Local organiser: Katerina Konstantinides-Vladimirou, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport and Youth

ECML experts: Katja Schnitzer, Germany; Mercè Bernaus, Spain

Participants: 35 (foreign language teachers, teachers of the language of schooling, policymakers/ curriculum writers, school administrators)

“The workshop ‘Supporting Multilingual Classrooms’ which was organised by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport and Youth in Limassol, Cyprus in collaboration with ECML has been a success. The two ECML experts, Merce Bernaus and Katja Schnitzer have, through their lively presentations, interactive approaches, and teaching-learning techniques, enlightened the audience with new knowledge and perspectives to use in their classrooms and schools. The audience consisted of teachers of Greek who teach many periods in the migration biography classrooms of secondary education, and teachers of English.

The workshop has added value, ideas and practices to the policy of student migration biography, a policy upon which the Ministry of Education invests programmes aiming to enable young migrants to integrate in the education system of Cyprus without difficulty. To achieve this aim, there is a Migration Biography Committee in the Ministry of Education which focuses on the improvement of teachers’ knowledge and skills necessary for those students’ induction.

At the school level, emphasis is given on the learning of methods and techniques that would help migrant students to learn Greek as a second language more easily in order to communicate with others (students, teachers), and develop a sense of ownership in our schools. The workshop has contributed a lot to the learning of interactive and creative methods. Each school organises activities, every year, which engage student migrants and make them develop emotional literacy besides literacy (reading and writing). The workshop has given to teacher participants many ideas of activities that indicate acceptance and respect to the diversity of people and, more specifically, students.

The workshop ‘Supporting Multilingual Classrooms’ constitutes an educational innovation for secondary education, signifies progress, and empowers teachers to continue to invest energy, time, effort and love in their classrooms. In general, the workshop has added high value to teacher professional development and learning. The participant teachers are now richer in interactive methods, teaching techniques, and emotional intelligence and using these in their teaching job, they can make their classrooms flourish!”

Katerina Konstantinides-Vladimirou, local organiser, 22 September 2021

ECML project website: Supporting multilingual classrooms – EU-ECML cooperation agreement 2020-2021 "Innovative methodologies and assessment in language learning"