[eal-bilingual] Training

Yesterday, I attended a seminar at Leeds University on Integration and Achievement in a Multilingual Europe: Languages for Learning and Life. During one of the sessions regarding links with parents, there were some innovative suggestions that those in the group might want to consider using. It may be that these are well known ways which schools are already using, but they were new to me.

British Airways use a badge system (in the form of national flag) to identify individuals who speak particular languages so if someone spoke Urdu and English they would have two badges, one with the Pakistani flag and one with the British/USA flag. This could be adapted to having a badge with 'welcome' or some other greeting. It would helpful for parents who come into the school and can see immediately, what member of staff speaks their language.

For communicating school notices to parents after school - one can use the school phone answer service and have messages in different community languages.  This is easy if there is one that uses the option system (like call centres) and callers press a particular number to |receive a message in their languages.  I appreciate that it would be difficult to do this for every language spoken in a school, but could be done with the major languages. If there are no-one in the school which speaks a particular language, community/religious leaders are often welcome this opportunity to be involved

 Local places of worship (e.g. mosques, churches, synagogues and temples) are good places to ask for any announcements that the school might want to be known to parents and the wider community 

I'd be interested if anyone has other ideas of positive ways in contacting parents of bilingual young people.

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