Since 2024 final year student teachers on the Professional Master of Education (post primary) in Maynooth University have the opportunity to share some of their learning from the programme with each other and the wider educational community. This mini conference, held in the School of Education on 1st May this year, invites students develop an hour-long workshop covering a topic, approach and/or sets of strategies that will be of interest and benefit to teachers.
This year a total of 21 PME2s facilitated around a dozen workshops. Some of them kindly repeated their workshop to give more options to the participating delegates on the day.
The workshops included the following enticing titles:
- Active strategies for Teaching Controversial Issues
- Sarah Deacon & Conor Murphy
- Using Drama Games in the MFL/Gaeilge classroom
- Emily Sachs-Eldridge
- Helping EAL students in your classroom
- Chloe Mulally, Mya Murtagh, Brooke Dunne & Nicole Crowley
- Andrei Espiritu, Anne Mc Gurran & Ronan Tynan
- Micro Lesson Study experience for collaborative research practices
- Claire Egan & Michael Sherlock (with Dr Diarmaid Hyland)
- Dialogic Teaching: How to facilitate argumentation in your classroom subjects.
- Amy Healy & Caoimhe Spollen
- Building confidence in the classroom
- Cathal McLaughlin & Jack Madden
- AI as a Tool, Not a Crutch: Using AI in Education
- Seán Murphy
- Equipping teachers to address controversial issues in the classroom
- Niamh Meagher, Melanie Rennicks & Brandon Martella
- Teacher as Performer: Using Acting Techniques to Enhance Teaching & Public Speaking
- Eóghain Kiernan
Some of the themes chosen and developed for workshops were inspired by learning from the Advanced Methods module in PME Year 2 programme. Some of the workshops were also developed from students' existing personal and professional interests and skills. All of them were extremely well received.
The magically smooth organisation of day was thanks to simply brilliant administrative skills of Ms Maelíosa Griffin and Ms Keira Brett from the Education Department. We also enjoyed delicious and stylishly presented catering provided by Master Chefs a Maynooth University on-campus catering company. This event is one of a number of initiatives that are made possible by the gracious and generous support of the Ubuntu Network.
For this year’s Shared Learning Day we held a keynote presentation in the afternoon. For this we were honoured to have Dannielle McKenna, Aaron Sunderland Carey and Dr Fiona Whelan speak about the Boys in the Making project. This project, which creatively explores the meaning and experience of masculinity with boys and young men, began in Rialto Youth Project in 2018 and has been developed in multiple community, youth and school settings in recent years. The project is on-going and the team hosted a review event earlier this year with an exhibition and conference in NCAD.
About the Boys in the Making presentation by Dannielle McKenna, Aaron Sunderland Carey and Dr Fiona Whelan
‘He is a boy.
He is from here.
And we are responsible for him.’
Boys in the Making is a dynamic place-based programme for boys and young men, which sees groups come together over time, to co-create a boy and explore his needs and experiences as he interacts with the world around him. The programme aims to explore, communicate and learn from the lived experiences and knowledge of boys and young men as they engage in a creative exploration of masculinity and its formation. The presentation will include inputs from the team who created the programme - Fiona Whelan (Artist and Educator) and Dannielle McKenna (Manager, Rialto Youth Project), and an input from artist Aaron Sunderland Carey who is a core member of the team leading the programme as it expands across Dublin. The presentation will include an overview of the programme’s methodology and origins as well as insights related to the process, and themes and insights emerging. www.whatdoesheneed.com