Dear All

In the posting we’ll be looking at the new IATEFL handbook for teacher associations (TAs), a wiki for TAs, and a couple of IATEFL Online highlights for your own TA.

RALT

As you may have seen on ELTeCS and twitter, Running an Association for Language Teachers: Challenges and Directions (RALT) is the new IATEFL handbook, published by the British Council with the help of a team of volunteers. 

My special thanks to my colleagues on the advisory panel and our editor Susana Gomez for their superb work on RALT. You’re a pleasure to work with!

RALT has been specially targeted at well-established teachers associations. The main topics include publicity, finance, events, publication, technology and membership. You’ll find below the chapter titles and their authors.

• Financial management of a volunteer organization, Robert Dickey 
• Fundraising and sponsorship, Bethany Cagnol and Jarek Kawalek  
• Recruitment and retention of volunteers, Vinicius Nobre  
• Newsletter editing - a guide, A. Suzan Öniz and Amna M. Bedri 
• Newsletter production and distribution, Susana Gómez 
• Publications, Simon Greenall 
• Using technology to improve your English language teachers’ association, Sara Hannam and Marisa Constantinides 
• Event management. SPElt’s international travelling conferences: a success story, Zakia Sarwar 
• Organising and running online events, Gavin Dudeney 
• Membership and conference database management, Robert Dickey 
• Publicity and public relations, Silvija Andernovics 
• Community outreach, Bethany Cagnol and Jarek Kawalek  
• Creating and running new TA branches, George Pickering

RALT offers a wealth of sound and practical information – checklists, questions to aid reflection within the TAs and even a wiki for TAs, which we’ll have a look later in this posting. 

Here are some RALT stats:

• Editorial team: 5
• Editorial team locations: 5 (UAE, UK, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil)
• Authors: 14
• Authors locations: 11 (UK, Turkey, Sudan, Spain, South Korea, Poland, Pakistan, Latvia, Greece, France, Brazil)
• Nationalities: 8 (British, Turkish, Sudanese, Spanish, Polish, Pakistani, Latvian, Brazilian)
• Contributors: 19
• Chapters: 13
• Pages: 110
• 1st print run: 1000 

As with most IATEFL publications, RALT was put together by an editorial team and contributors from all across the world. Its international flavour is aimed to make it relevant to all TAs, with little or no adaptation. However, it’s the fact that it’s the product of professional volunteering that makes it even more special to some of us! 

You can read RALT online or download it for offline reading on Teaching English and IATEFL websites.

The RALT editorial panel:

- A wiki for TAs

The chapter on ‘Using technology to improve your English language teachers’ association’ by Sara Hannam and Marisa Constantinides comes with a surprise bonus: a wiki for TAs: Tech Tools For TAs – where ‘you’ll find all the links mentioned in the chapter as well as many additional links and useful video tutorials or short screencasts to help you understand how you could use these tools’. Please visit Tech Tools for TAs and leave some feedback for Sara and Marisa!

- IATEFL Online highlights

IATEFL Brighton is behind us for another year, but you can still check out all the wonderful resources on IATEFL Online – sessions materials, video sessions, and interviews. 

Here are a few TA related interviews you may want to have a look and share with your TA members:

Colin Mackenzie on IATEFL SIGs

Tim Philips and Susana Gomez on RALT

Amy Jost and Bethany Cagnol on IATEFL Associates and Fundraising and Community Outreach for TAs.

Have a look at IATEFL Online and find out more about the topics that interest you and share away!

Your comments and questions much appreciated!

Cheers

ana