Tony opened our meeting by welcoming our 2024 training class. We have fourteen people who will be taking the training. Tony also acknowledged our outgoing and new Board Members. Louis Persson will be taking over Vice-President duties from Lotte Van de Walle. Lotte has stepped down as Vice-President. Lotte will still be on our Marketing and Recruiting committee and Continuing Education. Louise will make an excellent President. Ivonne Calzadilla Gomez, our talented Hospitality Chair will be moving back to Florida. We will miss her and wish her all the best. Natalia has taken on the job as Hospitality chair.

Every few years we have some kind of refresher training to keep up with new and old challenges that occur when we present to the schools. This year the Refresher Training Team focused our training on classroom management. Here are the topics we covered:

Refresher Training 2024 — Classroom Management:

Focus on the following issues:

• Responding to surprising comments and unexpected circumstances or behavior:
  How do you handle disruptive talking (or disrespectful students) during your presentation?
  What if a student brings up a sensitive topic?
  Have you dealt with inappropriate comments/behavior in the past? What was yourreaction? How would you manage this situation in the future?
  ...
• Engaging, encouraging, and including every student:
  Which techniques do you use to encourage both shy and confident students toparticipate in the discussion?
  What can you do when a student is reluctant to answer your question?
  How do you include students who don’t speak English?
  How do you encourage active listening in the classroom?

• Inattentive teachers:
  What if the teacher is absent and there is a substitute?
  What if the teacher is inattentive or leaves the classroom during your presentation?

You can see some videos of the training by clicking on these links: