TEACHERS OF ENGLISH CONFERENCE ON REGIONAL NETWORKING

TEACHERS OF ENGLISH CONFERENCE ON REGIONAL NETWORKING
Sponsored by the Regional English Language Office
US Embassy Dakar
January 25-26, 2010
Dakar, Senegal

A conference on regional networking for English Teachers Association took place in Dakar (Senegal) from January 25 to January 26, 2010. Nine countries including Senegal, Cameroon, Togo, Mali, Guinea, Mauritania, Cape Verde, Burkina Faso and Niger were represented at this conference.

THEMES

The main theme of the conference was: Setting up and running Teachers’ Associations and Regional Chapters/Challenges and Solutions. However various sub themes have been presented and discussed through workshops. These sub themes included:

• Local Efforts: Background Information about English Language Teaching in the Country/History of Teacher Support Groups in the Region.
After the opening word by RELO Alice Murray and RELO Assistant Khalil Ndiaye,
TESOL President Mark Algren and ATES President Moussa Diouf, the representatives of the different countries were invited to briefly present background information about English Language Teaching in their respective countries and also their associations. This was a good opportunity to learn about ELT in other countries and how teachers had run their associations so far.

• Sharing Our Stories: Successfully Creating Teachers’ Associations
ATES: The Senegalese Experience (Rama Dieng and Abèse Sow)
CAMELTA: The Cameroonian Experience (Mrs. Nnam-Mbi Ndong and Mr. Eric Ngea Ntam)
The Senegalese teachers’ association ATES and the Cameroonian one CAMELTA were the most experienced and successful organizations of the conference. That’s why their representatives were asked to tell about their success stories and share their experience with other T.A the most of which are at a beginning stage. We learned from these presentations that ATES has around 700 members, while CAMELTA has 1900 members. Both of the organizations are TESOL and AITEFL affiliates. CAMELTA is particularly well organized with chapters in all the 10 regions of Cameroon each of which is running its own newsletter.

• Linking Associations with Local/National Authorities
(Ndèye Marie Guèye Fall, CAMELTA reps and others)
During this workshop co-monitored by ATES and CAMELTA members, participants learned how to cope with paperwork as to get recognition by competent authorities of their countries. We discovered that apart from CAMELTA and ATES only SNELT (Society of Niger English Language Teachers) are legally recognized.

• Guidelines for Capacity Building and Creating Regional Chapters
This part of the conference was particularly important for us because creating regional chapters of SNELT is one of the main objectives of our Association.

• Networking at Regional/National Levels
(CAMELTA reps and ATES: Ndeye Marie Gueye Fall)
Networking is vital for teachers’ association, it help them to exchange and share experience. CAMELTA and ATES have a long experience of interaction with each other and with some international teachers’ associations. They shared with the participants their experience as to show the importance of networking and what can be achieved through it.

• How to Become a TESOL Affiliate (Mark Algren)
This was one of the most important presentations of the conference. Mr Algren, President of TESOL Inc. explained fully the requirements and the procedure to follow in order to become a TESOL Affiliate.

• Action Plan: TESOL Boston African Panel Discussion
Three members including two Cameroonians and a Cape Verdian, will represent Africa at the TESOL Convention in March 2010 at Boston. The Dakar Conference participants were asked to discuss on the topic of the African Panel presentation.

General observation
Dakar Conference has been a very formative workshop for us. We learned a lot on how to better our association and how to make it more visible nationwide and even internationally. We are going to use what we learned to make SNELT achieve its objective. Hopefully the networking between associations that we set in Dakar will be a reality.

Kanda & Moudy