KEYNOTE Katie Quartano and Paul Shaw, Disabled Friendly Access Lessons in Life that Matter

[Heike Philp]

Recording (58min): http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/p68rxwuocht/

Teachers are in a prime position to enlighten the younger generation and the teaching of EFL can be an effective vehicle for raising awareness about social issues. The Disabled Access Friendly campaign’s free EFL teaching resources can help teachers explore issues affecting people with mobility disability, develop students’ social conscience, make lessons meaningful, and encourage critical. The resources consist of lesson plans and graded reading texts at all levels, which can be used as supplementary material, for project work and examination practice. The material provides students with the information necessary to allow them to put themselves in the shoes of someone with a mobility disability and stimulates them to explore how others feel.  Specific lesson plans and reading texts are analysed, the difference between the traditional medical model and the more enlightened social model of disability are explained and participants are involved in examining their own stereotypes of disability.

Katie QUARTANO has a background in business administration and tourism, worked for Swissair and Austrian Airlines in Greece, and is now employed by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.  She is a qualified EFL teacher and works as an examiner.

Paul Shaw has worked as a freelance writer, project manager and editor for International ELT publishers and as an academic advisor, trainer, seminar speaker and examiner. He was Chair of TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece for two terms.

Together Paul and Katie work on the Disabled Access Friendly campaign, which uses EFL to raise awareness about mobility disability.