On 16 June, Pluriwell teachers and the expert team came together for a general meeting to conclude the academic year. The goals of the meeting were to share the final versions of the plurilingual wellbeing tools that the participants have created, to gather and exchange feedback, and to reflect together about the impact of the project.

Over 20 teachers from around Europe connected for the meeting. Many of them have been involved in Pluriwell since September or October of last year. “One thing we wanted to do at this meeting was to express our appreciation for our participants,” said project coordinator Caterina Sugranyes. “The four project leaders might officially be the expert team, but at this point all of our participants are also experts in plurilingual wellbeing in their own right.”

The attendees had a chance to take a closer look at some of the plurilingual wellbeing tools that their colleagues had created in other countries and contexts. “Seeing all of our work collected there like that was quite thrilling,” said Sugranyes. Relying on their expertise and the insights they have after working these past months with their colleagues and the Pluriwell team as a whole, they were able to offer detailed feedback, and they paid special attention to how tools that had been created elsewhere could be adapted for use in their own contexts.

Over the past few months, the Pluriwell teachers have been concentrating on creating and refining these tools, which they have designed to spread plurilingual wellbeing among their colleagues, but it goes without saying that working on the project has affected the participants themselves and their own outlook on languages and teaching. A participating teacher from the Netherlands, Dieuwke Popma, observed that the project had helped her become more aware of the importance of giving a place and a voice to all the first languages present at her school. “As language teachers, when we talk about the ‘language of the heart,’ we have always tended to mean [the regional language] Frisian,” she said. “But that is not the same for all the children at the school, and now we are more active in making children with other first languages feel at home.”

The Pluriwell team

• ECML project website “Fostering the plurilingual wellbeing of language teachers” (2024-26) (available in English and French) : www.ecml.at/pluriwell

Pluriwell school map / carte des établissements scolaires