Ixchell Reyes 0:00
Did you know that finding reasons to feel gratitude can help you become happier, more grounded and more resilient? In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’re sharing things you’re grateful for, big and small!

Brent Warner 0:26
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, author a few other things, and Ixchell Reyes, happy to be here with you as always, award winning educator professional development and teacher training and all the other good things we keep talking about. How are you?

Ixchell Reyes 0:49
I’m doing well. How are you good?

Brent Warner 0:51
Happy Thanksgiving. Happy pre, thanks. Happy pre, Thanksgiving.

Ixchell Reyes 0:55
It’s never too late to be thankful.

Brent Warner 0:58
Yeah. Are you planning on chopping any Turkey heads off?

Ixchell Reyes 1:02
I am planning on sleeping, because sleeping is sacred.

Brent Warner 1:07
Indeed, indeed,

Ixchell Reyes 1:07
And you? Traveling anywhere?

Brent Warner 1:11
Not traveling, but like some local family stuff, maybe going on, maybe slightly ahead of thanksgiving. But yeah, looking forward to it, looking forward to a little, a little focus on the family time. Well, not, not the organization, actual, real focus. (laughter) Not, not as sure about the organization. I’m sure you know some good things must happen out there too. I don’t really know much about it. So how are you otherwise ready? Ready to get into this. We’re we decided to talk about being thankful for things, right?

Ixchell Reyes 1:44
Being thankful for things, all the things, many things, yeah.

Brent Warner 1:49
So we’ve said, Hey, like, let’s get a little bit thematic this time around. And so we’re like, hey, let’s talk about some things, some people, just some ideas, some things in our field that we’re kind of have been grateful for, but you’re like, Hey, let’s go do the research and see a little bit of the information. So why do we want to be thankful for things, Ixchell?

Ixchell Reyes 2:10
well, it actually this is, I think many people might know this, but it’s important to know that when you find things to be grateful for, your brain is actually releasing dopamine and serotonin, and that, there’s research from Harvard and UC Davis that show some of that. And if you’re not familiar with those two chemicals, they are the happy chemicals. So that means you’re able to be a little more calm during difficult times, and if you’re resilient, you have a stronger will to survive and not just survive, but thrive. So this overall groundedness, I think, at any point in our lives as teachers or just as people, is necessary to cultivate, and if we can make better decisions under stress, so we know that life doesn’t become less stressful, right? (laughter)

Brent Warner 3:01
Not – Not recently (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes 3:04
Then who doesn’t want to be better at being able to make better decisions and remaining calm and remaining logical when things when things happen, or when this guy feels like it’s falling apart or falling down? Yeah?

Brent Warner 3:18
Well, I like that. The stronger will to survive and thrive. So just I’ll get started. I’m thankful for wall. I’m thankful for empty Lacroix. Can I’m going to be thankful for everything I need a stronger wilt to survive and thrive. At the moment,

Ixchell Reyes 3:33
If you’re drinking La Croix right now, that’s a privilege. You know that?

Ixchell Reyes 3:38
Bubbly, bubbly water?

Ixchell Reyes 3:39
Some some places don’t have clean water. So there you go. That is true. That’s a good point. Well, I’m

Brent Warner 3:43
not drinking it right now. I drank it yesterday and left the can out, but I’m thankful for it regardless. (laughter) Okay, cool. So, so we kind of said, Hey, let’s jump back and forth. Let’s talk about a few things. I’ll get started, if that’s okay, and we’ll, we’ll just jump back and forth. So I’m going to start with we’ve, we’ve mentioned a friend of the show several times, Susan akavan. So this is well, well, yes, we’re thankful for Susan. But this is a little bit less about Susan specifically, but about the work that she has done. So at our school, she puts together these mini conferences for our adult ESL teachers, and they’re kind of community led and community built. And so we just did the 12th one. I was just in the audience, just watching, and it was very cool, because a lot of our colleagues were, like, just sharing what they’re doing in their classes with, like, low prep ideas. And a lot of them were just kind of so simple and wonderful and easy to implement that it was really nice just to see the idea that, like, hey, all these teachers are out here just kind of helping each other out, providing support for one another. And so, you know, through this consortium, which. Susan has done a lot of time organizing a lot of the colleagues, one get to know each other, and also get to share ideas with each other and then improve their practice. And so I just love that idea of like, that local growth, right? Local. PD, really keeping it, you know, focused on the the people that are around you. So many, there’s so many good ideas from people that are right by you. And so I just want to be thankful for that, because it’s like, Hey, you don’t have to go all over the place to find things, right? It’s like, there is great, great stuff right in your backyard. And so that was a good reminder for me, too, of just like, how many, how many good teachers there are working in the room right next to us, and how much awesome stuff they’re doing, and also willing to share.

Ixchell Reyes 5:46
Well, that goes along with what I’m thankful for, and this is curious colleagues. I am so thankful for people who are curious, who ask questions, who are constantly wondering, what if we did this? What if we could do that? Why don’t we try this? It’s always the people who are inspiring me to learn and inspire me to look at things from a different perspective, and also maybe push me a little bit past my comfort zone when I feel like I’m starting to get in my comfort zone. One of those people in my life this year is Liliana long I call her Lily. She’s my colleague and she’s my friend, and she is ambitious, amazing, talented, she’s smart, she’s creative, but I think what I am so thankful for is that she shares everything, and she has a heart for teachers, and she has a heart for professional development, and she has a heart for students, especially language learners, but she is not holding her information hostage. She shares it, and I can’t imagine someone who’s more supportive of me there right now. And along with that, there’s another colleague I have. Her name is Suzanne Rizzo, and she’s just a big supporter of the show, and a believer in the professional development aspect. You may have heard of her. She presents at DIESOL often. So those two people inspire me to do more and encourage me. So thank you, curious colleagues. I’m sure you have some in your organization,

Brent Warner 7:18
Yeah. Oh, and can we just throw in? Go tell them thankful. Go tell them that you’re thankful for them, right? So, you know, let them know, wonderful. Okay, so I’m going to switch gears a little bit. So my next thing is, TESOL recently released a position statement on AI for the ELT profession, and so I don’t know if I’m going to read the whole thing here, which I couldn’t find. By the way, it is available. There’s a link in the show notes directly to it. And so I’ll read the first the first kind of sentence, or like, first sentence, slash paragraph. So TESOL, International Association calls for the responsible and ethical integration of generative a artificial intelligence and English language teaching and learning and stance opposed to efforts that devalue, diminish or displace the roles of English language teaching professional. And it goes on a little bit from there. It’s actually not particularly long. There’s no information on here, so I’m not going to say anything directly, but I may or may not have been involved with some of the writing of this statement. And so if you’re not supposed to say, I definitely was not involved, otherwise, I only may or may not have been involved. So anyways, but I’m glad this is out. The nice thing is that, you know, it’s, it’s making a claim. It’s making a statement. It’s saying, hey, there is a position on this. And this idea does matter here. And so if you haven’t seen it, it just came out very recently, the TESOL position statement, and you can use that to kind of guide some of your ideas, or maybe if you’re kind of trying to either come up with classroom policies, or for you know, sharing ideas with your school, it might be useful as well. Cool.

Ixchell Reyes 9:07
Well, I am very thankful for the TESOL country affiliates. Of course, I work with international pre service teachers and teachers who need the foundation, who’ve been teaching but need the foundation, and I find that they’re not they have never been told about TESOL. They don’t understand that there may be a an affiliate in their nation. And these are people that are friends of the show. We have friends of the show that are from all these different affiliates, and they have great resources, and it’s a good professional community overseas. So TESOL Spain, co TESOL, TESOL Kurdistan, and I’ve just felt so grateful, so grateful that I can send my teacher trainees when they’re finished with their program, with their resource right in their home, in their home country. And just again to oftentimes these teachers are going to go where they’re maybe. Be, not be as much support as we have here, and maybe not as many chances for professional development, but if they can just find someone in their TESOL affiliate, that’s that just means so much, and so I’m so grateful that they exist.

Brent Warner 10:13
Yeah, that’s great. I’ll also say, I guess this is the last little bit about TESOL as the organization itself. So I was recently in a thing with the English language program and kind of representing TESOL and a few other things. And so one thing I guess I didn’t know, or I kind of only knew in the back of my head, is that TESOL also provides reduced rate membership for people from who people who live in countries with a lower GDP, so it’s kind of nice that they can they, you know, like, if it might be really expensive to say, hey, it cost you 60 bucks, or whatever the annual price is, and they’re like, Oh, well, we’re getting down 30. And they’re even trying to get lower and lower down to the point where they can offer memberships for free for people. So, so if you’re not sure, or if you’re kind of in another country and like, I can’t afford these things, it might be worth looking at and just checking into some of the details. And especially, I think they said in the new year they’re really going to be pushing for more ways to get people in for even cheaper or free

Ixchell Reyes 11:13
Good, And I’m I we will have the link in the show notes. I know a lot of my students will. It’s a little bit harder for them to find it on the main page. So we’ll have the link in the notes.

Brent Warner 11:24
Great. Okay, so next is, I’m going to, this is kind of a, just a general group, I think I’m kind of calling them the sharers. The sharers, yeah, you had some of your people that are, you know, with with you on your campus, this is kind of more the broader ones. There are lots of people out there sharing, and this is totally unfair, because there’s no way I would even get close to mentioning all the people who are sharing a lot of amazing stuff. So I’m just grabbing a couple of a couple and total apologies. I hope people would share in the show notes, or just go out for their own Thanksgiving and say thanks to whoever is sharing out there that is useful. But I’m going to say a few people. So one, Tyson sabernt. We’ve talked about him a little bit in the past, and we tried to have him on the show once, Tyson does a lot of stuff around the LGBTQ community in English language teaching and materials creation, and it’s interesting, because a lot of times for me, I’m like, I don’t know if that’s totally my world, but it is. You know, it’s all of our world, right? That’s one thing to remember. And then two, I just really like that there’s someone out there who’s out there advocating for a specific group and trying to say, hey, we have a place here. And so I think Tyson does a really good job of sharing that. Sarah Davila, we’ve talked mentioned her before in the show. She shares so much stuff, so much good stuff around, like generative. Ai gotta have her on the show. We’re gonna, we’re going to, I’ll reach out to her and we’ll, we will have her at some point soon. But she’s a, you know, just a great curator, a great explorer, you know, really thoughtful in what she’s trying to put forward with everything. And so I really just respect and admire all the stuff she does. And that’s just the sharing stuff, like, I mean, and then she’s really working on top of all that. So it’s great. And then my last little section in the shares here is, you know, we always talk about, we just love how many people are doing podcasts. Some of these things have grown and kind of, some of these shows have held on for a while. So of course, Shay and Anna, who we, who we talked to a couple of episodes, so both of them, Carol salva, from early on, we she’s still doing her great show TESOL pop. There’s a number of very good language learning podcasts and and ELT podcasts out there, so go check some things out if, if you’re interested. And I’m just grateful that they’re out there giving so much of themselves in order to to help other teachers.

Ixchell Reyes 13:59
Yes, alright, well, my next, my next item I’m thankful for is an actual item, an item, not person. It’s it’s a resource. I go back to over and over again. This is from way back when I was getting my K through 12 teaching credential. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with this title, but it’s the reading teachers book of lists.

Brent Warner 14:26
You have mentioned it to me before. I don’t think I have it, although I guess I now recognize I probably need to go get it if I can.

Ixchell Reyes 14:34
There was also an ESL EFL teacher teachers book of lists, which I also have. But the reading one, I just keep going back to it, and I find myself, Yes, of course, I can do I can use AI to generate a list, but this one is just ready to photocopy if I need to. And I’m sure that comes with a digital like for digital copy now, but I still have the original book. And. Ion, I’m constantly looking for things to share with my teacher trainees, and there’s just so many useful ideas around language and around reading and strategies, and they’re just a quick and dirty here’s a page, here’s what you need, and it’s something that you can get started with and then find other resources. So I really, really recommend this book, the reading teachers, book of lists.

Brent Warner 15:20
Yeah, sometimes you get those books and they’re just like, they just last you for an entire career.

Ixchell Reyes 15:26
This is one of those where I’m just like, man, we need a whole series of this. I’m sure there are more. I’m sure. I mean, there has to be. But this one.

Brent Warner 15:37
Excellent, all right, my next grateful. I’m going back to people, which is my publishers and editors. So this year, I put out quite a lot. My book was published, the ELT toolkit through TESOL was published. You know, I mean, I’ve done, I should also mention some of these magazine articles I’ve written all these different people, so that stuff doesn’t happen alone, right? Like you don’t just write and just it just magically appears and looks good for everything. So there’s been a lot of people that kind of helped me through so much of this on the back end. So I will just say briefly, from TESOL, Tomiko, Gwen and Sarah have just been amazing, really helpful for everything. From ISTE for the book, Valerie and Steph was my kind of weekly editor. Just amazing. I’m also, you know, there’s other people that are, everybody should be, you know, thanked for this. So it’s like, you know, the the Oscars, the music plays you off with before going on. But I will also say Tara from ASCD for the columns that I’m also writing for Educational Leadership magazine. So just everybody who kind of works in the background doesn’t get all the credit all the time. They are appreciated by me, and they make my my writing and the things that I put out a lot stronger as well. So very cool.

Ixchell Reyes 17:02
All right, so I want to also share my gratitude for three kind of Og tools that I again, they’ve stood the test of time. One of them is volcaroo Yay. Talked about Vocaroo time and time again, but we tend to think that, or expect that all of our students are going to be able to record and use mobile devices that have microphones, and that’s not the case, especially overseas. And volcarou provides a platform that is very easy to use for students, no need to sign in, and you can just record simple sound files and that that’s just such a valuable tool, and it still exists with this very simple green interface, and I love it. So Vocaroo is one. Padlet is one that has really taken off, especially with the integration of AI. I still like that. They have kept it affordable for people who may not be able to purchase the premium options, but there’s enough that can get you started and you can use it. So I really appreciate that they’re not cluttering it up too much. We’ll see. We’ll see where next year takes us. But I think,

Brent Warner 18:18
Kahoot! – yeah, you’re talking about a cluttered page. Geez. (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes 18:20
Oh man, yeah, so Padlet. Padlet is great. And then we’ve talked about Duck, duck go browser. It’s a, again, it’s a focuses on privacy. And one of the things that I appreciate is that now they have their duck video player, which means you can watch YouTube videos without all of those unexpected advertisements that sometimes are inappropriate in our class. You can also have a duck email, which means it’ll mask your email, and you can simply have an email with@duck.com and who doesn’t want a duck.com email? So again, it’s very simple to use. It doesn’t have it has bells and whistles, but it doesn’t give you a headache trying to figure it out. So I’m thankful for those

Brent Warner 19:08
Indeed, indeed. All right, so my last group that I’m thankful for is, and this is not, this is not just mine, although it is mine, my students, right? The reason we come to work every day, the people that we are learning from and teaching to, you know, all of them are just so such amazing and interesting people. And there’s so much kind of fascinating stuff going on in their lives, and then, like when they share or whatever else is going on, what that as they’re growing, you know, I think we have to remember how, you know, our job is to help people, but I’m so thankful to them too, for also opening up and, you know, trusting, trusting me with their education, right, all of those things and so kind of keeping in mind the gratitude for our own students and and what they offer to us is, i. Is front and center for me these days.

Ixchell Reyes 20:01
Okay, so we said we’re thankful for big and small, and here’s the big one. Are you ready? Okay, so the biggest ion, it’s not a thing. Drum roll. Okay. We are so thankful for you, our loyal audience. We’re an OG longtime listeners, thank you for your ideas, comments, thoughts and inspiration. There are so many episodes that have come out of conversations with you, so I think it’s worth saying that we would not be here without you. So we are so thankful for being open and listening to us on whatever basis you do, and also for reaching out when you do, for sharing the show when you do, for applying some of the strategies. I’ve had people who say, Oh, I this strategy, or I thought about this, or I listened to this. It’s like, oh, you listen. I’m sorry, but we are so thankful. And I don’t think there goes an episode that goes by where we’re not always thinking about our audience. So

Brent Warner 21:07
yeah, absolutely. So thank you all for listening, and you deserve all the turkey and cornbread or whatever, the vegan options, or whatever options, or whatever options, whatever health options you need for that. Yeah, the fix ins as well. So so much. There is much to be thankful for, and I am currently building my survival and thrival skills by

Ixchell Reyes 21:39
it is time for our fun finds. And this time I have discovered, well, not really discovered, someone shared with me a Jordan ion singer named silawi. He went viral on Tiktok during the pandemic, and his songs are really good. They have good beat. They’re kind of a lot of love themes. And even if you don’t speak Arabic or understand I think you would appreciate it, so I am linking his YouTube. So check it out. Silawi,

Brent Warner 22:09
awesome. I am going to share a bakery which is local, but there’s at least a couple of them. It’s called bag of cakes, and there’s one in Fullerton and one in Irvine. And there might be others, you know, they kind of make these, like, gourmet cake slices and pastries and all these things. So not super cheap donuts as well, but, but very good. We found them. They had, like, you know, they have all these really excellent little kind of unique ones. I can never pronounce it right? Your favorite coin? Not quite a man. Is that right? Quantum Queen ion, something like that. There’s someone’s good. Someone out there is just dying there. It’s me, yeah, well, my and my wife too. She, she’ll anyways, creme brulee, cream donuts, really good in there. Anyways, they have lots of different excellent choices. So if you are in the Orange County area and want to try a different kind of bakery that’s focused on sweets, then that is bag of cakes. And they also have a couple savory options as well.

Ixchell Reyes 23:21
Alright, for the show notes and other episodes, check out diesel.org/ 130, for episode 130 you can find us on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, at diesel pod. You can also find me at IXC. Underscore, Pixie underscore, that’s IXC. Underscore, yeah, sorry I messed that up.

Brent Warner 23:43
P, i, x, y, underscore, yes. Two underscores, double, underscore, underscore, after the first one, and that is complicated. Don’t find me. I’m out there at Brent G Warner, thank you guys so much. We hope you have a great Thanksgiving, and we will see you in December.