Tenth Annual Tutor Summit, 2025
VEP tutors, board members, staff, and community partners gathered at Calvary Lutheran Church in West Chester for a morning of friendship, lively conversation, and strategic brainstorming at our Tenth Annual Tutor Summit. Interactive presentations included imagining VEP’s future through a guided “vision cafe” with Meghan McVety of Capacity for Change, building a workforce readiness “toolbox” with Juan Valencia and Josephine Girdner of PA CareerLink of Chester County, and using storytelling to teach language learning with Dr. Meg Niiler of West Chester University of PA. We are grateful for the insights, collaboration, and commitment to strengthening our communities that made this year’s Summit a powerful experience for everyone involved. We are also grateful to Dominik Bovan, son of VEP student Jana Bovanova, whose family business, Promo4Brands, produced the baseball caps for a distinctive event memento.
Ninth Annual Tutor Summit, 2024
New and seasoned tutors, board members and staff gathered at the Henrietta Hankin Library in Chester Springs to participate in a professional workshop led by topic hosts Jackie Kim, Dr. Meg Niiler, Nancy Satinsky, Barbara Casey, Aaron Rubin, Dr. Kevin Nerz and Dr. Samantha Weiss. These guided conversations included TPR (Total Physical Response), ideas for gamification, keeping adult students motivated, cultural guidance, Montessori method for adults, ESL writing, and kinesthetic learning. The highlight of the day was an interactive Korean language experience led by Jackie Kim and Maddie Geiger.
Eighth Annual Tutor Summit, 2023
As in past years, the annual Tutor Summit inspired conversation, ideas, and friendship. Thank you for the over 70 tutors, topic guests, board members, and staff who took part, in person, on Saturday, May 20, 2023 at the Chester County Boy Scout Council in Exton. A special note of gratitude to Mrs. Shannon Almquist who shared her experiences and guided all of us in Catching our Students [and one another] Being Brilliant. For highlights of the day, please view the following video and photographs.
Download the 2023 Tutor Summit Video
Seventh Annual Tutor Summit, 2022:
Balancing Opportunities for English Language Learning
Professor Paul Nation, who teaches and resides in New Zealand, accepted the invitation to be our featured guest and joined us in real time (@ 8 hours in the future) from his home. Tutors, board members, and invited guests gathered in the comfort of their homes and vacation spots while joining VEP friends for this mid-summer event. Mr. Nation is best known for his framework which identifies key areas of language teaching focus, labeled “The Four Strands.” He also emphasizes the benefits of extensive reading, repetition, and learning strategies.
Sixth Annual Tutor Summit, 2021:
Are We What We Speak?
The 6th Annual Summit was a great success thanks to over 75 tutors and friends who joined us for the virtual event. Small Group Tutor Discussions were based on the following material:
Topic #1: Integrating Culture and Language Through Proverbs
Topic #2: Cross Cultural Communication from TEDxBergen
Fifth Annual Tutor Summit, 2020
Thank you to all of the Tutors and Volunteers who dedicated their time to make the June 2020 Summit a great success. To listen to the live stream plenary presentation from Japan by Dr. Maria Guajardo, please click here.