Have you seen the new face of WILTA yet? Penny Coutas has been working feverishly behind the scenes to bring you a wonderful new website, which will be officially unveiled at the WILTA AGM on 31 October. Don’t tell her I told you but ... you can take a sneak preview at www.wilta.org. There’s still work to be done, but already there’s a lot of interesting and useful information to be found there. I particularly like the news feeds from Indonesia! The highlight for WILTA this term was a Gala Dinner in honour of a group of Young Ambassadors (“Duta Belia”) from Indonesia who had been selected for a special visit to Perth to share their talents and perspectives with local schools. The dinner was organised by the Balai Bahasa Indonesia Perth in collaboration with the Consulate and WILTA, and a number of WILTA members attended. See the full report on pages 9 & 10 of Warta WILTA.

The MLTAWA Professional Development Day at SIDE on 15 August was very well attended and included workshops on games run by our very own Danielle Horne and Alison Beeston, and a session on creating viewing tasks presented by Moya McLauchlan. Tiana Purba- Barnard delighted the multilingual lunchtime crowd with some Italian opera singing as well. It is clear that when it comes to talent and creative teaching, WILTA members are up there with the best! The successful WILTA tour to Sumatra in April has resulted in a recent visit to Perth by the Mayor of Bukit Tinggi, accompanied by a group of government and education officials. They had a busy round of engagements in their 4-day visit including a visit to Margaret River, SIDE, local government and state government. Hopefully the visit will lead to an official link between Bukit Tinggi and one of our local governments in Perth.

Professional learning opportunities for WILTA members coming up this term are our annual Workshops and AGM, on Saturday 31 October at SIDE, and two Course Development days on 26 and 27 November at AISWA for those teaching Course of Study Stages 2 and 3. For further information and registration details, see the pages later in this issue.

Finally, it is my pleasure to announce that WILTA has nominated current Treasurer Kellie Brophy as recipient of this year’s Professional Teaching Council of WA (PTCWA) Outstanding Professional Service Award. Nominees from all teaching associations will receive their awards at a ceremony at ECU on 29 October 2009. To read about Kellie’s contribution to WILTA, see Warta WILTA page 5.

Demikian surat ini, selamat mengajar dan semoga sukses pada caturwulan terakhir ini.

Salam,

Sue