Craig Neville is a lecturer in Education with a specialism in EAL and MFL. He has an interest in plurilingual student identities, heritage language education, family language planning, the sociolinguistics of education and teaching and learning of EAL students. Before coming to UCC, he spent two years as an Education Office for Post Primary Languages Ireland and, prior to that, a decade in inner city schools in the UK holding leadership and management responsibilities in the area of EAL and MFL education as well as teaching and learning. 

Topics Covered:

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My short workshop talk will aim to answer a number of key questions for educational professionals in relation to EAL:

 

1. What does EAL really mean across the educational spectrum?

2. How do students acquire additional languages in school settings?  

3. What is a language repertoire and how do I support it?

4. How do I support young emergent English speakers?

5. How do I know that they are making progress?

Dr. Mary-Pat O Malley is a registered speech & language therapist and lecturer NUI Galway. She has a particular interest in speech & language therapy for multilingual children and is involved in a range of research projects on assessing language in multilingual children and exploring their perspectives on what it means to be multilingual in Ireland.  

She is an ambassador for PEaCH, an Erasmus + funded project aimed at supporting parents and educators to support, maintain, and develop children's home languages. 

She is the creator of Talk Nua, an award-winning blog for parents and professionals working with multilingual children.

Topics Covered:

• Key concepts will include: what it means to be multilingual, ways of being multilingual, terminology, + harnessing the power of home languages at school, language for communication and transmission of cultural heritage/ the language culture connection, cultural awareness for professionals, translanguaging in action.

Susan Mackey is Social Worker with the Connect Project at Nasc Migrant and Refugee Rights Centre and with Mayfield Neighbourhood Youth Project (Tusla Child and Family Agency) 

 

Susan holds a Master of Social Work (MSW), HDip Social Policy and BSc (Hons) from University College Cork. She developed and coordinates Nasc’s Connect Migrant Youth project, a programme that supports young refugees and asylum seekers in Cork. 

 

Susan has significant experience in working with vulnerable young people and has provided training to schools, universities, and social workers on the rights of migrant and asylum-seeking young people.

Topics Covered:

• The work of the Connect and New Beginnings social work projects at Nasc

• How they can best support asylum seeking and refugee children and families

Kate is the Home School Community Coordinator in Dublin’s inner city. After 3 years working in a DEIS school in Tallaght, she spent 7 years  teaching in London and working to create Creative Curriculums and Leading English.  

She now works in St. Mary’s Primary School, Dorset St. which is unique in the sense that it has 85%+ children who speak English as an additional language. In 2019 the school received the Yellow Flag Award for Inclusion and Diversity and in 2021 it won the European Language Label Award for its project ‘Languages Connect Us’.

Topics Covered:

• Kate will be sharing the programmes and strategies that are used in her school and community in St. Mary’s Dorset Street. The aims of which are to promote and encourage multilingualism, parent participation and community engagement.

For the last eight years, Philip has been working as a mainstream class teacher in a school in Dublin which has a very diverse demographic; in his current class group, there are 14 languages spoken.

He has recently completed a Master of Education Studies in Intercultural Learning and Leadership. Last year as part of his role in ELSTA, Philip participated and provided input to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) on the new draft Primary school curriculum.

In his role as a mainstream class teacher, he seeks to bring an energy and determination in promoting the implementation of effective strategies in EAL teaching and Intercultural education. This year the students in his class were featured on an RTÉ Junior podcast series demonstrating how they use multiple languages in school everyday.