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19th Annual TESOL Greece – Athens College Event
7 February, 2021 @ 10:30 am - 4:30 pm
19th Annual TESOL Greece – Athens College Event
Social-Emotional Learning and ELT
Important Note to All TESOL Greece Members
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This year's pitta cutting event is kindly sponsored by
10.30 - 10:45
Welcome - Opening Remarks
Plenary Speaker:
Agnes Alice Mariakaki
10:30 – 11:45
How to Teach Positive Self-Leadership in Your Online Classroom, and How to Build New Post COVID-19 Emotional Skills in Students
Summary: The classroom remains the most inspiring place where students can learn how to navigate themselves, their emotions, their personal expression and their participation in a community. COVID-19 presents an opportunity to teach students about personal strength, resilience, mastering fear and building and sharing together a positive outlook in life.
Agnes Mariakaki holds a Master’s Degree in Organisational Psychology from the University of Lancaster, UK. She is a certified trauma therapist in liaison with the University of Alberta, Canada, a certified NLP trainer and a Lego Serious Play facilitator and Design Thinking expert. She lectures at the Public Open University and is a member of the research team of the MAMEM project for the social inclusion of people with disabilities. She manages MindSearch, a social and commercial research company.
Speakers
Dina Markopoulou is a mental health counselor specializing in Psychology of Child Development (M.Sc, M.Ed TESOL, PgDipl Learning Difficulties, BTEC Counselling). Dina’s primary scientific interests revolve around empathy among children and adults, the main focus being on dealing with stress factors and time management, since she is an accredited Life/Business coach, as well.
Dina Markopoulou
12:00 – 12:45
Emotions and Learners with Learning Difficulties in ELT
Summary: Why are emotions so important especially when dealing with learners with LD and teaching English? When it comes to ELT, since learners with LD struggle with issues of attention, memory and-in general- learning in their mother tongue, being exposed to a foreign language is highly likely to bring about feelings of frustration because of underachievement. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss issues of mental health and relationship quality among all stakeholders. In this vein, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) will be reviewed from the perspective of emotional intelligence to be further corroborated by neuroscience and its findings in this field.
Angele Papantoniou
12:00 – 12:45
How Can We Increase Wellbeing in the Classroom?
Summary: There is a strong connection between social emotional learning and wellbeing. We will focus on ways to increase resilience and wellbeing through the lens of the applied science of positive psychology. We will explore ways that will enable children to increase their positive emotions, be more engaged, build strong relationships, find meaning in life and increase their achievements.
I encourage you to take the character strengths survey from the VIA Institute on Character. It will take 10- 15 minutes. Using your character strengths more often can help you increase your wellbeing.
Angele Papantoniou is a graduate of HAEF and a mother of three girls. She completed her studies in Psychology and Sociology at the University of Leicester, UK (2006). She later became a shareholder and assumed the management of ΕΥΖΗΝ Children Vitality. This experience led her to further education, earning her Master’s degree in Positive Psychology (MAPP) at the University of East London (2012). She also holds the Specialist in Character Education Diploma from the University of San Diego, U.S.A (2013). She further trained at the University of Berkeley, the VIA Institute on Character and the Harvard Extension School on Character strengths, Nutrition, Well-being, Mindfulness and Resilience. She currently focuses on the ways of implementing Positive Psychology concepts in schools.
12:45 – 13:15
Lunch Break
13:15 – 13:30
TESOL Greece Virtual Pitta Cutting
Eleni Vasileiou received her BA degree in English Language and Literature at Athens University and earned an MSc (Econ) in European Studies at the London School of Economics. For the last 25 years she has served both as a practitioner and in senior leadership positions in the field of education. As a certified IB workshop leader, she has facilitated numerous face-to-face, online, in-school and regional workshops. Her current professional interests and areas of specialization include: Language and Literature, Language Acquisition, Approaches to Learning Skills, Differentiation and Service Learning. Ms. Vasileiou is the IB Programmes Director at Athens College overseeing the school’s PYP, MYP, and Diploma Programme and serves as an English language teacher at Athens College Junior High School.
Eleni Vasileiou
13:45 – 14:30
Language, Character, Growth: Weaving in Social and Personal Competencies
Summary: “Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions”. Excerpt from Mahatma Gandhi’s quote
- How do we enable our students to use language to monitor and regulate their own emotions and behavior?
- How do we enable our students to use language to work well with others and resolve interpersonal conflict?
- How do we use instructional language to develop emotional intelligence?
This presentation aims at increasing teacher awareness of the instructional practices that promote communication and social skills in the language classroom. I am delighted to share with you matters close to my heart and some practical tips about communicative language activities that encourage learners to use language naturally in authentic situations while enhancing Social Emotional Learning.
Dr. Nina Haritatou
13:45 – 14:30
The Role of Foreign Literature in the Promotion of Social and Emotional Intelligence: An Obstacle or an Ally?
Summary: The present paper focuses on the multiple ways the modern psychological theories on emotional intelligence can be connected with the teaching of literature as well as with the social and emotional education of children and adolescents (SEL). The outline of a demonstrative teaching lesson on foreign literature is used to manifest how, despite the obstacle of the foreign language, the literary text can be the springboard to the cultivation of emotional skills like empathy and self-awareness, enhancing at the same time the learners’ interest in humanistic and social matters.
Dr. Nina Haritatou obtained her Ph. D in Philosophy at Newcastle University in Great Britain. For the academic years 2011-2013 she worked as Seminar Tutor at Newcastle University where she taught Modernist and Post-modernist Literature and Poetry as well as History of Film. Her articles on English literature teaching have been published in Greece and in other countries (Paris, London, Sydney). She is the author of the book Texts of English and American literature (Patakis, 2013) and of English – Greek dictionaries aimed at Secondary education. She has been a member of the board of the Pan-Hellenic Scientific Union of English Teachers since 2014. She is also a member of the Counseling Board of Cambridge Scholar Publishing and of a number of international scientific associations.
Sophia Apostoli holds an Msc in European Policy from the University of Bristol and a BA in English and Greek Language and Literature from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has also successfully completed an E-Learning Course on Learning Difficulties focusing on Assessment and Intervention Strategies, run by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and a course on Differentiated Instruction, run by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has over 15 years of teaching experience in Greece and since 2007 she has been teaching English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language at Athens College Elementary School.
Sophia Apostoli
14:45 – 15:30
English Language Anxiety – Time to Decompress from Stress!
Summary: English Language Anxiety is something very common in an English Language classroom. “Why won’t he learn? Why doesn’t he speak? Why doesn’t she understand?” Teachers come across it in many shapes and forms and it affects the learning process in numerous ways. How can we discern the symptoms? What is the role of the teacher in steering anxious students back to the learning track? Looking at the theory behind Foreign Language Anxiety, we will explore ways to help students decompress from all that stress!
Vasiliki Mandalou
14:45 – 15:30
Nurturing the Educator within…
Summary: The educator is considered to be a life learner as well as a ‘source’ of perpetual knowledge, readiness and a psychological and ‘mental’ luggage. But we, educators need to recharge ourselves and cocoon our thoughts before performing in our classrooms. I will try to demonstrate ways with which we can find our centre, empower our spirit and analyze our inner being in order to be the best we could possibly be for the sake of our vocation.
Vasiliki Mandalou is a Greek Philology and Philosophy teacher. She holds a MSc in Learning Difficulties-Mental Health as well as a CELTA degree in English language. She is a writer and a book reviewer.
Elena Paraschopoulou has a BA in English Language with Linguistics from The University of Sheffield, and an M.Ed. from the Hellenic Open University. Before coming to Psychico College as an Elementary school English teacher, she was PYP Coordinator and served as Head of the English Department at the International School of Piraeus. She has 22 years of teaching experience in various teaching contexts working in private schools, foreign language institutes, and private tutoring. She has led multiple workshops including ‘Creativity: Thinking outside the box of prescribed lesson plans!’ which took place at TESOL HAEF in 2018.
Elena Paraschopoulou
15:45 – 16:30
Social – Emotional Learning in the Classroom
Summary: This seminar is for English teachers seeking new ideas on Social-Emotional Learning to implement in class. It includes information about the Primary Years Program of the International Baccalaureate and how to integrate these lessons in both IB and non-IB world schools. The participants will have the opportunity to interact and engage in activities that focus on SEL, promoting self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships, and decision making to use in their classroom.
If you want to empower your students to become better learners and build a more collaborative community in your classroom, join this seminar!
Tasoula Asimakopoulou
15:45 – 16:30
Negotiating Emotions and Developing Empathy through Poetry
Summary: Poetry, foregrounding the poetic subject’s processing and emotional negotiation of the world, can undoubtedly be a valuable tool in the framework of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). In this presentation, we will explore how students can gain a deeper understanding of complex emotions and the diverse ways in which they are expressed by different individuals through studying poems of different forms and from different eras and backgrounds. By posing SEL-based questions, we can help our students build their emotional vocabulary, and attend to both the singularity and the shared humanity of different voices, with a view to ultimately developing their empathy.
Tasoula Asimakopoulou holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and an MA in English Literary Studies from the University of York. She is particularly interested in literary analysis, the teaching of literature, and the different ways in which the study of literature can benefit language learners. She has been teaching English at Athens College Junior High School and High School since 2017.