish and present somewhat regularly, and so then it’s like, you’re not really providing value. You’re sorry, I want to be careful about this. You’re not necessarily providing value by giving a tiny sample size, like introduction concept to something where it’s like, Well, are we doing a real study out of this or not? Like, is this worth people’s one hour of time that they’re going to get out of the, you know, that they’re going to have to take out of the other sessions that are being presented, versus your one, right? Like, to me, one of the questions I always want to ask is, like, when people walk out of there, are they going to say, like, there was something really valuable from that for me, right? And so I hope so in my own presentations. I hope that it’s not just like a bunch of you know, patting ourselves on the back at these presentations, but I will warn that you know that can be a thing, and so you want to be careful that you’re really providing value to whoever’s going to go to your session, and that it’s more I don’t know. For me, I guess I’d like to see like that. It’s a selfless share, rather than, like a a some sort of personal need that you have to fill some requirement to get it done. Yeah,

Ixchell Reyes 17:29
and I’m just going to throw in that people will sense right through that. They will they will know. So the worst thing I’ve seen it happen is when people realize someone’s just spitting out their research, and people start walking out in the middle of the presentation, and you end up with like, one or two attendees, yeah? And that is really and they’re staying there just because it’s too late to one another session, or because they’re getting credit to attend a session, right? And again, I am interested in research. I definitely want to attend research sessions. But I also want to know how that research, you know, the end part of the your research article, where the implications, where the that start with that, yeah, because that’s going to draw your your attention to how you can apply it and why it’s important.

Brent Warner 18:20
Yes, yes. And I will say, recently, I went to a session where this teacher did actually do it that way. And so he said he actually had a fairly small, I think he was doing, like, pronunciation with AI type of thing, right? And he’s like, he’s like, I have a very small sample size for my own students, but these are the things that is starting to open up the conversations for me about, okay, then here’s how I here’s what’s going on with the conversation inside of it, and then it makes sense. And it was really became a valuable presentation, even though it was only a small sample to start with, because it’s really about, in that case, it was about getting people kick started and going like, Okay, this is what I can start thinking about. This is what I can start pursuing. Etc.

Ixchell Reyes 18:59
Yeah, we don’t like death, but by PowerPoint. And we also don’t like death by research, research spitting out, or whatever that is spitting out.

Brent Warner 19:10
Yeah. Okay, so, so in the future, ishchell, you and I already do have a plan to do another like how to put on a good presentation conversation, because about that, it needs to be talked about a little bit more. So not today, but, but pay attention. Hit that subscribe button. We’ll talk about it later. Okay, my next one here is, you kind of mentioned this. Ixchell already. It’s a variation of this, but reviewing your competition so and not to think of them as competition. But you know, just like again, looking at someone’s presentation that you went to and then kind of seeing, okay, what did it actually say inside of their session description and versus when you went to it like, what did it look like? You can sometimes reach out to presenters and say, hey, I want to learn how to present more. Um, would you be willing to share your submission proposal? Because the other thing I think that many new people don’t recognize is that a submission proposal is quite a bit longer than just the blurb, the abstract blurb that comes up. So you get that abstract that’s what they put into their into the catalog, the catalog, right? So when you go look on Cvent, or on schedule, or whatever that write up is there, but when you’re actually submitting your you’re writing quite a long, you know, bit of information, all of the things about you, your setting, you know how this is going to help people, etc. And so a lot of teachers save that all when they submit. So they kind of like I do, I keep a document and for the most part, and I kind of have everything saved. And so then I’m getting so if I’m going to present this again, I’ll use basically the same information. And so some people might be willing to share that with you and going, Yeah, okay, so now you can see what’s on the back end now, so if you’d already seen their presentation, you can say, Hey, would you be willing to share that with me? So I can see can see what’s going on on the back end and how you got accepted. So that might be a way to help you see a little bit of you know how the sausage is made, I guess.

Ixchell Reyes 21:13
Alright, the next thing to do is to keep an eye out for extensions, Dead Light extensions, and that’s because usually there’s the the first deadline, and then after some time, they extend the deadline to get other people other submissions in. That means they may not have received submission, enough submissions, or enough quality submissions. And I think this is always helpful. It’s usually about another week. You know, they give you about another week, which is for me, since I wait till the last minute, you shouldn’t do but keep an eye for app. Keep an eye out for extensions. Yeah,

Brent Warner 21:54
yeah, they can. That’s also a good hint that they really do need something a little better than what they’ve been getting, or a little bit more. And so, so I would almost, you know, when, when you see those extension ones, it’s a really good opportunity to submit, because it’s way it to me, it feels way more likely that you’ll get accepted than just the first one where it’s like, Oh, whatever. Percent only makes it in, and then they’re like, Oh, we’re doing extensions. You’re like, okay, they must be wanting something. So that could be a good chance, for

Ixchell Reyes 22:21
sure. And you know, one of the things that I often do when I get that extension or when the deadline is coming up is I always talk to someone and say, Hey, here’s my idea. Listen to my idea and see what do you think. And I talk it out, not for their benefit, but because then I’m internalizing what I kind of want to put down on paper. And I do this every single time, because sometimes my ideas just live and swim in my head. But if I don’t talk about it and I then don’t sit down and write about it, I’ll sit down, and the ideas don’t come so it’s really good to around that time. Don’t need to write anything and give it to someone, just talk about it with one of your colleagues. Cool.

Brent Warner 22:58
Yeah, all right. So I think we’re going to wrap with this last one just, which is just kind of keeping up on top of conference proposal deadlines. So Ixchell, like we said before, it’s really hard, right? It’s like, okay, wait a second, which when is this one going to be due? Oh, I missed the deadline for that one. I had no idea was it this time. And so you can, of course, keep an eye out by searching on websites, or you can sign up for the mailing list of the organizations that you want to go to and whatever else it is there, you know, but there’s not a lot of great there have been in the past, and people have kind of run their own calendars for a little while. At the moment, there’s a teacher named Todd Rademacher, I think is his name, he’s he’s a pretty well known teacher. Anyways, he has a, just a mailing list, and I’ll provide a link in the show notes where He sends out about once a month. And he’s like, Oh, here’s, you know, 10 or 15 conference proposal deadlines that are coming up. You know, you might want to check those out and see what they’re about. And so he’s not necessarily TESOL specific, although TESOL did come up on his mailing list last month and so, so if you have some, a couple of different ways to kind of keep on top of things, you might also just tell people, hey, you know, let me know if there are presentations, submissions coming up. Because sometimes your colleagues know about things, and you’re just like, oh, I had no idea it was going and it gets skipped. So create some ways to be aware, because again, many of them are quite far in the distance, you know, and kind of further than you’re prepared to start thinking about it. Especially one of the problems for me is like, I’m like, Oh, well, I’m not ready to prepare for 2026 like, I don’t know what AI is going to look like at that time, and it’s a real it’s a real struggle, right? Or it’s like, if we’re talking about AI or how the world’s going to look at that time, and it’s like, Okay, I’m going to give come up with an idea at least. And hopefully, like, that’ll be roughly the area that I want to talk in, and you might need to fine tune a little bit later, but, but keep an eye out on those dates. As they do, sneak by.

Ixchell Reyes 25:07
All right, please check us out on YouTube, at us on Instagram or any other platform. And

Brent Warner 25:15
and we’re there. Maybe

Ixchell Reyes 25:18
we’re there. And thank you to all we’ve got. Suddenly, I think after TESOL, we got a bunch of new subscribers, so thank you for following us and listening to our show. And now it is time for our fun finds, all right, so I have the govi hexa light panels. I’m a sucker for LEDs, and I received a gift, which was the govi hexagon light panels. I used to have hue light panels, but those are pricier and a lot more expensive to replace or to add on to, if you’re, if you’re, you know, creating something on your wall. But these are cheaper, customizable and they’re, they still work with all of your like home, smart home appliances. So Alexa, what is it the Google? What’s the other one? Home, kid or whatever, something like that. But they’re all, they all, they’re all compatible. So cool. If you want to put something colorful on your wall. I recommend those nice.

Brent Warner 26:25
Okay, if you I’m going to go with something, I’m going to go with these ultra thin webcam cover slides. There’s lots of these things I found. I found these ones, I think on, I don’t know, Amazon or something like that. There’s like, $3 for three of them. But panda ones, yeah, Panda ones. So, so they have, you know, they have all these web cover things, you know, you put a sticker over your webcam, and that’s fine, right? But this one is kind of nice, just because it’s a, it’s, it really is ultra thin, so it’s just it my MacBook still completely flat, yeah, that’s the hard part. Is like, Okay, are you going to find something that’s actually going to fold in? But it totally does fold down flat. It doesn’t leave any gaps in the seal for anything. And then you can actually slide. It’s a little tiny piece of plastic, and it has a little slider so it can cover up the camera or not cover it up. I have always had something physical covering my camera, in addition to, you know, the digital thing. So we might maybe trust the the cameras not to turn on by themselves, or AI not to sneak into your system and turn on the camera and see what’s going on. Maybe don’t trust that, if you don’t trust that some sort of little actual physical block to the camera cannot be defeated by AI. So, so I don’t know. I think this is a worthwhile purchase. They’re very non obtrusive. They’re out of the way. They don’t stand out on your computer when you’re using them. So really quite useful,

Ixchell Reyes 27:54
Alright, for the show notes and other episodes, check out DIESOL.org/ 119, for episode 119 you can find us on YouTube, Instagram and

Brent Warner 28:06
Some other places,

Ixchell Reyes 28:07
Some other places at @DIESOLpod, yeah,

Brent Warner 28:11
You can find me on some other places too, at @BrentGWarner

Ixchell Reyes 28:15
and me at @Ixy_Pixy. That’s i x y, underscore p, i, x, y,

Brent Warner 28:23
Awesome. Thanks so much. Everybody.

Ixchell Reyes 28:25
Take care.

Brent Warner 28:26
Bye.