TESL Ontario Blog

TESL Ontario is now accepting proposals for presentations for its 54th Annual Conference, taking place November 4 to 6, 2026. Interested presenters are invited to submit their proposals by 12:00 PM ET on June 14, 2026&n...

Written by Ban Al-Saffar, OCELT, TESL Ontario Treasurer

If you had asked me 15 years ago whether I would ever become a board member at a respected non-profit organization like TESL Ontario, I lik...

I was telling a colleague the other day about my Literacy class.

“We have certain expectations,” I said.

Will laughed.

“Say no more. I know exactly what you’re talking about,” he said.

It’s true, isn’t it? We have unchec...

In part one of this post, “digital duct tape” was defined as the act of creating or improvising problem-solving with technology tools to solve a teaching challenge. The following are a few more tools and methods th...

Asking students about their everyday life and engaging them in small talk is a key ritual in my class—whether in-person or online. It helps me build trust with my students and alleviate L2 learners’ anxiety. Halfway through this summer semester, during a routine task in a zoom class, a student—let’s call her Danny, did not respond to my ca...