Local CUC Student takes opportunity to be a Guest Speaker in UNE Teaching Lecture

Matthew Thompson is a local teacher at Aldavilla Primary School and he also studies a Master of Teaching at UNE. Matthew is one of the most frequent students to the Centre.

This trimester, he is taking EDUC503. A subject on Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, it addresses the background of EAL/D (English as an additional language or dialect) Students and the need for teachers to be cognisant of the perceived hurdles that may be encountered in teaching of students from diverse cultures.

Matthew had envisioned that the subject would provide teaching strategies, however, it mainly had been focussing on being made aware of the need of recognising ‘other’ in schools.

During one of the weekly tutorials, I raised the question as to whether we would be discussing the ‘8 Ways of Learning’ pedagogy which was developed with Indigenous Australian peoples in mind.

Matthew discovered the lecturer didn’t know of the pedagogy but asked for more information, which Matthew emailed to him.

This was fortuitous as the lecturer asked whether Matthew would be comfortable presenting to the cohort.

Matthew and the lecturer worked together to find the right time to present, and Matthew put together a presentation.

I am not one to do ‘Death by PowerPoint’ and kept the content on my slides to a minimum rather than just reading off the slides I typed notes for what I would say.

A top tip for any students who are doing presentations at university.

I delivered the presentation to 24 students on a Zoom call and the recording was uploaded to the subject site for the remainder of the cohort of over 100 students.

A huge undertaking for a student, but an amazing opportunity to share knowledge – one of the most gratifying and enriching parts of university.

I received some excellent feedback from both fellow students and the lecturer and felt so privileged to have shared the practical examples of the pedagogy in action that Aldavilla Public School undertake.

If you would like to get in touch with Matthew about his presentation, he is available at matthew@thetechpt.com.