It is with great sadness that we have to report the death of Bernadette Hall.
Bernadette was an EAL practitioner in Leicester City who retired in March this year after over 25 years as a teacher, advisory teacher and consultant in the city. During this time she also contributed to teacher training at Leicester University and worked closely with Martin Cortazzi and more recently with Wasyl Cajkler on a variety of reasearch projects. She wrote her PhD thesis on 'Investigating Lexical Understanding. A Study of EAL and L1 Primary Pupils'.
As well as being an active NALDIC member, Bernadette was the author of a piece for NALDIC Practice Papers 2 on Developing Inference Training with EAL Pupils in the Primary Phase. In 2010 Bernadette and Wasyl Cajkler collaborated on Occasional Paper 24 which looked at initial teacher training and induction for teaching pupils with EAL'.
To colleagues in Leicester City she was renowned as an excellent classroom practitioner who brought a strong sense of reflective inquiry into all she did. Although she was a highly qualified practitoner with a huge capacity for intellectual analysis, she was very modest about her achievements and treated everybody she worked with in the LA, in schools and at the University with gentleness and respect. The many collegues from other LAs who met her through National Strategies EAL Consultant Network meetings will also testify to her commitment to the education and welfare of pupils who use EAL and her friendly and positive nature.
Friends, colleagues and pupils will remember Bernadette with great fondness and respect.
