At the Scottish Parliament, we enjoyed high levels of engagement and interest to take AtWiOS forward in many schools and several Local Authorities. With the support and encouragement of the Scottish Government for plans to roll out the project at a larger scale, I sought and secured further funding ready to continue with the research.
Read about our journey travelled to the Scottish Parliament
In February 2020, AtWiOS funder, Creative Multilingualism, invited me to present at Creativity with Languages in Schools. This practical day brought many teachers and language practitioners together at SOAS University London. With plans to also present the project at the organised at Creative Multilingualism: New Perspectives on Modern Languages Research the University of Oxford, the covid-19 pandemic hit us and brought our lives to an unexpected halt.
During the Spring 2020 lockdown, the project received additional funding to produce a series of webinars to contribute to the legacy of Creative Multilingualism and to further support schools with more material. During lockdown, I made plans for the project to be taken forward virtually. One of the main considerations was that the number of participating schools would have to be severely limited. I could only recruit two, hoping to work collaboratively together from the beginning of the new session towards February 2021.
We had high hopes to have our multilingual performances ready to celebrate Languages Week Scotland 2021 (#ScotlandLovesLanguages). We initiated the project with me joining virtually via Teams as it was not permitted or safe that I visited the school. It was fantastic! Pupils were delighted and comfortable with my online presence and we worked incredibly well, using the technology to our advantage. At this stage of the game, teachers were incredibly tech savvy and at ease with this hybrid delivery mode. Everything seemed to indicate we would have a large audience attending our virtual multilingual performances. However, as we entered into another lockdown, schools remained operative exclusively for children of key workers and vulnerable children. What could we do? We had worked extremely hard and were really looking forward to showcase our pieces! In another display of commendable effort in the face of adversity, parents came together with the school leads and sent a few sneak peeks of our work behind the scenes which we shared on social media. This was our way to join the #ScotlandLovesLanguages social media campaign and keep spirits high.
In April 2021, before I could return to my virtual visits to the really busy school schedules, the Association for Language Learning (ALL) London Branch invited me to deliver a TiLT (Technology in Language Teaching) webinar. In this webinar, I shared how the decision to transfer the project online was made and how it was being successfully pivoted online. Co-presented with the two school leads we also gave our insights into the flexible approach we were taking as restrictions tightened and eased.
Joe Dale, TiLT organiser and Independent Languages Consultant shared:
We were truly delighted Eneida agreed to showcase her project All The World Is Our Stage along with Arnault Kasa and Zoe Gordon in one of our technology in language teaching (TiLT) webinars for The Association for Language Learning in April 2021. It was so impressive to discover how she had been able to adapt her multilingual project which promotes the value of translanguaging so it could run fully online during the pandemic. We loved hearing how the aims of the project which include celebrating children’s heritage languages and raising awareness of the interconnectedness of languages were achieved. I was very impressed to find out how the project had been able to forge links with the local non-English speaking community with parents and grandparents getting involved too.
You could see in the webinar how the primary children clearly loved taking part and how proud they had felt about sharing their home language and their cultural identity in school through teaching their peers new phrases and songs and adapting stories.
I can’t wait to see how the project develops in the future. Great work, Eneida!
Watch the full TiLT (Technology in Language Teaching) webinar
A virtual return to both schools in May permitted ‘All the World is Our Stage: primary pupils never lost in translation ONLINE!’ to be shown live via Teams. Again, with a great reception and excellent feedback from our audience, the future holds exciting multilingual adventures. Watch this space!