ELSTA TeachMeet - 2022 Annual General Meeting (AGM) and National Conference

ELSTA will hold their Annual AGM and National Conference on

Tuesday, November  22nd, 2022, from 7.00pm - 8.30pm

The format for the ELSTA National Conference 2022 will be a TeachMeet.  

The TeachMeet format will  highlight the importance of hearing the voice of practitioners from around Ireland in the  Primary and Post -Primary/FE Sectors. It will allow teachers to share good practice they are using in their classrooms around Ireland. People who attend will leave with at least one new practical idea to try in their own schools!

7.00pm-7.20pm       AGM for ELSTA Members (others welcome to join the Zoom meeting at 7.20pm)

7:20pm-8:00pm     Primary TeachMeet

The Primary TeachMeet will include a brief (7min) practical presentation from several teachers followed by a short Q&A session.

8:00pm-8:30pm    Post-Primary/FE TeachMeet

The Post-Primary/FE TeachMeet will include a brief (7min) practical presentation from several teachers followed by a short Q&A session. 

8:30pm Thank you and GRMA!

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About the TeachMeet Teachers

Dr Treasa Bowe is a primary school teacher from Cork with over 20 years teaching experience- 17 years in Ireland and more recently five years teaching in Los Angeles, California.  Treasa was a pivotal member of the team that developed the highly regarded comprehension programme Building Bridges of Understanding (Mary Immaculate College, 2009). Treasa’s PhD research focused on the role of on-site continuing professional developing in promoting a whole school approach to CSI. More recently Treasa has become better known on Instagram as @betweenthecoversofagoodbook , where she shares her knowledge about literacy, and picture books on a daily basis.

Hilary Brennan is  a language support teacher at St Clare's P.S in Belfast.

She has been in the education sector for 23 years and during this time she qualified as a SEN Assistant and a Dyslexia tutor. She got the opportunity to become a full-time language teacher in 2019 after completing the CEFR-P in St Mary's Teaching College.

Her classroom caters for an ever-growing newcomer population. Her post not only focuses on the language side of the parent-school relationship, but, also the pastoral, as her school continues to give support for housing and benefits, etc. She looks forward to sharing ideas and practices with the attendees.

Anne-Sophie Cocault is an EAL/Multilingualism Project Worker with the Full Service Community Network with over 15 years’ experience teaching and training in Central Europe, the Middle East, Ireland and the UK. She is now based in Belfast where she supports multilingual learners in primary and secondary schools, and trains educators in the fields of EAL, literacy and the role of home languages. She is a regular presenter at conferences (e.g. IATEFL, Literacy Association of Ireland, Naldic). In her free time, she collects international children’s books and will read stories to whoever will listen!

Liudmyla Yashyna is a Ukrainian teacher from Kyiv, Ukraine.  She studied Primary school teaching and for the last two years she has been working as an English teacher in a Primary School. After the beginning of the war she started working in Skibbereen Boys School where she tries to help pupils and teachers with Ukrainian children. As she am a learner of foreign languages herself,  she can understand the difficulties pupils may face during the process.

Sorcha O’Donovan is a primary school teacher working in St Mary’s Primary School, Dorset Street in Dublin. Sorcha has experience in both mainstream and support settings and has worked in Ireland, the UK, Spain and China. During her time in St Mary’s, a school where 86% of children speak English as an additional language, Sorcha has supported many children and families who are new to English, particularly in infant classes. She shares her practice with colleagues and supports new teachers as a Droichead mentor and welcomes multilingual children to act as ‘Young Interpreters’ in her class. Sorcha has implemented the Language Explorers programme in partnership with facilitators from Mother Tongues Ireland, the ‘Tell a Tale’ oral narrative programme with Aoife Merrins-Gallagher and regularly encourages the children in her class to use their home languages in their learning at school.