The CLIL Class meet EU Parliament

President

The TY CLIL class have been working hard, learning about the EU through French. We have been learning about all of the benefits of the EU, doing projects and making videos.

On the 3rd of February, EU parliament President Roberta Metsola was in Ireland and held a Youth Dialogue, with the students of Ireland, doing the EU ambassador program in Smock Alley. Our CLIL class was invited to go.

The class spent the previous day, 2nd Feb. as a CLIL day. This also happened to be “La Chandeleur”, a festival similar to pancake Tuesday in France where they celebrate by eating crêpes. So the class spent the morning in Home Economics kitchens learning about the history of La Chandeleur and making delicious pancakes and hot chocolate.

We then went back to the classroom and spent the rest of the day learning about the structure of the EU parliament and coming up with questions to ask Ms. Roberta Metsola the following day.

February 3rd saw us all very excited. The CLIL class met with Ms. G Kelly in Tara station and started to make their way towards the event. With a slight bit of struggle with Google maps, the class found Smock Alley and went inside.

We checked in, received little EU flags, went upstairs and were greeted

February 3rd saw us all very excited. The CLIL class met with Ms. G Kelly in Tara station and started to make their way towards the event. With a slight bit of struggle with Google maps, the class found Smock Alley and went inside.

We checked in, received little EU flags, went upstairs and were greeted with a long table of tea, coffee and cakes. We then took our seats in the 3rd row and waited for the event to start.

Ms. Metsola was given a brief introduction and then she began speaking. She talked about the importance of listening to young people in politics and asked for us to give her difficult questions in the Q&A section because it's important that we are listened to. She spoke very eloquently and didn't even have notes to refer to.

The Q&A section began and one of our students, Niamh Abbott was the first to receive the microphone. She asked about the difficulties Ms. Metsola had faced not only as a woman in politics but as a young woman. Roberta explained that she hoped now, in 2023, it is not as much of a challenge as it was when she began at 23. She started politics really young and even dropped out of college to run in an election. She went back and finished college later.

Ms. Metsola continued answering the people's questions which ranged from everything between how she got into politics and the war in Ukraine. There were so many questions that she ended up running significantly over time.

The event for the CLIL class ended with a group photo with Metsola and Fine Gael politician, Peter Burke.

On the way out we were given goodie bags with highlighters, a digital pen, a newspaper and a little booklet. After grabbing a bite to eat in the train station we then got on the dart back to the school. We had returned in time for our CLIL class, where we told the other French teacher, Adele, all about the trip. It really was an interesting and fascinating day out.

By Niamh Abbott