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Hello, and welcome to E2 Talks. In this episode, E2 Expert Teacher David chats with Margaret Corrigan, CEO of Carringbush Adult Education and President of Vic TESOL. Carringbush Adult Education is a non for profit registered training organisation (RTO) and has delivered educational and community developmental programs in Melbourne, Australia since 1984. In today’s podcast, David and Margaret discuss a range of topics such as Margaret’s workplace at Carringbush Adult Education, the value of educational programs for parents and children, the importance of learning in context and the need for digital literacy. David and Margaret also touch on the hot topic of face to face vs digital learning. If you’re an English language teacher or avid English language learner or interested in language itself, you don’t want to miss this discussion. Enjoy.
David
Welcome to E2 Talks, Margaret.
Margaret
Thank you, David.
David
Great to have you here. Let’s start by exploring your workspace. What happens at Carringbush adult education?
Margaret
Well, Carringbush adult education being a not for profit RTO, we deliver accredited EAL programs using an EAL framework curriculum. We deliver in English as additional language programs, starting from initial very beginner level, through to course and cert one, two and three to refugees and migrants, many of whom live close by in Richmond and Collingwood. Many of whom actually have had trauma in their backgrounds. They live in public housing, and, you know, really liked the, the, the community feel of our center, which is quite user friendly for people. In addition to our English Language Programs, we have a community development approach. So we have other wraparound programs to support our learners and other residents of the of the area. So we have worked readiness programs, and other supports, like form filling and warm referrals to other local organizations who might support learners with or support people with if they’ve got legal issues, fines, housing issues, family violence, all sorts of all sorts of tentacles really into that space as well. So that’s, you know, we’re really interested in supporting people in a holistic way.
David
Yeah, it sounds amazing. So there’s a there’s a language learning element starting with beginners, using an EAL or framework, and there’s a lot of support for for the needs for the day to day needs in the community as well. So it’s a it’s a supportive learning environment.
Margaret
It is.
David
Yeah, so who works there.
Margaret
So we’ve got qualified teachers who are all peace all qualified, they also have to have a certificate four in training and assessment, which is a requirement of, of our funders. So they’re all very well qualified teachers, and, you know, teaching a variety of just different levels, some of them, they’re all, they’re all part time, most of them are part time, working any number of hours. A normal day would be a five hour day, a five hour class, then, and then there are some other shorter programs. But I think that pretty much captures it. So we’ve got, you know, people who want to work for us and are interested in, in working in a bit of a quirky space, shall I say?
David
Yes, Yeah, absolutely. And so it takes a very special kind of person to be able to turn up, rock up every day and solve all those problems as well or help to solve those problems?
Margaret
Yes, that’s right. Not that we want the teachers to solve the problems, and we don’t require them to solve the problems. However, they have to keep in mind, what are they going to do about a problem that a particular learner might present with? And how do they, who are they going to refer to and so we need to support the teachers to feel good about that.
David
Great, because what right they are specific kinds of learner aren’t they there’s that there are language learners, but they’ve got other issues going on as well, which add to the learning mix. So in terms of, what’s your position in the organization?
Margaret
So I’m the CEO. So I kind of oversee all the operations. So keep it you know, try to keep keep all the balls in the air. And that includes grants that we look out for contracts for different programs, looking for partners. to do different projects with you know, we have all kinds of things going on.
David
So when we’re talking about funding, is this state government funding? Or is this private industry funding or
Margaret
Yep. So we are funded in a variety of ways. So we’ve got our biggest programs, other federally funded programs, AMEP, and C. So AMEP being for new arrivals. However, the eligibility rules for that program have changed just about a year ago. And now that’s more uncapped. So we have more AMEP students, and they’re not all new arrivals now that they could have been here for quite some time. And in the schools for education and employment program is also federally funded. And –
David
Can you talk a little bit, I’m interested in both of those. We’re all interested in those areas. So firstly, AMEP, but could you talk about the Second? Second, we call it funding, but what it really is, is a system of enabling learning to happen to lead students to the workplace. How does that? How does that program work?
Margaret
Yeah. So the C program, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. So look, the C program, look, it works in a similar way, really, in our space as the AMEP. Basically, so in our context, they’re learning, they’re using this, we use the same curriculum, however, they’ve got, they’ve got the program just has more requirements for how long they can be in it. And the idea is that they are pathways. So if Centrelink or the or they will get forced Australia service provider has asked for them to be in C, then they’re in C, and they don’t really get much different treatment in our setting, because they’re in C, it’s actually fairly similar. If they’re higher level, in C, well, then we would be, you know, there’ll be a greater focus on employment. In in the teaching, that’s really the difference.
David
Yeah, that’s interesting. So when you say, focus on employment in the teaching, does that mean that, the scenario, I’ve worked with AMEP material, and I find it a really excellent material in that little limited time that I had with them. But we know that there’s role playing there’s language associated with specific activities, such as going to the post office or, and again, you mentioned filling out forms before making purchases in the supermarket. So a language that’s specific for engaging in the possibility of being employed, for example. So yeah,
Margaret
That’s right. That’s what it would be. You know, there’d be just more of the topics, or the themes of the class would be more employment related, rather than, you know, everyday life related.
David
Yeah, yep. Yep. So how many, How many students would participate in a class at Carringbush?
Margaret
Ah, well, we’ve probably usually got about 15 or so in a class.
David
And well, what cultural backgrounds? Are they mostly from?
Margaret
Yeah, so our biggest group is Vietnamese. And then where Chinese would be our next group, and then the horn of Africans. So we’ve got, you know, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Sudanese. And then a smattering of other backgrounds.
David
Talking about how they, they turn up at your place, and where do they go afterwards in a moment, but are there specific migrant literacy programs? And I noticed when doing a little bit of looking at Carringbush, what happened to it where you are, is this something called the Family literate literacy project? Can? Yep. What does that mean?
Margaret
Yes, so so a couple of things there. So obviously, sort of language and literacy goes together. And we do have one program where we have one on one mentoring for for students who they’re in our English language class, but they need more assistance with their literacy and that may be because they have little or no literacy in their first language. They may come from an oral tradition. And so you know, learning literacy for the first time in another language is obviously more difficult. So they want to come get one on one support. The family literacy program. That’s a different program. And that’s where we work with, it’s mostly mother’s, we say parents and their children, but it does happen to be mostly mothers. So we’re trying to engage the mothers into into learning and into a pathway where they might have opportunities for further training and for employment. But they, they, they’ve got preschool children, and they can bring those children to the programs. And the programs are also for the children. So, for example, we’ve got parent child, Mother Goose, which is a evidence based program where the mothers are, you know, they’re sort of learning to help their children with reading, and they’re gaining skills for themselves. And so it’s, it’s a nice learning environment for everybody. And we hope that we have better outcomes for the mothers and better outcomes for the children as a result of that early learning, quality early learning. And we do that with a range of partners so with with the city of Yarra in delivering Nash, in delivering part of that we’ve had a grant from the readings foundation. So back to the back to the funding. For our community development programs, we usually get some funding from philanthropic or some other government programs for our different project. So for example, our referral and support service, we need to be funded for that. So we’ve actually got, we’ve actually got a grant for that from from the Department of Families fairness, and housing. So reading Foundation, we’ve had a number of different collaborations with KidZone publishing is another one Can you tell what is the reading Foundation, Reading foundation, you might know the bookstore readings, they have a foundation and they give, give out grants. So you can apply for a grant, and they’re obviously very interested in literacy, and supporting really supporting grassroots projects. So yeah, that’s really helpful to us.
David
Beautiful work, the relationship between parents and their children are particularly mothers they’ve got who are available to engage in reading with their children is, is known to be effective pathway to literacy as well. So even the ability to read. In the space, it seems like it’s on the scale of things, the literacy in a first language, may be coming from an oral tradition, and then coming and working in Australia or attempting to work in Australia with literacy skills that won’t match the demands of the space must be extraordinarily challenging. How do people? How do people deal with that? Like, what how do they? How does that affect the way that they? How does it affect them every day?
Margaret
The people who have the literacy issue, do you mean? Well, I think life is difficult. Life is difficult, because we increasingly need literacy. And, you know, that includes digital literacy. You know, we, in order to function, you know, you’ve got to be able to get on to the Centrelink app, you’ve got to just jump online for things and how, you know, how do you just jump online, if you’ve got if you’ve got low literacy, so we have and especially over COVID, we’ve really, you know, we had to do the pivot, and, and really work hard on delivering quality digital learning. And so we’ve, we’ve done a lot to support learners with that, so that they can become confident. It takes it takes time. And it takes patience, because people need a lot of support. But we have found even our very, very beginner learner, beginner level learners made incredible progress in the digital literacy space. So with support, you know, people can, can move on, but it is it is very hard. And if you haven’t got literacy, then how do you parent your children in Australia, the Australian education system? You know, there are many barriers for them to fully participate. So, you know, that’s where you hope that there are some programs out there that do recognize the issues that they face and can’t support them.
David
How will you support, how are you supported by that is that do you think there is? Do you think state government policy and is Do you feel like it’s encouraging Um, your community to, to, to engage in literacy programs? Do you think they’re making it funding wise? Or?
Margaret
Yes, I do. I do. Part of carinngbush, you know, we’re a not for profit organization. And we’re, we’re what is deemed a learn local. So we’re a learn local organization, which means we deliver pre accredited programs which I sort of got distracted before. We delivered the accredited EL framework. And then we delivered the pre accredited programs, some of which are sort of a bit more community development focus, not all of them. And those programs can be quite flexible. And they are funded by the state government. So it’s a different arm of the higher education skills group, and Education Department. And they do recognize that we’re that way, you know, we are working with vulnerable people who don’t just march through their programs and ended up, you know, you know, they don’t just do a 10 week course and then move into employment, it takes much longer. And part of being success, successful learner is feeling comfortable in your learning environment and feeling like you’re part of the community and that you trust people. And all of that takes time. And, you know, there is a there is an understanding of that from the from the state government, I think, probably less so from the federal government, but the state government, I think, through that learn local does, does acknowledge it. And also, I have to say, you know, we work in closely with the Department of Families fairness and housing. And we’re really quite connected with what’s happening in that space. And, you know, we have had grant funding from them, they recognized for our referal and support service, for example, they, you know, to, you know, that they’ve given us, you know, projects, so that with an acknowledgement that we’re supporting the community with what we’re doing.
David
Yeah, nice one. Okay. So state government seems to be on side with or recognize the need, and are prepared to fund it from time to time. What issues are there in resourcing EAL, what, what is what counts against the sector, what makes it difficult?
Margaret
Sometimes, it’s sometimes we feel undervalued, I think, as a as EAL as an EAL sector, that we have to fight to sort of be heard that there are other things that take over, for example, literacy, literacy is sort of taken over a little bit from when people when politicians talk about literacy, they kind of mean language, but they don’t really know what the difference is between language and literacy. So and, and I think generally, amongst governments, EAL is less valued than a vocational skill, where you can move into employment. So that’s where there’s, that’s a, it’s a little bit difficult sometimes to be heard, don’t just push, push EAL to the, to the side, because if people don’t have the foundation skills, they’re not going to be able to successfully move through further education, and get successful employment, consistent employment, and not just a little bit of a casual job.
David
Where language isn’t actually necessary or prioritized in the job as well.
Margaret
Yeah, that’s right. And its not valued. I think that’s, that’s sort of something I think we have to keep you know, we have to keep advocating for the sector. And I don’t know where we’re going to talk about my other volunteer work. But
David
Yeah, well, let’s, let’s move on to that as well. Because, right, it’s not raising awareness, it’s a thing of mind, mindful consciousness of the the implications of literacy or functional illiteracy, and how it affects people long term in, well in life, full stop, but in our employment, specifically when that’s necessary for all sorts of things like esteem, as well as paying, paying the bills and feeding, feeding the family. So literacy, so be mindful and conscious of that as well. Other than people who work in the sector, so and to also to eliminate or to educate, to educate us all in the importance of learning to read for example, and when we mentioned Volunteers, Why’d the volunteers volunteer with you?
Margaret
Yeah, that’s interesting. David. We, I guess, people have all sorts of motivations for for volunteering, often people want to give back in some way, they are interested in doing something meaningful. And so they fit it in around them odds. It’s quite interesting, we have quite young, younger people who are at university, whatever, and they, they’re interested in doing something meaningful, something grassroots actually supporting people on the ground, we have retired teachers who are interested in doing something productive in their retirement, that the choosing their skills, and, and, you know, it’s lovely working with, with people and using your skills and actually connecting to, to people on the ground and feeling like you’re, you’re making a difference to them and learning a bit about their lives. And it can be quite a rewarding, volunteer role. You know, volunteers do different things, Individual mentoring –
David
That’s been my experience as well. So from the volunteers perspective, we learn a lot about other people, and we learn a lot about other people’s backgrounds that we wouldn’t be able to know otherwise.
Margaret
That’s right. And that’s really rewarding. As volunteer, you learn a lot yourself, and and people really enjoy that and enjoy being part of the community there of learners and and of staff members and other volunteers too.
David
Nice one. Does some of that happen online? Or does it all happen face to face at your place?
Margaret
It’s mostly face to face. Now, we, we were all that was all face to face before COVID. Over COVID, we the volunteering ended up being ended up being mostly volunteering to support with digital in the digital space to help people you know, that was obviously a very big a big thing for people to become proficient enough, they had to get on Zoom, and they had to do various other things. And so now we’re pivoting we’re pivoting back to mainly face to face.
David
Things are changing, where we didn’t we’ve talked, we’d haven’t mentioned carring books, what is carring books?
Margaret
Oh, carring books. So a few years ago, I think it was might have been been 2018, we had a grant that was a grant from the state government. And we developed, a set of books for beginner level, adult learners. And the reason we did that was because there are not that many of them out there yet. And so we’re going to watch that what’s something nice, meaningful, authentic, that learners can read, that teachers can work with? And, you know, there are a couple of things out there and we thought, Well, look, let’s let’s make our own. So we, you know, was important was a very large piece of work, you know, we had a book publisher, help us with the design of the books, we did some we’ve actually got some hardcopy versions, but they’re not really for sale, we we develop the hardcopy versions, we used our own people, we have professional photographers, actually who are drawn from our connections. And we developed the script. And that, you know, they look really great. They are available free on our website, PDF versions of the books. And there’s also an a companion app that is available on both platforms. And it’s an interactive app, and you can tap on the and on a whole sentence or on individual words or on chunks of text, so that it’s you know, the idea is that it’s actually quite helpful for for pronunciation as well,
David
Nice one, ah perfect. And that’s that’s kind of we’re up to in this space as well. And that’s the way and it’s certainly something that I’m very interested in is enabling readers to access texts, through audio versions or through highlighting words or through the interacting with the with the reading process in itself and very much interested in that area. Can when, who wrote these books, were they are they refugee and migrant themes is that –
Margaret
So the books were written by by a group of carringbush team members, and they the things are our, you know, someone’s someone is sick and they have to call up the office. And there’s another one taking children out, you know, a busy Saturday. Yeah, another one. I’ve just, I can’t remember all the names
David
So they;re quite practical, day to day themes.
Margaret
They’re day themes. They’re for beginner level learners, they’re very, they’re very much for beginner level learners. But even, you know, slightly higher level learners would enjoy the app for the, for the interactive nature of it. So you know, they’re quite, it’s quite nice for learners, you can, you can, you can do a lot with that, as a teacher, you can do a lot with with a with the text, really dried out and have a lot of activities related to the text.
David
Nice work, okay, so that it’s interactive and fun and is a digital component to them as well. And they’ve contemporary, and I bet that they probably look good.
Margaret
They do, they look really lovely, really lovely.
David
Really nice. And that was a Melbourne based project was it that was local?
Margaret
Yep, yep. And local. And so we’ve got our students featured in them. We’ve got our students now staff that someone goes to the doctor, and we’ve got a pretend doctor, the doctor as a staff member
David
So they can identify with the materials. So there’s a carringbush aura, about them.
Margaret
That’s right sol I recommend them.
David
Yeah, nice one. Really great. Awesome. As far as volunteers go, do you think that the how long the volunteers stay with you? I’m going to some of them there for for a month or some of them there for a year? Yes.
Margaret
Yeah, we’ve had, we’ve had some for several years. And we have some, from time to time we get people to do a short term project with us. We you know, we had someone making actually the video about working with volunteers, they might come in, they might just come in and helping a conversation group. They might stay for longer. There’s all sorts of volunteer experiences that we’ve that we’ve had and different lengths of, of engagement.
David
Yeah nice one. So you’re good at coordinating volunteers?
Margaret
Well, yes, because it is a whole other piece of work. And we have a volunteer coordinator to support with that. Yeah.
David
Yep. Right, whose job is to coordinate the volunteers? Yeah. Nice one. Yeah. Okay. So um, what other activities happen? So there’s a bit of reading a lot of language learning stuff, is there do you eat food?
Margaret
Well, food is a wonderful topic to bring everybody together, because we all need food. So we and of course, we’ve got some fabulous cooks amongst our, in our community. And so we would often have, well, we haven’t actually done it for a couple of years, because of COVID. But we would, you know, have lots of gatherings where we people would share food and, and then that can be helpful, especially for the lower level learners, you know, really talking about food. And in fact, over COVID, we had teachers work with their learners to create digital cookbooks. And, you know, we’ve got the students that have went away and found out recipes and right, writing recipes, and then they had to speak, described the background to the recipe. And if you click on the click on the page, you can get a little bit of audio from the, from the student –
David
Who organized that? Teachers
Margaret
That was, yeah, the teachers did that. Yeah, some really lovely work was done.
David
Yeah. And those sort of experiences are memorable as well. Not only –
Margaret
Well they are, yeah, they are and that it’s an it’s everyone’s interested in food and, and, and then having that lovely product at the end was really was really great. And, and at that time, they couldn’t get together to eat. But you know, they were, they were cooking at home and sharing on the screen.
David
Brilliant. Alrighty, so they can be in each other’s living room or kitchens, that’s a brilliant idea. So there’s a lot of digital literacy level involved in that. One of the other people we’re going to interview later on in this series is a man from Elektra from Melbourne University in he’s talking about Quill, which is content, language embedded learning. And we realized that this is a bit that I understand is that the development of English in context is where it’s at. So if we’re giving people a context to use to draw in the language, is for practical reasons. So if we put if we tell people cook and talk, it’s a good idea. But shop, and talk is a good idea as well. Yeah, yeah.
Margaret
And it’s a little bit related to project based learning, which I’m really interested in, too, to try to get better outcomes for adult learners in particular, but of course, it’s relevant to all learners, where you’re actually learning you know, by doing something that’s meaningful to you that’s related to quill. It’s not just sort of something out of a textbook. Yes.
David
You’re right. So the context is real, and the and the need for the for the language, we use real language in those contexts as well. So we’re all supporting that we really love that. The idea also the element that it’s on that there’s a digital component, as well as actually really good as well, because there’s a degree of skill development going on there. And also confidence building, and probably intergenerational stuff happening as well.
Margaret
Absolutely. And we had that either COVID, we had children and various people coming in helping people to assist them with their digital learning, which was really, you know, quite difficult during COVID, when we’re all locked down in Melbourne.
David
But it was essential at the time to develop those skills straightaway. So if you’re a second, if your, first language is Vietnamese, and to try to operate on a Mac, in English as must be, you need a unit a young person around to be able to do some of the translation.
Margaret
Yeah, we actually had at the time, we had a lot of, a lot of people didn’t have adequate devices, and most of them had a fine, but many of them had to share a device at home. And then they didn’t have adequate data
David
Yeah we’re aware of that aswell. So they were aware that digital literacy is a problem. We’re aware that all sorts of problems, there are all sorts of problems and resourcing is one of them. But we also know that my experience is that most students everywhere have a phone, somebody in the family has got a phone. So if you want to reach the family, if you want to, yeah, yep.
Margaret
It’s become very, very important fall, if you can, and that’s really very meaningful learning for the, for the student, give me a phone, and let’s let’s help you, you know, what is it that you’re wanting to do? How do you use Google Translate how do, you know, there’s a wealth of resource resources?
David
Also. That’s right. There’s a wealth of education resources through Google as well, which enabled language learning to happen that you mentioned, one is Google Translate, and then other ways of using images to translate to find meaning that we’re all wondering what that word means I find an image to match the word translated back into my first language, or I get a definition, I get Wikipedia to explain what it is that I’m looking at.
Margaret
Yes. So neat, and helping, helping learners navigate that, you know, is really helping to equip them with the skills that they need.
David
And that’s great. So that’s, that’s teaching content knowledge as well, or teachers being aware of that. That’s part of the curriculum as well, which probably leads back to what is the curriculum too, which is EAL and, um, I know that people who EAL is embedded in the is part is a strength unit in the in state education. So and as it was in New South Wales, it is here as well. So those, those there are there are frameworks for learning as well. So it’s not over time. So I imagined that if students stay with you for, and that’s the question as well, how long does students stay with you for?
Margaret
Well, again, any amount of time we’ve had them for, from short periods to longer periods, we’ve had some students with us for a number of years. They take a long time to move through and dig through the levels.
David
Yeah, absolutely. And it is a long and accumulate process as well. And then of confidence building and solving problems and feeling that it’s all working properly, as it should do as well is, is there a means where do they go afterwards? I mean, do they go afterwards? Is there an afterwards?
Margaret
Well, that’s a good question. You know, that they might move, go on to some further training. So they might go, you know, we’ve had students sort of go into various certificate three in various areas, or they go into employment. And they’ve, you know, go into various depending, it depends on that background, if, you know, if we’re talking about the cohort who have who’ve had more disadvantage, well, then that tends to stay with them, they tend to go into entry level jobs. If you’ve got people who come with learning skills, they’re educated already, they’ve really got to get a bit of English under their belt. They will sort of move more quickly, and, you know, go into something higher level.
David
Yep. So and then you must, you must have students from all different levels, so there’ll be those who are. We’ve talked about this before about the most, a lot of your students are beginner level with other other, you know, learning challenges going on. But do you get refugees and migrants that turn up who are well skilled or were skilled in the previous
Margaret
We do. We do. We have we had all of them. And so you’ve got to sort of accommodate all of those in a in a class. And so it does Depending on the, on the motivation and on the learning goals, what are they learning for and so, if they’ve come with no literacy, they, you know, they would probably take a long time to move through, and they might not be pushing so much to, to get to get a job, maybe. So we have people coming with all kinds of motivations and different levels of education in and, and skills from their own background. So they, you know, we have to accommodate those differently, and people who come in, and they want to, they want to get a professional job, within a few months, well, they have a different sort of, you know, sort of set of requirements in a way for the and the teacher can’t just sort of the teachers really gonna be very conscious of how to accommodate their needs. So you know, it’s like any classroom, you’ve got a group of people, and they’re not all sound as each other, and the teacher has to be aware of how to support each one of them and, and try to help them meet their goals.
David
Yep. Now, we’ve got a little bit of time left, you’re you’re the immediate past president of the umbrella organization, for states and territories, TESOL groups, so and you’re currently president of the vic TESOL Association. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience there? And also, how effective is that as a body of as a body that coordinates teachers or practitioners of the teaching of English?
Margaret
Yes. So ACTA, Australian Council of TESOL associations, is the umbrella organization for each chapter of victory as well as one that is for each state and territory have their own member organization. Now, and so each of that that’s all nonprofit, people volunteering to be part of the committee to really, it’s all around professional at the state level, it’s all around professional learning for teachers. So at VIC TESOL, anybody can jump on our website and have a look at some of the events that we’ve had in the past and what we’ve got coming up all sorts of events, professional learning opportunities for teachers at all levels from adult, primary, secondary, and in early childhood as well. So that we do the full breadth, and we have a small grant, at VIC TESOL to support us. So we’ve got an administrative officer who, who can keep everything chugging over a little bit. But we have an executive and a committee of management, who pull it all together. And you know, really, we’re all passionate about providing professional learning opportunities for EAL teachers. So that is what we do. And we have partnerships with NGV, immigration museums, zoos Victoria parliament, where we try to provide more interesting learning for the teachers to assist them to create better opportunities for their learners. Now, Pacific TESOL sits under ACTA, and ACTA is more around advocacy. So we meet with representatives from each of the state and territory associations, and we try to advocate for the for the field nationally. So, for example, ACTA was quite strongly involved in the advocacy around the new AMEP contract, and really putting forth our views on what we thought it should be. And when the draft came out, we gave our thoughts about what we thought was needing to be improved in that draft. And that work is ongoing. And we’ve you know, we’ve met with we meet with politicians and senior department heads and have really tried to be very involved in that. We were actually actually talking to the union movement at the moment as well looking at conditions for teachers in the new contract. We we’ve had a school’s roadmap if anyone would care to have a look at the ACTA website. You’ll, you can see we’ve got a school’s roadmap for Moving forward with ELD. D being dialect. That’s sort of very interesting to look at the background to EAL provision and how it’s perhaps been neglected, and what where we think it needs to go forward. EAL, It wasn’t specified as a particular learning area that needed attention. And so it’s been left off data collection, which of course feeds into funding down the track. So we’re hoping to contribute to the discussion and to the change in policy there. We’ve just released some early childhood principles, which is the set of principles that we it that were developed in consultation with some experts in the field, looking at, you know, how the English language learners who bring other resources to the table, how are they best served from an early age, because if they can be well served at an early age, they’re going to have better outcomes going forward. It’s better for their families as well. So we’ve we’ve been doing a lot of work in that in that space. And they at all, it’s quite interesting being a bit cross sectoral how that work in the different areas sort of feeds into each other and doesn’t sort of sit separately. One of the interesting things, that one, one aspect of the Early Childhood principles is talking about principles of translanguaging really valuing the resour ces that learners of any age to bring to the classroom. And rather than having a deficit model view of of the learner where they need to be brought up to scratch, it’s like, how can we utilize their strengths? And they have many strengths? And how can we utilize their language resources to help them get better outcomes in their English learning. And with that at VIC TESOL, so we’ve done quite a bit, quite a number of sessions on translanguaging, across the different levels. And I think that that sort of something for teachers to keep in mind going forward.
David
Now, they, obviously that’s, well, obviously, it’s where it’s at. And when I say obviously, because everybody I’ve spoken to that’s got any credibility, believes that this is this is an appropriate, appropriate approach to, to language, which is that we don’t live in a multicultural world, we live in a pluralingual world, where we need to acknowledge that the thoughts and processes and life goes on in different languages, and how do we access that? And we’re how do we enable learning to happen? Using that knowledge or that awareness? It seems like contemporary, it seems like I’m interested in how are you seeing it work?
Margaret
Well, it’s, it’s a good question because it can be hard to it can be hard to picture. As a teacher, what does it look like in a classroom. And I think there are different, there are different things that can be tried, where even small things of like having some words or phrases around around a room, that are in other languages that have students who are in the classroom, or it could be that in an activity, the teacher might ask students of a particular language group to discuss a concept in their strong language, discuss, discuss the concept, and then tell everybody else in English. And so they’ve got the concepts, they can consult that out. And then they do the English part on top, and then they can be supported to, you know, improve the language or their their English, the English aspect of that, but they’ve done the thinking in their best language, and it will help them to be better.
David
And to access memory, for example, access life experiences and access prior learning.
Margaret
Absolutely, because they bring, they bring prior learning, they bring prior experiences, they’re not empty vessels. And I think sometimes teachers need to be reminded of that and to think, okay, and not to be afraid of not being an expert at all languages, yes, that are present in your classroom. It’s a bit and it can be a bit daunting, but if you consider it to be a resource,
David
And also a learning experience with it as a learning experience with the teacher in lots of ways as well. I’ve just so my experience is when I worked at Deakin for a couple of years I was very lucky to have that experience there while I was studying at Melbourne and so they gave me a job there. Working with English as per academic purposes across the levels and then working in a master’s qualifying program, this idea of, of enabling students to develop ideas and their first language and a group, and then and then access, then use English as the as the lingua of the room, in order to communicate. So we all understand each other, it has profound resonance, because last year, when I’ve spent some time working with the British, I mean, we do the city to language, talk with our people, our people from languages on the English. So. And to some extent we are at with, we’re preparing them for Test Readiness, in which case we enable them to talk to communicate in English to practice their English at that level. But there’s a lot of learning that goes on. And there’s a lot of life experience that goes on beyond beyond the preparation for the test, which enables people to understand the the ideas behind the questions, for example, and formulating ideas before in another language, even before we respond to that responded, an English essay, is an English interesting concept as well, which we maybe haven’t exploited as much as we, as we should, which is to, I want to spend 10 minutes writing down your own language, your key points to that response to this, this academic task. And then and then I want you to spend 20 minutes writing in English.
Margaret
Yeah, that’s right. And it’s, and it’s supporting learners to use all the resources that they’ve got. And they’ve got, you know, that and they might have several languages, some of them and, and people, you know, can draw or aren’t, you can enable people to draw on languages in a variety of ways into as teachers to try to, just to be think think, creatively, how can I, how can I prompt students who they might have – It’s sort of a, it’s, it’s a confidence building thing as well. So listen, I know that you I know that you know about this, you think about it in your in your first language, and then tell me.
David
And the teacher is that aware that that they are likely to know things that some of the other the teachers aren’t aware of, or that other classmates are unaware of as well, which is content material for exploration, and then for language for the exploration of language and the way that we communicate those ideas as well. But particularly, so if I talk to, and that’s been my experiences, but if I talk to somebody from a culture, I’ve got very little idea about, I will learn from them immediately.
Margaret
Yes and you might, you might learn something about their culture, and then you may learn something about their language. Oh, you know, how would you say that? Oh, you say it like that. That’s different, you put the verb in a different place to eat. Okay, you know, so that can be quite a rich discussion.
David
It is a very rich discussion we talked about and I think that’s, that’s, I’ve just recently been very lucky to do and explain to them I found this in my bag at last a course with a man called Scott Thornbury who teaches around the world, but its alternative approaches to second language acquisition. And he’s very much the writing in this is completely compatible with what you’re saying. And that these are the theoreticians, the researchers, but the practice the Uber teachers in a way, who describe what it is that we do, is there, is there a theory and overarching theory about second language acquisition that turns out, well, maybe there isn’t. But there are certainly different approaches to language teaching. And one was a directly cognitive approach, which was to say that we’re going to learn this amount of language, we store it on memory, we take it with us. And we learned that and that’s the language that we access. The other side of it is that there’s a social aspect to learning or social linguistic aspect, which is that we learn language in context usefully. And then we access the language and use the language that we need in order to communicate effectively in that context. And most contemporary things are a lot of there’s a lot of emphasis on contemporary thinking is that that’s the way that we learn. That’s the way we remember. And that’s the way that how we engage in language learning. So it’s an exciting level, that there’s a social aspect that the research is come into the realm that explains and supports the idea that there’s a social, there’s a serious social aspect to learning, which goes alongside a cognitive approach to learning, which means that things like what you’re saying is that somebody in Mandarin has a different word or, or, or doesn’t use the past tense or doesn’t have plurals, and somebody from an Italian background is, has a has a Latin based language, which is closer to in many ways to the way that French and Spanish in English work as well. So we become aware of the, with the structures of language as well. So can we do grammar comparisons and those sorts of things, which makes English as additional language learners, more language conscious in lots of ways than most first language learners, except those who are at an extremely high level who take it on as a subject of choice?
Margaret
Yes, that’s right. And I think it’s very, it’s interesting for all learners, and it’s quite affirming for them to be valued at for what they know and what they can bring to the class.
David
I think in my memory, my experience, that’s the most important aspect of them all, if the students smiles, the job has been done, meaning they’ve been given a chance to be recognized, to be given an identity, and they’ve been given a chance to allow it to be themselves. And I think that was what Julie Choi taught at Melbourne University, which was this idea of plurilingualism, or the idea that in the classroom there are people come from different cultures, these different languages to speak every day. And then in the classroom, we say I want you to demonstrate the past simple stops and talking about what it was like to be a child in Korea. So yeah, and locks their identity and that the idea of identity is significant to creation, that language in step, there’s a relationship between English between language and identity, and for teachers.
Margaret
And that’s what we early childhood principles. That’s one of the things that we’ve, that we’ve talked about there, that whole family, you know, don’t, who might be thinking, Oh, we’ve got to just speak in English or that our child is successful. It’s like, No, you need to nurture that first language, you need to keep that culture going. And then you need to utilize it to help you be a better English language learner.
David
Better language expert. That’s right, which is why young people, we think become very good at language and their parents are still learning. It’s the speed of acquisition of new or new learning as faster in younger people, and it’s an older people, but also older people haven’t have the demands haven’t been so serious on them. So Young, younger people. And we talked about young people learning before, which is where we end. So if we address some of the issues of literacy, for example, at an early age, particularly primary, and if we deal with things very seriously that age, but we’ve got a better chance of us not creating a complicated spaghetti highway version of learning,
Margaret
That right the earlier we can get going and for and for the adults in those children’s lives to to understand some of the things that are going on there and the value or the value of having additional languages, you know, going on in their lives, I think it’s really important and what, you know, students are likely to go further, if they’ve got a richer background.
David
That’s an interesting topic, too, because I’ve come from them from New South Wales. I’ve been here for I don’t know, period of time. But the I’ve noticed that it’s in schools in primary schools in Victoria, there was a lot of second language learning going on. And there’s some schools have other languages embedded into the as part of the learning process as well. So that’s, that’s quite exciting. To see. Yeah, because that’s a it’s a, it’s a, it’s a learning, it’s a cultural awareness. And it’s also it’s a, what I love about it is it actually relates to what’s going on the street. So if we walk out of here?
Margaret
Yes. Thats right its more real world. I think it does, it probably really broadens the moment, you know, to have to, you know, try to think in another language and try to figure out problem solve. It’s another form of problem solving. It’s a window, a window into some other cultures too.
David
Yes and also perhaps it reduces conflict, perhaps it creates awareness, perhaps it creates better understanding and better levels of communication as well. So just briefly, if you can, perhaps, let us know what you think, in this tumultuous time, that is a I mean, for some of us, it’s tumultuous for other people It’s tumultuous exponentially. So in this time, in this these changing days that we live in, literally, what do you see as the joys and successes that particularly students, or adults are carringbush , take away from their experiences with you?
Margaret
Well, I think, you know, there’s a there’s a nice community feel at a carringbush. And so people feel like they’re valued. I would like to think. And I think in terms of successes, one of the big successes and I think I mentioned this, over COVID, you know, we, the beginning of COVID, we started handing out hardcopy packs to learners, basically dropping them off at their houses because the Australia Post sort of were not operating very well. And then we gradually gradually, you know, ramped up, bear in mind. We’re in Melbourne, which we were just locked down for years on end teamed. And we gradually gradually got students onto WhatsApp, and then on to zoom. And then, you know, we really, really developed our own capacity as an organization to support, to support the learners chose to support teachers because we had to support the teachers who where on a major major learning curve to get their own skills ready to walk to a point where they could really support, in some cases, very low level learners remotely. But they did it. And it really, there was some really, really great outcomes out of it. And we would have, we would say that we wouldn’t have believed the outcomes that we got, that people did rise to the occasion. And they found a way and the people, you know, our learners, they did want to engage, they did want to jump on. And there were some very funny stories, but they did want to jump on. And they did get into WhatsApp groups. And you know, there was some really fabulous things that went on. And so, you know, really, that that was a joy to know that we were helping people to really stay connected and, and, and more than that, you know, develop their skills in a very meaningful way. Yeah, brilliant. So yeah, so great community and, you know, happy to be involved.
David
Yeah, I bet. And there are the rewards. That was a wonderful conversation. There’s so much that we’d like to pick up on again, because it really your practice, you’re applying the theory to people’s real lives. And we want to, we want to we want to see, we want to see It work. You have full support here at E2 language, whatever we could do along the way. If we were able to help in any way for whatever your students drop into any free classes that we’re having, or anything like that, or to broaden their community, as well, in particular, their online community, we have free spelling classes and grammar classes currently could change next month next week. We got them on spelling, grammar and pronunciation classes, particularly pronunciation classes are interesting. And they we have prepared maybe 120 students in each of those from around the world. So just another opportunity to meet with students from around the world and just enjoy the aspect of being in a room with other people learning, you’d be most welcome to join those free and as part of our extended community as well. And also give your, your adult learners a chance to and younger learners as well a chance to extend their sense of community community particularly online, so no one feels isolated and they’ve got groups to work with. And they’re developing language skills and communication skills and solving problem solving skills along the way as well. And so I really appreciate your time. Margaret, thank you very much. And they will remember that it’s Corrigan and carringbush which are two completely different entities.
Margaret
Thanks David.
David
Thanks Margaret, take care. Thank you very much.
Outro
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