ESU – International Oracy Symposium

Late June 2017 & England is gripped by a heat wave as I travel down to London to attend and work with the English Speaking Union at their International Oracy Symposium.

Who are the English speaking Union:

http://www.esu.org/

The main purpose of my attendance is to share my report with the ESU from my recent American adventures (which will be uploaded in the very near future) and to network with American teachers, fellow ESU members and other educational stakeholders.

The day was structured as follows:

In the morning I travelled across to Dartmouth House and met with ESU colleagues to present and deliver my full report relating to my Walter Hines Page Scholarship

(Zoe Adams, Patrick Ryan & Melanie Aplin)

before moving onto the Churchill Room for drinks before the afternoon event commenced, there I fell into a discussion with a teacher from Scotland about to embark on his own journey to America to research an educational aspect common to both the UK/USA education systems and then with Duncan Partridge, the ESU Director of Education, who was very complimentary regarding my international work in both Europe & America.

http://www.esu.org/about/staff

The afternoon sessions were vibrant and lively workshops with speakers from the ESU, Speakers Trust & School 21, all discussing how to embed oracy and public speaking across the curriculum.

Speakers Trust:

“At Speakers Trust we take a huge amount of pride in our work with the education, not-for-profit and community sectors. Our vision is for every young person to be able to speak confidently and to be heard. Our mission is to create a pathway for young people, from primary school through further education, to enhance their speaking and communication skills.

These skills unlock the individual’s potential with benefits spreading to the home, school, work, the economy and society. Our training is designed to build confidence – enabling adults and young people from all backgrounds to speak with clarity, conviction and impact.

We help everyone who takes part in our training to become better communicators, with a greater awareness of the importance of speaking out. This improves education and employment prospects as well as the desire to use the power of their voice to bring positive change. We’ve reached more than a quarter of a million people to date and worked with more than 1,000 schools, colleges and charities throughout the UK. We look forward to celebrating the next quarter of a million”

https://www.speakerstrust.org/

School 21:

Is a school that has put public speaking & oracy at the heart of the school and was at the ESU to share good practice.

http://www.school21.org.uk/

The event was enjoyable and very interactive with sessions ranging from group discussion, to physical workshops that enthused and motivated me to challenge myself further and embed oracy throughout my subject area and curriculum wide.

Moving forward:

I recently applied to become an English Speaking Mentor & over the summer will spend time at Dartmouth House being trained to work as a judge in one of their many outreach programs – exiting times!

 

And as the ESU are based in London, heres a shout out…..London’s Calling !!!!!!!