The ALL London January Event 2024

Saturday 13th January 2024.

This page is a report about the ALL London January 2024 event, written by Helen Myers, Chair of the ALL LRB. It is a work in progress!

There is a private page for those who paid and registered for the event giving them access to the presentations.

Here is the programme issued on the day: ALL Jan 2024 programme on the day

Photos so far: (more to be added)

NB: This is a Flickr album.. click to access many more photos! (Thanks to Antonio and Judith). We asked people to tell us if they did not want to be photographed. If anyone needs to be removed, just let us know. No questions asked…!!

Thanks

Thanks so much to Mark Reid who put us in the BFI diary last January so that we could continue the now well-established tradition of holding our January Event in their beautiful premises on London’s Southbank. Although Mark has now moved on from the BFI, he made sure to pass the baton to Dr Carol-Mei Barker who generously gave time to meet up with us for planning the event. Sadly, she was unable to make it on the day, but Nikki Parchment stepped in wonderfully the day before and attended on a day when she would normally be at home, arriving early in the morning and patiently waiting until we left over 7 hours later. It was lovely to welcome her to the event and she seemed impressed by our enthusiasm!

Many, many thanks to our wonderful presenters for preparing excellent talks. Details of their sessions, along with their bios, are on this document.

Team Primary + KS3: Cara Bleiman, Nadine Chadier and Miriam Paridjanian with special guest star, Dominikia Widlak-Manka from the BFI!
Team GCSE: David Blow, Adam Lamb, Helen Myers, Judith Rowland Jones (AQA) (celebrating her 30^th year there!), Rebecca Waker (Edexcel).
Team Residentials and Exchanges: Tim Crapper and Eva Lamb
Team Employment: Nick Mair – as well as running a session on how to prepare CVs and present yourself at interview, Nick also invited job seekers to introduce themselves to us, and appealed to employers to treat their candidates well. (There was a collective groan on hearing an account of a particularly gruelling scenario.)
Judith Rowland-Jones of AQA gave us an update to AQA for the current GCSE (slides here: Blue Room 13.15 Rowland Jones AQA update
Rebecca Waker of Edexcel Pearson gave us an update to Edexcel for the current GCSE (slides here: Learning Space 13.15 Waker Pearson update

Thanks to our Corporate members and Language Institutes who held attractive stands during the breaks and financed our refreshments: AQA, Consejería de Educación, Eduqas, LanguageNut, L’Institut français, Goethe Institut, Maison Claire Fontaine, NCLE, Pearson Edexcel, Thisislanguage and Voyager. Particular thanks go to Caroline Conlon of the NCLE who gave a double contribution! Many, many thanks to Angela Murphy who coordinated this and ran a fun raffle.

Thanks to the committed committee members for arriving early in the morning and ensuring the smooth-running of the day: Nathan Jenkins wrote a lovely encouraging message to our Mailchimp list, and is landed with that job for life now! Mary Heath and Miriam Paridjanian made wonderful human accompaniments to the newly established ‘lollipop stands’ directing people to the event and even spent time explaining who we were to people who were just coming to watch a film ..! Liz Fotheringham, Sarah Hau and Richard Margerison were extremely efficient at registering people and processing payments/refunds. [The app even tells me how many were checked in and by whom! Richard excelled himself with 82 of the 117 check-ins. No one could get past him!] Sharon Mangion anticipated those with special dietary needs and brought along gluten-free biscuits and almond milk to supplement the usual fare. Kerry Phipps and Peter Moore looked so professional behind that bar. Angela Murphy coordinated an excellent exhibition. A massive thanks to our committee members who spoke today and crafted some lovely presentations: Cara Bleiman, Nadine Chadier, Mary Heath, Nick Mair, Wanda Marshall, Miriam Pardjanian, Leanne Simmonds, and Judith Rifeser. Thanks to Nathalie Blondeau and Judith for overseeing the rooms and thanking people. Ali Koubaa, Richard Margerison and Darnelle Constant-Shepherd recruited some new committee members, and Antonio da Silva (who joined us last year) took photos, tweeted and offered (or was strongly encouraged…) to do a webinar on setting up a Google site! And though I am somewhat biased, I must not forget to mention our very own ‘ALL Fellow’, David Blow, who does so much to support the Languages Community at large with respect to exams and grading, but also makes a wonderful co-pilot, box shifter, and general spotter of things which need to be done …!

And finally, thanks to the participants, our special ‘Saturday Morning Keenie Club’. The vast majority are ALL members and, as last year, it was lovely to see a sea of hands raised when we asked the question ‘are you a member of ALL?’! Here are some of the comment they made:

Always great to meet up with fellow MFL teachers/enthusiasts at the @ALLLondon007 January event. Great for the soul, and thank you to hosts (@BFI ), speakers and ALL London committee. #mfltwitterati
I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday. Thank you for organising the wonderful morning’s Inset! It has given me lots of ideas that I can put into practice. It was also good to meet up with like-minded folks
The time and care that you and others have taken to prepare us – and therefore our students – for the new GCSE is incredible. Thank you!
Thank you and your team for all the efforts to us all. I needed this event. […] What can I do to support our community?
Saturday was very inspiring, thank you, David and all your committee members for making it happen.
I have never known such a lovely buzz and atmosphere as we had today.
Amazing @ALLLondon007 event today. Although I had to rush out, it was fantastic to see friends and present some ideas. Thank you

If you are not a member yet, please, please join your professional home here! ALL volunteers such as The ALL London Committee love supporting and promoting the community, and we do not like to exclude anyone. But if you can personally afford a yearly subscription of £70 to support others who are coordinating the association and promoting your subject, to receive 3 glossy magazines a year expertly edited by Steven Fawkes and Crista Hazell, containing useful articles to being you up to date with what is going on and to receive substantial discounts on events, please do join! Our own price structure is designed to make it a no-brainer to join the association. The amount you save by being a member pretty much covers the yearly subscription. (And if you cannot personally afford this, how about asking your school? It’s very cheap INSET!)

Links to presentations

Those who registered for the event have received a private link and password to a page containing resources shared in talks. If you registered and do not receive this information, please contact us via Ticket Tailor.

Save the date please!

Saturday June 15th 2024 when we will be holding our June Event for the first time at the Instituto Español Vicente Cañada Blanch in Portobello Road. Here’s a link to our event page which we will update as more information becomes available.

Thanks if you have managed to read to the end of this rather gushing report. I just can’t help it!

Helen