Seeking experienced teachers of Chinese, German, Japanese, French and/or Latin to be mentors in the Virtual Languages Mentoring Network (VLMN) program.

Are you an experienced teacher of Chinese, German, Japanese, French and/or Latin? We are currently finalising the new 2022-2023 cohort of the VLMN program and are looking for experienced teachers of these languages who are interested in mentoring the 2022-2023 cohort of beginning language teachers.

The VLMN was established in 2017 to support beginning language teachers 7-12. Beginning and geographically remote teachers of languages often work as the only language teacher in the school and have specific needs which cannot always be met at the school level.

Beginning and/or isolated language teachers (mentees) are matched with an experienced language teacher (mentor) for the duration of the VLMN program. The VLMN program will begin with a centrally-located conference for both mentors and mentees. The Languages and Culture team will provide release to participants to facilitate mentoring support and to attend targeted professional learning for the duration of the VLMN program.

The VLMN will:
• identify professional learning needs for mentees and mentors
• implement evidence-based mentoring practices to develop the capacity of mentees
• support teachers of languages in working towards and maintaining accreditation at a range of career stages
• build the capacity of virtual and face-to-face language teacher networks
• provide significant professional development opportunities for all mentors and mentees.

The VLMN includes the program leaders from the Languages and Culture team, and school-based language teacher mentors working to support the mentee teachers.

If you are interested in becoming a mentor, please email your EOI to Shanelle Ingram by 5 pm on Wednesday 9 February 2022.

The Languages and Culture team is very pleased to announce that we have just published a sample scope and sequence and a sample unit of work with matching assessment task for Stage 4 Latin.

Thank you to our Latin writers, who were busy working on this support in Semester 1, in addition to their normal teaching loads. 

We are very, VERY excited to announce that we have just published 3 new resources for Stage 6 Latin:

• - a sample assessment task for the Preliminary course on Catullus poem 50
• - HSC examination in Latin Continuers – advice for students
• - HSC examination in Latin Extension – advice for students.

Please note that we published an earlier version of the sample assessment task, however we had to make some changes to the outcomes and the marking guidelines. Some of these changes were to enable students to access the task as a practice, without providing them with any answers. We also included more background information for teachers. If you had previously downloaded a copy of the task, please discard it and replace it with the new version.

You can access this new support from our Latin Stage 6 page.

Our support for Latin is finally starting to come to fruition! A HUGE thanks to our small but mighty team of writers who are continuing to develop resources.

We have just published programming guidelines for classical languages 7-10 on our new Latin Stages 4 and 5 page.

We have also added a Latin folder to the Resources shared tab within our statewide staffroom, if you'd like to share your resources with other Latin teachers within our schools.

More support is coming, so stay tuned!

​Expressions of interest are invited from teachers/head teachers with expertise in Latin who would like to be part of a writing team to develop language-specific resources for the NSW Department of Education’s curriculum website, for example:
- programming guidelines and advice for classical languages, including Latin

• - Latin-specific support (sample scope and sequences, units of work and assessment tasks) for Stages 4, 5 and 6.    

Successful applicants will be required to attend 1 full-day of planning either via Zoom or at our offices at Parramatta, followed by the equivalent of up to 10 writing days, at a location and on dates to be negotiated. The project will commence in Term 1 to be completed by the end of Term 2 2021, with the planning day to be held on Monday 14 December 2020.

The Languages and Culture team will provide release for the planning day and subsequent writing days. Travel and accommodation costs may also be reimbursed, if required.

To apply, please complete the attached EOI form and email as a PDF to Marcela Ayas by 5pm Friday 27 November 2020.

For further information contact Marcela Ayas, Language Officer on 7814 3448.

Please note: The EOI is for teachers from NSW public schools.