Ixchell Reyes 0:00
What are the hot topics people are talking about at English language teaching conferences? We’ve got the answers. As we recap with attendees and presenters at CATESOL 2024 you

Brent Warner 0:25
welcome to the diesel podcast, where we focus on developing innovation in English as a second or other language. I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL at Irvine Valley College, and I’m here with ishchell Reyes, award winning educator in innovation and professional development, and I shall still in Saudi Arabia. How’s it going?

Ixchell Reyes 0:44
(Speaks Arabic)

Brent Warner 0:46
Yes. (laughter) I hope Yes is the right answer. The better answer is just the smile and nod, uh huh, uh huh,

Ixchell Reyes 0:55
or just say Alhamdulillah for everything.

Brent Warner 0:57
Alhamdulillah. Okay.

Ixchell Reyes 1:00
Thanks be to God. I’m fine. Oh

Brent Warner 1:02
Oh yeah,

Ixchell Reyes 1:03
it works for everything.

Brent Warner 1:04
I like – Can you use Inshallah, anywhere, too,

Ixchell Reyes 1:07
Yeah, that’s like, maybe,

Brent Warner 1:09
yeah, maybe God – God willing

Ixchell Reyes 1:10
Hopefully – yeah, God willing.

Brent Warner 1:14
All right, so we had a terrible election. I think we should just say it right, it’s awful.

Ixchell Reyes 1:21
Oh, God, if there is a God,

Brent Warner 1:27
Yeah, I mean, bad results for anyone who is in favor education, immigrants, you know, all sorts of just, you know, just being in favor of just decent people, I think, is …

Ixchell Reyes 1:41
Humans. How about humans?

Brent Warner 1:42
Yeah, and some humanity.

Ixchell Reyes 1:45
And, decency and…

Brent Warner 1:48
Yeah, it’s rough, and obviously neither of us are, like political scientists or anything like that, but I think it’s just enough to say a lot of people are basically saying they’re they’re planning on just working locally with their politics and, you know, and kind of shutting out the bigger scale of things, or at least to start. We’ll see how things go. But what a rough, rough little while here. I guess we’re gonna and another four years, we’ll see what happens. But until then, we’ll keep on, keep on starting to keep on. All right, I alright. So I shall on topic here today. We are we’re going to be talking this is something we’ve talked about doing for a long time. I’ve never been successfully able to do it, which is just going around a conference and interviewing people about their experiences and trying to get some like, a little bit of like a pulse check on on things at the moment. And so I was able to finally do it at CATESOL 2024

Ixchell Reyes 2:49
I know I’m so jealous. You got to go.

Brent Warner 2:53
Well, it was only for one day. I did go with our friend Eric Roth, and we got to chat with a bunch of people. But, you know, we wanted to just kind of feel what, what was going on, what, what the conversations were about, and so, so important

Ixchell Reyes 3:08
It’s important to stay connected. I think more than any time, it’s really important.

Brent Warner 3:15
Yeah, 100% and it was great to see a bunch of people. So I think what we’re going to do on this one, Ixchell, I did the interviewing. They’re very brief interviews with, with a, you know, a handful of people, and you’re gonna,

Ixchell Reyes 3:27
I didn’t teleport (laughter)

Brent Warner 3:29
you’re gonna be virtually – post virtually here. All right. So let’s get into it. We’ll listen, and then if we have any comments, we’ll get get to them too. Here we go.

Name, position and location. Hi,

Gizelle Ponzillo 3:49
I’m Gizelle Ponzillo, Assistant Professor of ESL at Santa Ana College.

Brent Warner 3:54
Nice and Gizelle, here at CATESOL what has been your number one takeaway, or the thing that you’re most excited about seeing maybe something you’ll bring back to school. What are you impressed with?

Gizelle Ponzillo 4:05
So I’m very excited to see that there is a number of presentations on AI, and the use of technology in the classroom, even for Adult Ed, for adult ed students, non credit students. So I made sure to attend most of the sessions on AI, and I’m excited to take some of that stuff back and to show the other faculty that, yes, we can teach our adult ESL students how to use a computer, how to build a website, how to use Google Docs and Drive and Google Suite and all that. So if you didn’t make it this year, you you need to sign up next year. Also you can participate. Get involved with cateso. That’s a great way to build connections with people. And lastly, Brent, you did receive a shout out at one of the presentations that I attended.

Brent Warner 4:54
Oh, very nice.

Gizelle Ponzillo 4:55
By Denise,

Brent Warner 4:57
Oh, wonderful.

Gizelle Ponzillo 4:58
So it was great to see your name. Her slice. Thank you for all that you do. Awesome.

Brent Warner 5:02
Thank you. All right. Your name, position and location.

Emmy Min 5:09
Hi. My name is Emmy Min, and I’m a professor at University of Southern California at the MAT TESOL program.

Brent Warner 5:17
Awesome. And I should say Professor Min was one of my professors in my in my master’s program as well. So Professor Min here at CATESOL, what’s your biggest takeaway, or the thing that you find most interesting or exciting that you’re wanting to take back to school?

Emmy Min 5:33
Yeah, couple things. I gave two presentations, so I got a lot of like, questions and reactions to my presentation, so that I wanted to, like, bring back to my own research team, and also, like, teaching my own teaching and maybe modify it or do some more research based on reactions. And also, another thing that I learned a lot I wanted to learn was was about AI, and it’s something that I really need to learn more about, is just that there’s new things coming out as we speak. So I just wanted to make sure that I am caught up with the latest technology and also how people use it, because we do different things with it, and there’s a lot to learn from each other. So I just wanted to, like, make sure that that I am in this professional, like, world of people like using it and to the same, you know, cost. So just wanted to learn a lot. And I think that I learned quite a bit, you know, from all those sessions that talked about AI and technologies.

Brent Warner 6:32
And are you feeling pretty positive towards it? Are you worried?

Emmy Min 6:36
Oh yeah, yes, when I was at conferences, like years before, when we first talked about, like, AI, the use of AI for classes and purposes, people were torn. But now I think that people are moving towards the use of it. You know, we can’t really ignore the fact that there’s AI in the world, whether we like it or not, we have to use it, or we have to deal with this some extent. So I think definitely positive in the way we use it. Just how we use it is something that we need to talk about and discuss.

Brent Warner 7:07
Still sorting out. Right? Awesome. Thank you so much.

Emmy Min 7:10
Thank you.

Brent Warner 7:11
All right, name, position and location, please.

Margi Wald 7:15
Margi Wald, I work at the University of California, Berkeley as a as a lecturer for first year writing, and also I direct a summer ESL program, awesome.

Brent Warner 7:28
And so Margi, what was for you the most interesting takeaway, the thing that you think that maybe you’ll bring back, or just something that you’re there’s been thought provoking for you.

Margi Wald 7:40
I really enjoyed the plenary by Mark Warschauer. I thought that the way in which he was talking to us about how to teach students to use AI responsibly in the class, and the ways that it can be very beneficial, especially in a force for equity, is something that I will take away from the conference and also meeting all the first time people who came to the conference.

Brent Warner 8:06
Yeah, absolutely awesome. So you’re feeling positive towards AI as we’re stepping forward, or nervous, or both?

Margi Wald 8:13
I’ve always felt positive towards AI. I think that a lot of teachers are very scared of AI, although we use it all the time when we’re making materials and all that, but then we tell our students that they can’t use it. And I understand that there, there are some disconnects and things that we have to work through. But what that’s what I really liked about his talk, is that he gave us a kind of framework for how to talk, not only to our students about it, but to other colleagues who may be very, very afraid of allowing their allowing their students to use AI

Brent Warner 8:51
I use skeptical. That’s the word I go with

Margi Wald 8:54
Okay, skeptical may be a better word – yes.

Brent Warner 8:57
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Margi Wald 8:58
Thank you,

Brent Warner 8:59
All right, name, position and location. Hi,

Kimberley Briesch Sumner 9:03
I’m Kimberley Briesch Sumner, and I am a master lecturer at the University of Southern California and the American Language Institute.

Brent Warner 9:11
Awesome. And for this weekend, what was your biggest takeaway? The thing that you thought was interesting, maybe that you’ll bring back to classes, however you’re thinking about it,

Kimberley Briesch Sumner 9:20
The thing that I would say has been like the biggest takeaway, and the thing I really tended to focus on was looking through the vast number of AI generated presentations and basically just trying to find ones that really would help, you know, add a information to like, to my personal knowledge, but also things that I could begin to apply to my own classrooms. And so

Brent Warner 9:50
you’re you’re feeling kind of positive towards a skeptic goal. How are you? How are you landing on that

Kimberley Briesch Sumner 9:54
definitely positive thinking that I just need to begin incorporating it a little bit more aggressive. Lee, just so that way my students can feel comfortable with it, that I can feel more comfortable with it. Yeah,

Brent Warner 10:07
Awesome. Thanks so much. Okay, name, position and location.

Pete Torrez 10:15
So, my name is Pete Torrez. I am a full time noncredit ESL instructor at Los Angeles Mission College,

And Pete. What this weekend has been really interesting to you, like a takeaway, something maybe you’ll bring back for classes the biggest impact for you this weekend. I

mean, overall, I really am enjoying all the conversations around AI and the embracement of it. You know, it’s not all the doom saying it used to be the plenary in particular had a lot of like, data driven, like, evidence or supportive AI that I really appreciated, and the papyrus app that he showed is something I definitely want to look at more.

Brent Warner 10:53
Yeah, so you’re feeling pretty positive about the AI stuff.

Pete Torrez 10:57
I use it my classrooms and encourage my students to use it.

Brent Warner 11:00
All right, that’s it. Thank you so much. All right, okay. Name, position, location.

Michelle Buell 11:06
My name is Michelle Buell. I am my full time job as an academic director at an IEP in Southern California. I also teach part time at Mount San Antonio College in the evenings. And I was, I volunteered here as a CATESOL registration coordinator, awesome. So I didn’t get to attend a lot of sessions, but it was still really, really a nice, nice experience.

Brent Warner 11:30
Yeah, a lot going on here. So for for that which you were able to participate in or see going on, what has struck you about this weekend, or what’s been interesting?

Michelle Buell 11:39
Well, I liked, I liked the main speaker, and he talked about AI and and talked about it in a really positive light. And I, I liked seeing that kind of shift. Because I think when i ai first came out, everyone was kind of afraid, and they thought, you know, oh, we need to punish the students. You know, plagiarism, all that, and it’s not right. It really is something that can can help them and empower them, and it’s a tool, yeah, they can use. And so I really, really what he said in the in the main speech, really resonated with me. Okay, yeah. So

Brent Warner 12:10
when people are talking about the AI thing, I am following up with the question of, are you feeling positive towards it? Skeptical?

Michelle Buell 12:17
I’ve been really positive about it for for a while, but I’m a lot of teachers around me are still skeptical, and so I kind of that’s why I liked what he said, and I liked his presentation, because I, you know, I think it’s important to let teachers know that it isn’t just about, you know, plagiarism or anything like that. It really can be used as a tool.

Brent Warner 12:40
Thank you so much.

Michelle Buell 12:42
Thank you. Brent,

Brent Warner 12:44
Okay, name, position and location.

Jennie Kim 12:48
Hi. My name is Jenny, and I am a full time ESL instructor in San Diego. And one of the takeaways from CATESOL 2024 is that people are now slowly, maybe reluctantly, but slowly, accepting and adopt, starting to adopt. AI more I’m learning a lot more about new apps and new websites to incorporate into my lessons. So that was really great. So that was my focus. More of technology. Are

Brent Warner 13:28
you feeling generally positive about AI these days, or nervous? Or what are you landing at?

Jennie Kim 13:34
I’m definitely not nervous anymore compared to last year, and I see that there’s less resistance all around me, and it’s not just me, but all around me. Yeah, so positive about it.

Brent Warner 13:50
Awesome. Thank you so much. All right, so Ixchell this is the first batch, and I kind of put these together in kind of two categories, right? So we talked first about this. There’s a lot of conversation around the AI stuff. So what are your impressions of you know what people are sharing here?

Ixchell Reyes 14:10
Well, I’m not surprised that everybody’s really talking about AI still, and I’m glad to hear that the keynote speaker is encouraging, encouraging others to use it still. You could hear that some of some of the interviewees, mentioned that some of their colleagues are still resisting it. So again, I’m glad to hear a more open approach to AI

Brent Warner 14:42
That was kind of the big thing for me is, like, I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t trying to lead people on these conversations, you know, I but I did pick people that I kind of know, but the general conversation was, you know, leaning more towards positive and seeing more, like, understanding of positive possibilities. With it, right? So I felt encouraged in that side. I mean, it is, you know, there’s still problems, of course, and there always will be, but, but I think that, like people are trying to solve things instead of stop things, which is a nice, a nice approach, and definitely Mark war shower, he’s a professor at UC Irvine, really, you know, interesting ideas did a good job of presenting and kind of helping people see where they can work with these things, with their students and with other schools as well. All right, let’s take a quick break. Okay, everybody. For those of you who have already signed up for this, you know that I am not a spammer in any way, but the book is coming out fairly soon. Ed Tech for multilingual learners through ISTE, coming up in a few months. It’s, it’s moving fast. Ishchell, so if you’re, if you’re interested in getting a pre order or just kind of knowing about what’s happening as the book is approaching. Please feel free to sign up at the mailing list at diesol.org/book, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Okay, so I shall second part here. We’re actually going to jump in with our friend of the show, dia mudra. And Daya was kind enough to she’s actually served as the perfect transition, because she does talk about AI and kind of the second side as we move into like, the things the other things outside of AI that we kind of need to know about. So let’s take a listen and see what she had to say. Okay, name, position and location.

Dayamudra Dennehy 16:50
Hi, I’m Dayamudra Dennehy. I am full time tenured faculty, ESL, credit and non credit at City College of San Francisco. Is there something else?

Brent Warner 17:00
I think that’s it. And Daya, we’ve had you on the show before. So glad to see you again. But what was your what’s your best takeaway, or the thing that you’re most excited about learning here at CATESOL?

Dayamudra Dennehy 17:11
Well, I’m really interested in generative AI, so we had some really rich conversations about that. And I thought Mark war showers presentation, the plenary was really great. There was also one younger scholar named Malik Stevenson who made a presentation called Understanding the emotional labor of teaching while black. So it’s really great just to see a presentation that was really rooted in anti racism and equity, and to have, like, a younger scholar in the field really talking about anti blackness and how to bridge some of those gaps with our students.

Brent Warner 17:46
I like that. Okay, cool. Any messages out there for everybody?

Dayamudra Dennehy 17:52
Well, I haven’t been at CATESOL for a while, but it was just really great to meet colleagues from all over the state, and even someone approached me who were disconnected through LinkedIn, and she said, Oh, I follow you on LinkedIn. And so that’s been really fun. I think these connections through the field, sometimes we can be quite isolated in our classrooms, so just to have the chance to meet colleagues, to sit and have lunch together, has been a real joy.

Brent Warner 18:14
Awesome. Thank you so much. What is your name? Position and location?

Femia Scarfone 18:20
My name is , and I am a full time ESL professor at Saddleback College, and I’m also department chair,

Brent Warner 18:31
Busy.

Femia Scarfone 18:32
Yes, quite busy.

Brent Warner 18:33
And so Femia, what was your biggest kind of takeaway or the thing that you found most interesting so far at CATESOL?

Femia Scarfone 18:41
So I have learned a lot during this CATESOL conference, but I just came from the college university level rap session, and Kevin Wong and Anna waking presented on linguistic bias in four areas, and those were accent discrimination, language hierarchies, recognizing global Englishes, assumptions based on fluency that we may have, and cultural stereotyping. Okay, so we had a really great discussion about our own personal experiences and observations of linguistic discrimination, and we discuss strategies to address and prevent linguistic discrimination.

Brent Warner 19:27
I like that, because I think a lot of times right now, it feels like the only conversations are AI conversations, but there are other parts that are so important for continuing conversation at in our field, right? And so I’m really glad they did that.

Femia Scarfone 19:40
Me too. Me too. It was awesome, and it was a really great conversation.

Brent Warner 19:44
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Femia Scarfone 19:45
Thank you.

Brent Warner 19:46
Name position and location,

Anthony Burik 19:48
Okay, hi everyone. My name is Anthony Burik. I am a past president of CATESOL. We are here at the CATESOL 2024 conference at Cal State, LA. And then I’m also a coordinator at the outreach and Technical Assistance Network, otherwise known as OTAN in Sacramento. We’re a state leadership project for adult education. Awesome.

Brent Warner 20:10
And so for this conference, what’s been your biggest takeaway interest? Thing that’s been, you know, something you want to bring back to work. What’s been catching your attention,

Anthony Burik 20:21
Right – So this is actually our second annual conference at an academic institution. So we used to have the conference at hotels and convention centers, and then COVID came around, and we had to change the model. And so what I really love about this conference that I’ve been thinking a lot about is how we’ve been able to really just focus on the teaching and the learning and the networking and the getting together and the sharing of great ideas, also the sharing of challenges and concerns that we face all the time as teachers. But for the organization, for cateso, I really love that we’re kind of going back to basics on professional development, and it’s kind of stripping it down to its parts, in a way, and really getting folks just to focus on teaching and learning, and hopefully everything that they’ve been learning at the conference, they’ll be able to bring back to their schools and agencies back home. And hopefully that impacts the learning that goes on in their classrooms and in their programs and in their communities. So hopefully, you know, not only just being a part of the conference, but hopefully just that idea of the how do I take away what I’ve learned and really apply it? And so hopefully people have found this to be a meaningful event where they’ll be able to take all that learning and bring it back to their communities. So that’s the hope.

Brent Warner 21:38
Love it, and I’m very happy that we’re on campuses too. That’s a big happy change for me too.

Anthony Burik 21:43
Good, good, fantastic!

Brent Warner 21:45
Awesome – Thank you so much. Thanks. Okay, Name position and location,

Chris Stillwell 21:50
I’m Chris Stilwell, and I’m an ESL instructor at Saddleback College,

Brent Warner 21:54
Okay, and Chris over the weekend here at CATESOL, what was your biggest takeaway and most interesting thing, maybe something you’ll bring back to the classroom, whatever, whatever is kind of holding your attention right now

Chris Stillwell 22:06
The biggest thing for me, I think, is just being able to reconnect with people at all different colleges and all across the state, see where everybody is, finding out where everybody’s policies are, what they’re struggling with, and finding out that we share a lot of the same kind of challenges, but different ways of approaching them. So I got a lot of great things from the sessions. What I’m really going to remember is the things I got from the conversation,

Brent Warner 22:25
Absolutely, yeah – that for me, is an advocacy for being back in person, although I understand the desire to be online, but the socializing aspect is huge and kind of undeniable,

Chris Stillwell 22:38
absolutely

Brent Warner 22:39
Awesome. Thanks so much!

Chris Stillwell 22:40
my pleasure.

Brent Warner 22:42
Okay, so main position and location,

Naomi Sato 22:46
Naomi Sato, position Assistant Division chair and vocational ESL coordinator at Glendale Community College in the non credit ESL division.

Brent Warner 22:55
Okay, so what is your biggest takeaway, interesting thing that was valuable to you about this weekend.

Naomi Sato 23:03
well, I love all the sessions. The biggest thing for me is that I’ve been away from conferences for a while and just getting together and seeing people I haven’t seen in years and making those connections again. Yeah. So,

Brent Warner 23:16
so we’ve been talking about that and kind of the coming back in in person. Some of these events have been back in person for a while, but people still really appreciate the value of that, right?

Naomi Sato 23:26
Oh yeah, yeah. You know it’s that. It’s those informal times in between sessions when you just get to talk, share ideas, catch up on what people have been doing, how their families are. It’s going to conference is just a wonderful opportunity to do all those things in addition to get to getting professional development.

Brent Warner 23:43
Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thank you so much.

Naomi Sato 23:45
Thank you.

Brent Warner 23:50
All right, Ixchell, so what do you think the second, second round of conversation kind of focused on, like community and some of the other things that are were happening, but a lot of lot of talk about the value of community for people here?

Ixchell Reyes 24:02
Yeah, I think that, you know, it’s been, what, two years since the pandemic, and it’s really good to hear that people are connecting back with their people again. I think that’s important number one, obviously, to feel connected, but also to feel that you’re making a difference. I think in isolation, we we aren’t inspired, we don’t innovate as much, and it’s easy to get to become apathetic, especially when we’re also having to deal with what technology or AI is bringing to the field of education and ESL. So it’s really nice to hear that people are refreshed by connecting with others. And like I said, we said at the beginning, now more than ever, it’s so important to remain connected.

Brent Warner 24:51
I also think it’s interesting how it’s been, like you said, it’s been a couple years, but people still feel that like, oh, being with other people matters. Right? Yeah, there’s just a long term effect of that, you know, in the fact that people still bring it up, like, as a major salient thing for them, shows me, like, how powerful the time being away was, or being, you know, like how much it really affected us. I just thought, you know, it’s like, kind of like, it’s easy to go, Well, we’re just back now, and everything’s fine, but it’s like no, people are still really grateful to be able to be in person when, when possible, right? And so, right? So I that kind of struck me as interesting, where I would think that people were kind of, Oh, we’ve been back now for a couple years. It’s fine, but people are still just saying like that, being able to talk, being able to see people, being able to shake their hands, right, like that. Stuff is really interesting, how powerful it is,

Ixchell Reyes 25:46
Yes. All right, it is time for our fun finds. And this time I have an app called noon, noon, N, O, O, N, yeah. And noon is also the the name of an Arabic letter. So if you look it up, you’re going to see a little moon looking thing like, well, it’s like a half moon. That’s the letter noon in Arabic. And noon is like your I don’t think is, I wouldn’t call it, I wouldn’t compare it to Amazon, but it is the shopping service, except it’s like on steroids. You could get anything within up to 15 minutes of when you order it, food services, items, household items, everything is delivered. And it’s just so convenient, especially since I don’t have a car here, I can’t just get up and drive. And sometimes I forget something at the store, and I can’t just go get it. I can just order on noon. So I don’t know that it’s available in the United States, but if you happen to be listening to us from another part of the world, in the Middle East, I believe it is available. So awesome.

Brent Warner 27:00
Yeah, I haven’t heard of it here, but, but yeah, sound sounds useful, kind of like a combination like TaskRabbit and Amazon and

Ixchell Reyes 27:10
all the things you can possibly – yes,

Brent Warner 27:13
Got it. Ok cool. So mine is so going back to the social media conversation, there’s been a big shift of people going to blue sky again. And so I remember our episode about the death of Twitter.

Ixchell Reyes 27:29
Death of Twitter. What do we do? Where do we go?

Brent Warner 27:33
People are still recognizing that it’s dying and trying and like, you know, there’s just waves of people, whatever, but now there’s a new wave happening with people going to blue sky, and it’s really big educator community going on there. So, yeah, so that’s what I’m excited about, is like, it actually really feels like old Twitter and at the moment, and I don’t know if this is like a temporary boom, you know, and then it’s going to fade again, because it’s happened a few times, right as people try to make these shifts or figure out where they’re going. But right now, blue sky feels pretty good. It’s, you know, you can. It’s all chronological. You can, kind of, there’s no real algorithmic bias going on inside of there where it’s like all these other ones really want to push, you know, days old stuff that’s totally irrelevant at the point. So I still struggle with that with threads, but blue sky is pretty good, you know, overall, I like it. I did get one article that was really useful, which is Corey Doctorow kind of talked about why he’s not going to invest in blue sky because, or invest his time in blue sky because you cannot take your audience with you yet, as compared to, like, some of these ones that are in the proper Federation. But I think it might change, right that might become a feature in the future, because it does seem like the blue sky people are pretty, like, user friendly. And so if you’re interested in seeing it, where a lot of people are jumping in right now, and there are even chats starting up, jump over on blue sky and check it out.

Ixchell Reyes 29:03
Alright, for the show notes and other episodes, check out DIESOL.org/113 you can also find us on YouTube or Instagram at @DIESOLpod. I don’t know if the show is good and I go over to blue sky. But you can also connect with us on LinkedIn, and, you know, leave us a message, yeah.

Brent Warner 29:28
So you can find me all around the socials at @BrentGWarner,

Ixchell Reyes 29:34
And you can find me at Ixy. Underscore, Pixie, that’s IX yy…, sorry, that’s I x y, underscore, p i x y, oh, my goodness I’m forgetting my own handle.

Brent Warner 29:47
That’s how often you’re using it these days. (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes 29:50
Yeah.

Brent Warner 29:51
All right, everybody, thanks so much. We will see you in December.

Ixchell Reyes 29:56
Alright. Thank you for listening!