^{“Eye-opening”: How we can use multimodal texts with school staff to support more inclusive school and classroom narratives.}

5 September 2024,5:00pm – 6:00pm AEST, Online

As EAL teachers, or as mainstream teachers who work closely with EAL students, we often advocate for our English language learners. We may discuss ideas with staff and leadership about what it means to be multilingual, how the use of a home language is beneficial to support English language development and how it fosters our students’ multilingual identity. We also often suggest that EAL pedagogies are good for all learners and feel a sense of frustration that we are not really being heard. But could it be how we frame the issues that is part of the problem? Based on recent research findings, this professional learning session will give you the opportunity to collaboratively undertake an EAL informed activity that can be taken back to your educational setting to support more holistic conversations around what it means to be a diverse language learner. Discussion questions will also be provided to accompany the task.

April Edwards

April has extensive experience working as an EAL and English teacher, EAL Coordinator and EAL specialist mentor to English teachers. She has promoted the implementation of EAL strategies across the curriculum and for the last 6 years she has worked in Initial Teacher Education and as an EAL consultant to both the Victorian Department of Education and the Victorian and Curriculum Assessment Authority. April currently works at the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, as a Teaching Academic of English, TESOL and literacy across the curriculum. Her research focuses on culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies that seek to include all learners whilst evoking new, more pluralistic understandings of the self and others.

Cost

$10 – VicTESOL members (including members of other state TESOL associations affiliated with ACTA)
$30 – Non-members
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