CONTRIBUTORS

Lucia Barbera

Lucia Barbera, an Italian native speaker and polyglot currently living in Melbourne, holds a Master of Teaching (Secondary), with specialisations in Languages (Italian), Humanities and TESOL from Deakin University. She also holds the DITALS (Teaching Italian as a Foreign Language) certification issued by the DITALS Centre of the University for Foreigners of Siena.

In the past, she has collaborated with the Dante Alighieri Society of Melbourne within the Italian Conversation Program for VCE students in Years 11 and 12 to reinforce classroom teaching in preparation the VCE Italian oral examination. Currently, Lucia is teaching Italian to adults at the Italian Institute of Culture in South Yarra, but will soon also be a full-time Italian teacher in a government secondary school in the western suburbs.

Nadege Debax

Nadege Debax has spent seven years as a full time French teacher in Australia and Norway. She also is a certified yoga and meditation teacher, mindfulness instructor, life and empowerment coach, and reijukido therapist – as well as an advocate for establishing mindfulness programs in schools.
In her spare time, she loves travelling, scuba diving and learning foreign languages.

Find her online at www.theboxofhappiness.com

Ella Dyson

A writer/editor/illustrator, Ella is a recent graduate of RMIT's Associate Degree in Professional Writing and Editing. She provided the illustrations for this site, in addition to customising the design and sourcing the text.

Find her online at @EllaDyson42. And at www.elladyson.com

Katharine Gentry

A New Zealand-born Australian, Kat began her career in education at the age of 6 when she created a library for her friends to borrow books. In 2014, she started the Teach for Australia teaching degree through the University of Melbourne. During her time as a TFA Associate, Kat was a Science and Biology teacher at a secondary college in rural Victoria. Recently, Kat has been broadening her understanding of the Australian education system by undertaking CRT work in a variety of schools throughout Melbourne. She passionately believes that every child deserves an excellent education, and wants to learn more about the power of theatre and outdoor experiences to enhance and complement learning.

Viqui Gras

Dr Viqui Gras is originally from Barcelona, Spain, where she obtained a Doctorate in Linguistics in 2006. She has a passion for languages and, in particular, bilingualism and home-language maintenance.

Viqui has worked as a Sign Language interpreter and interpreter trainer, and has vast experience as an EAL, Spanish and Catalan teacher. In 2013 she founded Bilingual Stories Australia, offering languages services to provide families, professionals and the community with practical tools to maximize their language potential.

She has recently completed the Master of Teaching (Dual Strand) at Deakin University, specializing in Spanish and EAL, and is looking forward to starting a career in teaching Primary and Secondary Education.

Manuel Moreno Alcauce

Manuel Moreno Alcauce is the Education Advisor appointed by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport of Spain in charge of Spanish Language and Culture in the states of Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. Manuel’s career in education spans 20 years. His career as a languages teacher started with the Language Assistant program in Wales (United Kingdom) for 10 months in 1996. Manuel has worked as teacher of English since 1996, working in several government schools in Spain until 2014. He worked as Assistant Principal and as Business Manager in his last secondary school, IES Gerardo Molina, in Spain. He has participated in several European Projects such as Erasmus+ and eTwinning Programs. Manuel has a particular interest in second language acquisition, ICT, and innovative methodologies such as Project Based Learning, Cooperative Learning and Inclusive Learning.

Phillip O'Brien

Phillip has a broad range of educational experiences, having taught in Japan and Brazil, as well as in the Government and Islamic systems in Australia. He currently works at McKinnon Secondary College and Deakin University and is an active writer and consultant, liaising with the Victorian Curriculum & Assessment Authority, Department of Education and different subject associations. He is also an accredited school evaluator with the Council of International Schools with a keen interest in Intercultural Curriculum Development and Global Citizenship. Phillip speaks fluent Portuguese, can survive in Spanish and Japanese and would love to build on his basic French and Turkish.

Follow Phillip on Twitter: @POBrien79

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Tasha Paquier

Tasha Paquier started her professional career as a Research Assistant at Deakin University's Economic and Social Policy Research Centre of the early 90s. At the same time, she took on a position at Programs Manager at the Ardoch Youth Foundation, where she later went on to be a long-standing member of the Board of Management. She later completed a Graduate Diploma in Education. She has been predominantly teaching modern languages for the last 17 years and calls herself a French teacher, but has been known to teach German, Japanese, Indonesian, EAL, English, Accounting, Global Politics Theory of Knowledge and even ICT. She is currently Head of French at Albert Park College and is a Teaching Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She is also the proud mother of 6-year-old bilingual (French/English) twins.

Aimée Pochinco

Self-professed language nerd, Aimée was born and raised bilingual to French and English-speaking parents in the Canadian Prairies. She started learning Spanish as a teenager, and continued learning as a minor at the University of Manitoba, along with her major, Sociology. Aimée has always been fascinated by people, learning, and languages, so her decision to teach seemed inevitable. Aimée recently completed her Masters of Teaching (Secondary) at Deakin University, having taught French and Humanities at several schools around Melbourne on her placements. While at Deakin, she specialised in TESOL, understanding the challenges faced by EAL students in an increasing globalised society. Aimée is greatly looking forward to the experiences of a graduate teacher in Australia.

Scott Santarossa

Having multiple passions ranging across many different areas, Scott’s current endeavour lies in learning Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and he hopes to one day become a dentist who is accessible to the Deaf community. Previously, he has enjoyed learning German, Italian, and even a little Norwegian. Scott loves learning languages and travelling, and tries to fit this in around full-time study.

Zachary Tan

Originally from Singapore, Zachary Tan has lived in the UK and in Hong Kong before finally settling down in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to punk rock music, Zach enjoys learning new languages, and can communicate in Italian, French, and Mandarin Chinese. He is currently teaching himself Japanese using WaniKani and Bunpro, two (mostly) free online SRS tools.

Find him online at https://zachary2wtan.wixsite.com/zachary-tan

Stanley Wang

Stanley Wang is currently the Chief Strategy Officer for Teach For Taiwan, after serving as the Head of Languages at Haileybury and the Learning Area tutor for LOTE in the Master of Teaching (Internship) program at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education over the past 3 years. At Haileybury, Stanley oversaw the Language program (Chinese, Japanese, French and Latin) and managed 55 Languages teachers across Haileybury's 6 campuses, including Haileybury International School Tianjin in China. Stanley is an alumnus of the Teach For Australia Program and has served as a committee member of the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Victoria and Modern Language Teachers Association of Victoria.

Michiko Weinmann

Dr Michiko Weinmann is Course Director of the Master of Languages Teaching, and Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning Languages (CTaLL) in the School of Education at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her previous teaching experience includes the teaching of German, Japanese and Latin in secondary, bilingual primary immersion, community language and distance education programs. She has researched and published widely in the areas of Languages pedagogy, multilingual education, Asia literacy and teacher mobility in the global age. Twitter: @michikoweinmann

Alistair Welsh

Dr Alistair Welsh is Senior Lecturer in Indonesian language at Deakin University. His interdisciplinary research interests focus on identity positioning in cross-cultural and intercultural spaces. Recent publications range from the examination of intercultural experiences of Australian university students as learners of Indonesian language, to the case of Cocos Malay cultural identity in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. He is engaged in several ongoing projects that include analysis of political discourse, cultural identity, intercultural encounters and the phenomenon of ‘translanguaging’. His research focuses on discourse analysis of how language is used, cultural contexts that shape identity positions of language users and critical self-reflection by multilingual speakers.