February 2018

On the 4th and 5th of February 2018, Julie McAdam, Susanne Abou Ghaida and Dr Azadeh Emadi conducted a two-day workshop with picturebook mediators from St. Andrews Refugee Services (STARS), the Catholic Relief Services, EducateMe and Duwwar. The workshop aimed to strengthen knowledge and understanding of how to draw on the potential of children’s literature to address the educational and emotional needs of displaced children, young people and their families. The sessions presented multimodal texts, introduced the mirror-windows-doors metaphor for book selection and using creative strategies to capture the responses of children. A portion of the workshop was dedicated to developing the skills of the participants in decoding images in picturebooks as well as in video recording storytelling and activity sessions in an ethical manner.

On the 2nd of February 2018, Julie McAdam and Susanne Abou Ghaida conducted a workshop with 10 educators working with Syrian children in community schools. The workshop took place in the headquarters of Fard Foundation, an organization that provides humanitarian aid and educational services to the Syrian refugee population in the 6th of October city in Egypt. During the day, the participants discussed texts that had served as mirrors, windows and doors for them, were exposed to picturebooks from Egypt and other Arab countries and learned strategies to elicit the responses of the children they are working with to picturebooks. During the course of the day, they developed their own ideas for activities.