Convention

Friday Morning Plenary Dr. Janet Zadina Promotional Flyer (PDF)	Saturday Morning Plenary Dr. Patsy Lightbown Promotional Flyer (PDF)

Dr. Janet Zadina is a cognitive neuroscientist, reading specialist, and former high school and community college instructor. She received her doctorate in the College of Education at the University of New Orleans, conducting her award-winning dissertation research on the neuroanatomy of dyslexia through collaboration with Tulane University School of Medicine. She continued her postdoctoral education with a Fellowship in Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University School of Medicine where she researched neuroanatomical risk factors for developmental language disorders through MRI brain scans. She is currently engaged in neuroscience research as an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane and in Psychology at the University of South Florida. Dr. Zadina is author of *Six Weeks to a Brain-Compatible Classroom – a workbook for educators,* among other books. She is the founder of Brain Research and Instruction and has presented keynotes and workshops internationally on brain research and instruction.	Patsy Martin Lightbown is Distinguished Professor Emeritus (Applied Linguistics) at Concordia University in Montreal. The principal area of her research is second language acquisition in the classroom, particularly the complementary contributions of communicative and form-focused activities. Her research publications have appeared in TESOL Quarterly, Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, the Modern Language Journal, and other professional journals and books. With Nina Spada, she co-authored How Languages are Learned (Oxford University Press), an introduction to second language acquisition research for teachers that is now in its third edition. Having lived and worked for more than twenty-five years in Canada, she now lives in Massachusetts, where she continues her research, consulting, and writing about language teaching and learning. She provides professional development workshops for new and experienced teachers as well as research-oriented courses for students in applied linguistics.
Plenary and Break-Out Session Abstracts
Friday Afternoon Plenary Luis Urrea	Saturday Afternoon Plenary One Heart for Congo

Luis Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is the best-selling author of 13 books, including The Hummingbird's Daughter, The Devil's Highway and Across the Wire. Born in Tijuana, Mexico to an American mother and a Mexican father, Urrea uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss, and triumph. His most recent book is Into The Beautiful North, which follows a group of Mexican women determined to save their village by recruiting immigrant men to return back across the border with them. Urrea lives with his family in Naperville Illinois, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois- Chicago.	One Heart for Congo is a non-profit organization founded by current and former Adult Education ESL students. One goal of the organization is to raise awareness of the consequences of the on-going conflict that is affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC should be rich from its gold, diamonds and minerals, yet millions of its people suffer from a lethal combination of disease and hunger caused by ongoing conflict and displacement. 5.4 million people have died since 1998 from war-related violence making it the deadliest conflict since World War II. As a community, One Heart for Congo is working on social, health & educational issues to help better the lives of Congolese people in the DRC as well as in the Central Illinois area.
ABSTRACT Everything is ESL: One Writer's Journey Through the Many Codes of Communication This talk by award-winning author and poet Luis Alberto Urrea focuses on his journey from Spanish-as-major-language Tijuana to English-as-major-language San Diego and beyond. It examines his own -- and his family's -- adventures in the acquisition and expression of language. And it illuminates the function of language in the architecture of each person's dreams for a better life. A large factor in this story is the actual ESL educational experience.