Conference for Language Friendly Schools

Hilda HeydeNews

Saturday 9 April 2022: 10.00-16.00 (CEST)
Location: Mozartlaan 35, 4837 EH Breda, The Netherlands

We invite you to our first ever Language Friendly School Conference! On April 9, we will celebrate language inclusion with all the Language Friendly Schools in the network. The conference will be organized at the International School Breda.
With presentations and workshops from our Language Friendly Schools in the Netherlands, Spain, China, Canada, and Saba (Caribbean), we are celebrating language diversity around the world. The conference is an opportunity for Language Friendly School-teachers to meet each other in person. And to share strategies to make your school even more inclusive.

The conference is also open to teachers, students and parents or policy makers who want to find out how schools welcome and value all languages spoken by their students.

Programme

The final programme can be found here

In addition to inspiring presentations from our own Language Friendly Schools, we have some very special guests:

Secondary school teachers from our sister language friendly voXmi-network from Vienna, Austria who participate in our LERI Project will share their perspectives (see Rutu Foundation.)

Ambassadors of the PEaCH Project – for bilingual children will give a workshop for parents and teachers on fostering home languages.

You will also have a chance to try out the AVIOR bilingual supportive materials that were recently included in the European Teacher Toolkit of the European commission (see: School Education Gateway)

Finally, Professor Jim Cummins (University of Toronto), Ambassador of the Language Friendly School will close the conference with an online presentation.

Student Involvement

As we discussed during our last Network Meeting, we would like to increase the role of students in our Language Friendly School network. For example, by creating Language Friendly School Student Councils, made up of 3 or 4 student representatives who are invited to answer the questions: 

  • How language friendly is your school? 
  • And: how can your school become even language friendlier?  

The students can use video, a drama piece, a story, drawings, songs, dance, spoken word or any other creative ways and present it virtually at the Language Friendly School Conference (max. 5 min). Please send your submissions before 1 April 2022 to info@languagefriendlyschool.org and we will make sure they are shared during the day with the participants.

Facilitate a Workshop

Every school is invited to facilitate a workshop (max 45 min) or a presentation (max 10 min) about your school approach and/or your favourite activities to enhance language diversity and inclusion. Please let us know before March 20 whether you are interested in presenting, using the registration form or via info@languagefriendlyschool.org.  

Tickets

There is a limited capacity, so register soon! We have early bird tickets (15 euro) available for registration before 23 March and 25 euro thereafter.

We hope to welcome you on the 9th of April at International School Breda, Mozartlaan 35, 4837 EH Breda in the Netherlands.