The last few years have heralded many changes for English language learners in New Jersey and around the nation. In an effort to promote unity in diversity and global understanding, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2008 to be the International Year of Languages. The No Child Left Behind Act is soon to be re-authorized and many of the proposals circulated regarding the next version of this legislation focus on linguistically appropriate accountability for ELLs. New Jersey’s bilingual code is also being reauthorized this year. The New Jersey Department of Education is providing a Spanish version of the NJASK this spring. The Department continues its commitment to International Education. As a state participating in the WIDA consortium, New Jersey students continue to be challenged academically as school districts across the state are aligning curricula for ELLs with the WIDA standards and preparing for the ACCESS test. With so much new facing ELL’s today, the NJTESOL/NJBE conference theme this year is New Horizons for English Language Learners in Classrooms and Communities. This year’s Spring Conference will be held on May 20 & 21st at the DoubleTree Hotel and Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset, New Jersey.

       This year’s conference is full of workshops reflecting national and statewide initiatives, current research, varied resources and best practices in the state of New Jersey and beyond. Socorro Herrera will be the keynote speaker at the awards dinner on Tuesday evening. Dr. Herrera serves as a professor of Elementary Education at Kansas State University and directs the Center for Intercultural and Multilingual Advocacy (CIMA) in the College of Education. Her K-12 teaching experience includes an emphasis on literacy development. Her research focuses on literacy opportunities with culturally and linguistically diverse children, reading strategies, and teacher preparation for diversity in the classroom. Her publications focus on differentiated instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Her presentation at Tuesday night’s dinner will serve all who work with ELLs as we strive to master differentiating instruction to meet student needs. Our conference dinner has become very popular. Be sure to register early to guarantee your seat at this sought after event.

       We have several other prestigious keynote speakers at this year’s exciting conference. K. Lynn Savage, teacher, author and editor of the Ventures series, will be presenting on literacy for ELLs across the levels Her workshop will address bow literacy research informs classroom practices for ELLs from kindergarten to adult. Elizabeth Claire, publisher of the Easy English NEWS and prolific author of teacher resources in the field of English as a Second Language, will share her experiences of thirty seven year working with ELLs. Judie Haynes, author and co-author of five books on helping classroom teachers with their second language population, will be presenting two workshops Modifying Methods and Materials for ELLS Content Classrooms and Reading and Writing Workshop and the Elementary ELL. Paul Heacock is author and editor of numerous dictionaries, from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, to the Cambridge Dictionary of American English and the New American Dictionary of Difficult Words. His dynamic presentation, What Makes Academic Language Academic, delves into the development of content area vocabulary, an area highlighted in the WIDA standards and a key technique in SlOP. Fred Carrigg, formerly with the New Jersey Department of Education, will be presenting his work on ELLs in the middle grades, Instructing Adolescent ELLs: Double the Work. Workshops by Lynor Carnuccio, Educational Consultant, round out the literacy and standards strand of our keynote presentations. Rebecca Freeman Field, author of Bilingual Education and Social Change, Building on Community Bilingualism and co-editor of English Language Learners at School: A Guide for Administrators, brings the needs of ELL’s to the level of school and district administration.

       Representatives from several offices of the state Department of Education will share with us current information on the status of NCLB as related to ELLs. Raquel Sinai, Lori Ramella and Ericka Reed will hold their annual seminar on the state of initiatives in the Office of Specialized Populations on both days. Representatives from the Office of Literacy and Reading First and the Office of Early Childhood Education will be conducting numerous informative and exciting literacy workshops. Each special interest group will have a strand of workshops available to meet their needs. A new format for our NJTESOL-NJI3E Legislative Conference will run concurrently. The legislative sessions will require preregistration, but no extra costs.

       Our exhibitors also have a tremendous array of presentations, products and materials to share with you. Once again we will be holding several raffles over the two days in the exhibitor’s hail. Look for your raffle tickets in the conference booklet at sign-in. Submit your raffle tickets in the exhibitor’s hail and be eligible to win an NJTESOL-NJBE membership for a year, assorted books and materials donated by exhibitors, or the one-day registration fee for the 2009 conference. You must submit you raffle tickets in the exhibit hail. While you need not be present to win, you must visit the exhibit hall-to claim your prizes. Drawings will be held at 9:45 and 11:15 on both days and at 3:00 PM on Tuesday. Be sure to drop off your conference evaluations in the exhibit hail to become eligible to win other valuable prizes.

       Due to the overwhelmingly positive response to the new conference format we introduced last year, the NJTESOL-NJBE conference committee is working overtime to ensure that your experience this year is even better than last. Please note that all workshops will be held at the DoubleTree Hotel in Somerset, with an increase in the number of keynote presentations. Sign-in, lush breakfast and lunch buffets, the expanded exhibitor’s hall and poster sessions will be held at the Garden State Exhibit Center connected by covered walkway to the DoubleTree Prior to the conference booklet going on-line, we will have a list of workshops and brief descriptions for you to use to support your requests for release time to attend the conference We hope this will facilitate the process to your attendance, while also meeting the new state guidelines for teachers going to out of-district workshops.

       If you would like to volunteer an hour of your time at the conference or facilitate a workshop, please e-mail me at jkusielewicz@njtesol-njbe.org. If you aspire to be a presenter or would simply like to share a good idea that works for ELLS, consider participating in the Poster Sessions on Tuesday, May 20, the first day of the conference. We are still accepting proposals for poster sessions only, via the website www.njtesol-njbe.org. More detailed information about the conference can be found in the next issue of Voices and is frequently updated on the website.

       Janina J. Kusielewicz is Vice-President of NJTESOL-NJBE