Fall 2026 CoTESOL Convention

How can we move beyond screen fatigue and turn virtual classrooms into dynamic, student-centered communities? This interactive presentation offers tools, techniques, and mindsets that empower educators to lead inspiring, interactive, and equitable learning experiences online.Participants will explore how to:

• Design online lessons that promote learner autonomy, voice, and collaboration.
  
  
• Use virtual tools designed for the virtual learning environment  to facilitate meaningful reading, writing, speaking, and listening practice.
  
  
• Differentiate for multilevel learners in online settings using visual supports, breakout rooms, sentence stems, and choice boards.
  
  
• Foster a strong sense of classroom community with routines that prioritize identity, culture, and connection.
  
  

Through a combination of demonstration, collaborative planning, and reflection, attendees will leave with adaptable lesson templates and tech-integrated strategies that engage adult multilingual learners — even through a screen.Whether you're teaching synchronously, asynchronously, or in hybrid formats, this workshop will show you how to energize your online classroom with confidence, creativity, and purpose.

Audience: Adult Education (AE); Intensive English Program/Higher Education (IEP/HE); Educational Technology (TECH)

In spring 2025, Douglas County School District hosted its first ever Youth Multilingual Conference, designed to connect multilingual high schoolers from across our schools. In this session, we will discuss how we planned it, what went well, and how you can bring the idea to your school, district, or region.

Audience: Secondary Education (SE)​​​​

This session explores EFL online teaching insights from the Cameroon Distance Education Center, focusing on strategies for engaging secondary and high school learners in resource-constrained environments. Participants will discover practical activities and digital tools used, gaining adaptable techniques for diverse online EFL contexts.

CDE CLDE Credit: 5.11(2) ELEMENT B

Audience: Secondary Education (SE); Adult Education (AE); Intensive English Program/Higher Education (IEP/HE); Teacher Education/Action Research (TE/AR); Educational Technology (TECH)

Help learners find their voice—literally. This workshop delivers fun, practical pronunciation tools that improve clarity, reduce stress, and boost learner confidence. Attendees will walk away with games, visuals, and methods to make sound instruction part of any lesson. Help learners find their voice—literally. This workshop delivers fun, practical pronunciation tools that improve clarity, reduce stress, and boost learner confidence. Attendees will walk away with games, visuals, and methods to make sound instruction part of any lesson.

Audience: Adult Education (AE)

This interactive session reinforces what distinguishes Translanguaging from translation and provides participants with definitions and concrete examples of how intentional Translanguaging design and instructional shifts enhance not only language and content learning, but also a sense of belonging for multilingual students.

CDE CLDE Credit:  5.11. Quality Standard III, Element A

Audience: Elementary Education (EE); Secondary Education (SE); Content Area (CA)​​​​

Are you currently in the Educator Trenches, unable to find your way out? This session will provide the chance to think about your own experiences and when you may have found yourself in a trench. This session will also focus on tools to help teachers of Multilingual Learners rediscover the reason they got into teaching and ways to combat burnout.

Audience: Teacher Education/Action Research (TE/AR); Socio-Political; Content Area (CA); Secondary Education (SE); Elementary Education (EE)