For the second year running, APAVAC went to Madrid to the Annual English Teachers Associations meeting, invited by the British Council Spain. The following ET Associations were present along with APAVAC: APAC(Catalonia), APABAL (Balearic Islands), CETA (Córdoba), GRETA (Granada), APIGA (Galicia), TEA (Canary Islands),APPI (Portugal), TESOL Spain and BETEA (Basque Country).
On the Saturday evening session, part of the associations presented their reports.
APAVAC started by thanking the BC for inviting us to the meeting and generously running with all expenses involved. There followed a brief review of achievements of APAVAC. How membership had grown from 80 to almost 160 members. We mentioned as our key event the I APAVAC Conference in October 2011. We stressed how a number of first rate speakers kindly contributed to a very successful event.. We mentioned Patrick Howarth from British Council Valencia, IULMA and Miguel Martínez from the University of Valencia and María Jesús Frígols (CLIL), Esther Molina from CETA, Victoria Oliver from UJI, Rodrigo F. Carmona, Beatriu Cardona.
Then we briefly informed how we had established new and profitable liaisons specially when organizing our conference, including the University of Valencia, British Council Valencia, publishers and also recently University of Alicante.
We also presented our short term projects, such as ESP Conference in May in Alicante and later in Valencia, IULMA digital story telling in March and for next school year , our II APAVAC Conference. We also aim at spreading the association further in Alicante and Castellón.
Then, the rest of the associations reported on their achievements since last meeting. During the reports, a number of issues of our interest arose:
-the only community that has to do the A2 tests in secondary schools is our Comunidad Valenciana.
-Cooperation among ELTAs in the areas of attending each other’s events, sharing publishing materials, sharing speakers, events info - keep us posted so that we can cross promote events & initiatives through our contacts, members and channels of communication
-Boosting visibility through BC Website, Facebook, the Press.
-Validation of Training Credits from other communities.
-Creation of ELT Iberia blog, like a public community site. Commitment for 2 postings a month per association
-Reaching out to university students as future professionals and associates.
-How to get language assistants (UK; USA), CIE American Association.
-Offering to Educational Authorities as advisors.
-Achieving of Certification Body Status in agreement with Educational Authorities.
-Discount for members on other TAs conferences
-Invitation to Coimbra and to Bilbao (1 person) 12th March, send name of person
-Work on improvement of conditions for CLIL teachers and bilingual schools.
-Exploring ways in which BC and TAs can support English in vocational education
Mark Levy , Project Manager of Inclusion & Diversity in Education (INDIE) and Manager of ELT & Education Projects team, British Council, Spain, projects closed the meeting stating the British Council policy and how we could as TAs cooperate with them.
1 Stakeholders Mapping; Talking and working with the right people who are key in policies
2 Policy Dialogue; Strenghtening BC’s status as”World Authority”
3 Global Products & Services; Raising revenue while reaching wider audience
4 A joined up approach; Working with all TC in Spain and across Europe.
British Council-Spain Activity Focus for 2011-2012
-More engagement with a wider variety of key players in English
-Think Tanks, High Level conference
-Re-defining BC’s role in Bi-lingual Projects
-Marketing and selling BC’s Global Products and Services
-Delivering BC’s “Connecting Classrooms” activities: Olympics, Dickens,etc materials all free at www.teachingenglish.org
After a meal on Saturday we all said our goodbyes until next year. All in all we learnt very much from each other, were encouraged by the British Council to keep up the good work and we got renewed energy and ideas to last for another year.
