BBC News: 'A wonderful opportunity': The adventure of raising bilingual children

BBC News: 'A wonderful opportunity': The adventure of raising bilingual children https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240307-how-to-raise-bilingual-children

Visible versus invisible disabilities: Communication rights moderated through hierarchies of disability and childhood

What an exciting moment - to hold a book that includes a chapter that I have co-authored with my daughter. 

McLeod, S., & McLeod, J. (2023). Communication rights moderated through hierarchies of disability and childhood. In S. Meyers, M. McCloskey, G. Petri (Eds.). The Routledge international handbook of disability human rights hierarchies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003410089

I enjoyed the collaboration, conversations, and the task of writing together. I am proud of our thinking, particularly our work on identifying challenges living with visible versus invisible disabilities.

New chapter: Communication rights moderated through hierarchies of disability and childhood

I am so proud to see that this chapter has been published. What an honour to write it with Jessica.

McLeod, S., & McLeod, J. (2023). Communication rights moderated through hierarchies of disability and childhood. In S. Meyers, M. McCloskey, G. Petri (Eds.). The Routledge international handbook of disability human rights hierarchies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003410089

Here is the abstract:

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (United Nations, 1948) and Article 2 says that the right to communication should occur “without distinction of . . . language.” These powerful statements underscore that all people have the right to communicate. This right, however, is often not met for children with communication disabilities whose families do not speak the dominant language of the community. Case studies from Australia, Fiji, Iceland, and Vietnam help elaborate hierarchies of disability human rights relating to communication. 

Here is the direct link to our chapter:

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003410089-24/communication-rights-moderated-hierarchies-disability-childhood-sharynne-mcleod-jessica-mcleod?context=ubx&refId=843415bf-9187-47d9-9935-405e5c17d57a

Welcome Ruby to the Speech-Language-Multilingualism team

I had the great privilege to welcome little Ruby to the Speech-Langauge-Multilingualism team on Thursday in Albury when I was visiting her mum Sarah.

Health

Our health is important. All aspects of our lives (including our work) are impacted when we are unwell or family members are unwell. These impacts can be short-term -- but also can be long term, especially for researchers like me. There are many years between planning research, writing grant or book proposals, receiving funding, undertaking research and writing it up. Research that involves multiple collaborators can also be impacted by ill health and other circumstances (including happy circumstances such as maternity leave). 

The past few years with the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted the world and have slowed down the research cycle. Additionally, I have been impacted by cancer since 2018. Many times, the impact has limited my capacity to think, plan and work. At other times, I have been well and have really enjoyed my work as a distraction from my treatments. During 2022 I have had a number of unanticipated treatments that have significantly reduced my capacity to work - and also my reliability to meet deadlines - and particularly to answer emails. I have appreciated the patience and encouragement from my colleagues.

This week I have had really great news about my health. I am hoping that 2023 will see a healthier year.

Proud graduation moment

My daughter graduated with a Masters of Philosphy last night. I am a very proud mother and grateful to her excellent supervisors: A/Prof Jenna Gillett-Swan and Dr Nerida Spina

Macquarie University graduation

Today I attended the Macquarie University graduation ceremony for education graduates. This week saw the first gradations at Macquarie University since the COVID pandemic began in 2020. I was so proud to see my daughter graduate, and also to see many of my early childhood education colleagues at the ceremony.

Online launch of the free bilingual book "VietSpeech: Multilingual Children/Trẻ em Đa ngữ"

Today, the VietSpeech team hosted an online launch of the free bilingual book titled "VietSpeech: Multilingual Children/Trẻ em Đa ngữ". The 52-page book aims to support Vietnamese-Australian children and families to maintain their home language and enhance speech skills in Vietnamese and English. It contains many strategies to support families’ teaching of Vietnamese every day at home. 

The free book is available here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/vietspeech/info 

Capstan Le

Dr Duong Nguyen

Sheila Pham

Dr Van Tran

 

This book is the culmination of our VietSpeech research project funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery ARC Discovery Grant is titled Vietnamese-Australian children's speech and language competence (DP180102848) that began in 20218 and concluded in December 2021. VietSpeech team members are here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/vietspeech/team

More details https://about.csu.edu.au/community/events/upcoming/online/vietspeech-book-launch

The CSU media release is here: https://news.csu.edu.au/in-brief/research-delivers-free-bilingual-book-vietspeech-to-be-launched-online  

I have provided radio interviews on ABC Goulburn Murray and 2BS Bathurst regarding the launch. 

ABC published a news story https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-07/new-book-encourages-survival-of-vietnamese-language-in-australia/

VietSpeech team - bilingualism is a superpower

Dr Van Tran and Sheila Pham will mention the book on their SBS radio programs and podcasts.

We hope that it is a useful resource for the world. 

Wow! Our research published by ABC was featured in the Qantas Club!

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-07/new-book-encourages-survival-of-vietnamese-language-in-australia/

Congratulations Jess on your Masters thesis submission

This week my daughter submitted her Masters thesis to Queensland University of Technology. I'm really proud of her. Soon our whole family will have a Masters degree!

 

A proud mother

 Today my daughter had her first conference abstract accepted for presentation. She is thrilled. I am proud!

Family holidays

Holidays with family is important and this location is special.

New beginnings for our SLM team's family

Our SLM team includes mothers who have supported their children to move into new life stages this year. One of our team members' child has begun attending an early childhood education and care centre, two team members' youngest children have started school this week, one has started high school and my youngest started work as a teacher (after finishing her university degree last year). Our family roles are important in understanding the research we do and the lives of our participants and their families.

The importance of families

In 2014 I wrote a blogpost about the importance of our families: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-importance-of-our-families.html

As our SLM team continues to grow, our families continue to be our guiding lights, our grounding influences, our greatest supporters, and our priorities. Thank you to our wonderful families.

Here are a few photos from the past few weeks of the importance of our families.

Michelle, Kate M, and Sharynne with their children during a recent online meeting

Jess and Sharynne at the United Nations

Sarah and Sadie at the SPA conference

Happy Mothers' Day

Today was Mothers' Day in Australia.
I celebrated with my family, and one of my PhD "daughters" and her family.
Here is a lovely message from our Head of Campus to celebrate the day.

Dear Colleagues,
Without mothers we will not be here. Mothers’ love, hard work, dedication, care, nurturing spirit, and patience have raised generations of human civilisation. I would therefore like to use this month of May which is dedicated to mothers, to thank you for your kindness to humanity and loving contributions to and in our lives. As a community we celebrate you. We honour you, and we wish all CSU Mums and expecting mums, a wonderful loving and happy mothers’ day celebration.
Chika Anyanwu, PhD, FGLF
Head of Campus, Bathurst, Charles Sturt University

A lovely Mothers' Day message from Ben

Sarah Masso's PhD graduation

Today Sarah Masso graduated with her PhD. Her PhD supervisors and family all traveled to Bathurst to celebrate with her. Her PhD was titled: Polysyllable Maturity of Preschool Children with Speech Sound Disorders and the abstract is here. Congratulations Dr Masso! We are all very proud of you.

Dr Sarah Masso with her supervisory team: Dr Audrey Wang, Dr Elise Baker,
Dr Jane McCormack, and Sharynne

Dr Sarah Masso with her proud family and supervisors

It was also a very happy occasion because my son graduated with a BA(Hons) at the same ceremony.

Sharynne with her family, and her son's honours supervisor, Dr Ruth Bacchus

Our children and families

The work undertaken by our team focuses on the communication skills of children and families throughout the world. Every so often on my blog I mention the importance of our own families who underpin who we are and the work we do. Here are some recent photos of the mothers in our team.

Sharynne, Franklin and Sarah

Mothers - Ben, Sharynne, Sarah and Suzanne
holding Vietnamese turtle mothers with their babies on their backs

Suzanne and her family with her co-supervisor Sarah McDonagh and her family in Fiji

The importance of our families (continued)

My students and I have an agreement that "family comes first". Our families are important for so many reasons, including as our support crew.  On Saturday I had the pleasure of meeting Anna's family - and to chatting about their role to continue as her support crew over the next few years during her PhD. In 2014 I wrote about families of some of my other students here.

Celebrating Children's Speech

Recently Children's Speech was published. Elise Baker and I began writing this book about 15 years ago. Last night our families came together to celebrate the our book's release and to acknowledge that it was written throughout most of our children's lives. Our families appear within the book, so we had fun locating each others' photos and input. To our families - thank you for your support and encouragement. Details about the book are here.

Graduation congratulations continue

Today my son graduated from CSU and my daughter received her high school results. I am very proud of both of them: their achievements to date, and their goals for the future.
The CSU Media tweet is here.

Congratulations Jess

Today my daughter graduated from high school. I am so proud of all she has achieved throughout her high school years and look forward to see her continued growth in the future.