Special Event: Mental Health and ELT Roundtable

29th May 1pm – 2pm, Oxford TEFL Barcelona

We are excited to announce that Oxford TEFL is organising a special event in Barcelona in collaboration with La Federaciò de Salut Mental de Catalunya to discuss the issues of Mental Health and ELT. During this unique event there will be a panel of experts to share their experiences and ideas as well as opportunities for the audience to participate and contribute to the event.

The panel of experts will include a representative from Macmillan Education, a key adviser and participant in this mental health social inclusion initiative, Fiona Oates and Andrew Dodd, two Barcelona based teachers leading up the Mental Health Friendly initiative on behalf of La Fedraciò Salut Mental de Catalunya, Jose Maria, a community ELT teacher with enormous expertise in teaching English to people suffering/recovering from mental health problems, and Santi Bonillo, a Community Action sociologist working with the Fundacion Marianao de Sant Boi, a project deeply imvolved in the field of mental health and community action.

There is also a lesson plan competition, for which teachers in Catalonia are invited to design a lesson which positively introduces the issue of mental health into the classroom. Deadline for entries is June 6^th. Find out more about the Mental Health Friendly Lesson Plan competition here or watch a video of Fiona and Andrew here.

We hope you can come and join us and listen to our panel discuss the challenges facing people with serious mental health problems and how we as a community (teachers, teacher trainers, materials writers and students) can not only play our part in making ELT more open to people suffering/recovering from mental health problems but be positively transformed as a community in the process.

This event will include students as well as teachers and will be filmed to ensure a wider audience. If you are a teacher, email [email protected] to be added to the list of participants. We hope you will join us for this fascinating and original event!

Find out more about Mental Health here and here, and more about the social inclusion initiative through Andrew and Fiona’s blog here. To stay updated about all events at Oxford TEFL, “like” our facebook page here or sign up to our newsletter.