Languages show live, parents evening and the end of the first half term.

This weekend marked the end of my first half term in school and 10 weeks on the School Direct programme if we include the two weeks worth of summer school.  In many ways it has been a long half term, and in others the last 8 weeks have just flown by.  Until now I have been teaching four hours a week on my own and observing and helping out in 6 others.  I've been taking bits and pieces of starters, plenaries and half lessons in years 7, 8, 9 and 10, some French and some Spanish.

A week or so ago now another MFL trainee and I went to the Languages Show Live at Olympia.  It meant losing the usual weekend lie in and getting on the train nice and early in the morning and making our way across to Olympia, with the usual barriers that Transport for London like to throw in for good measure!  There were loads of stalls and so as well as attending talks on using the target language in the classroom and the new national curriculum for 2014 we managed to spend quite a lot of money...!  We justified it by saying that we're investing in our future by helping ourselves to do better this year, at least that's what we've convinced ourselves of anyway!

As I've been teaching year 7 on my own for a few weeks now they are my classes and so I took the lead in talking to the parents on parents evening this week.  Although I went to year 11 parents evening a few weeks ago I didn't really participate other than to add a couple of comments so this was quite a big step up.  At first it was quite scary sitting on the other side of the table and telling parents how their children were getting on in my lessons but by the end of the evening I realised I was actually quite enjoying it.  It was really interesting to get to meet the parents and hopefully I'll be able to see the effects of some of the things we talked about when we're back in the classroom after half term.

Unfortunately this half term break is not going to be that relaxing.  I've had a weekend off but work starts tomorrow as I not only have 6 hours of lessons to plan for the first week back but a 4000 word assignment for the PGCE and I'd really like to get at least a first draft done.  I might even have to pop into school at some point to help plan the primary link we are starting in November.  Hopefully I'll get it all done, but it'll be nice to not have to get up quite so early every day in any case.

School Direct: Reflecting on every breath, or so it seems!

The key to teacher training, or so I am lead to believe so far, is reflection.  In fact, it would seem like I have to reflect on every waking breath!  For anyone that doesn't know, these reflections are used as evidence that I have met 8 standards to gain Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).  In the past there used to be something like 32 of these, each requiring a folder full of evidence.  Some training routes still require a folder per standard, which can be confusing when trainees within one school are on different programmes.  As I'm doing a PGCE I will just need one folder at the end of the year, this includes my weekly journal, a reflection on each of the standards and yet more paperwork and forms.  As well as this I will complete 3 assignments over the course of the year, they are Professional Investigations: Professional Studies, Enhanced Studies and Curriculum Studies.  I only really know anything about the first one at the moment and that the Enhanced Studies will be researched whilst I am on a two week non-teaching placement at another school.  I'll also be doing a teaching placement for four weeks at another school, this has to be a contrasting school to my main placement so I presume it will be a grammar school.

Over and above my training requirements I'm trying to get involved in other things going on around the school.  So far these have centred around my own department, I've gone along to after school sessions, marked some primary transition work and even been out to a primary school to talk about how the school can work with them on some MFL sessions in year 6.  This week I get the chance to be involved outside of my department when the students are off timetable for the day, working on activities in their form groups and colleges (or houses).  As far as I know this event is to start off some competition between the colleges for the rest of the year and to encourage what has been described as a family feeling.  I'm really looking forward to it and think this has to be one of the main advantages of School Direct as it is allowing me to be part of the school from day one and really get involved just as any other member of staff.

In terms of the school/PGCE balance things are going fine so far, but I can already see that changing as I start to take over starters and parts of classes bit by bit from this week.  I'm conscious that there is going to be so much to do and so little time to do it in, but I knew that when I applied for this programme so it's just something I'll have to deal with.

On a less personal note, the ITT figures for this year have been released recently.  They show that whilst there were many many more applications for School Direct than places available there were many places left empty, I think it was around 45% or something similar.  It seems that this comes down to the schools involved in the process.  As schools have a much bigger say in the selection of trainees than they would with PGCE placements they are applying the standards that they would in selecting their own staff.  Unfortunately, this seems to mean that there are many unfilled places for teacher training this year, as less PGCE places were available.  Although the quality of School Direct training is high, there won't be enough Newly Qualified Teachers around at the end of it.  What worries me is that the mistakes made this year are going to tar what could've been a very successful programme in the future.

An enjoyable week and a good experience, but Primary isn't for me thanks!

Keeping track of the reading list. So far so good...

Since getting back home from Lancaster I have been finishing off my preparations for School Direct to get some bits and pieces out of the way before the end of the academic year.  I spent a few days in the MFL department of my old Secondary school and I also went and met all the other trainees studying via the same university and training with the same lead school.  It was really good to finally get to meet people and gives me some faces to look out for at the summer school in August.  It also started to paint a slightly clearer picture of how the year is going to work.  It seems that one day a week will be spent training at one of the schools in the consortium and 6 of these days might be a little further afield depending on our subjects. Looking forward to the summer school now as hopefully we'll get information about how it's all going to work in terms of assignments and second placements.  My few days in Secondary were good too as I got to see all years, except for 11 and 13 of course, and saw a variety of lessons which gave me ideas for September.

As part of the preparations set out by my university I had to spend a week in a Primary school. Unfortunately the last few weeks of the Summer term are not the best for getting into classrooms and seeing lessons going on.  Due to the timing with the end of term I only spent one day with year 6 but two days with year 1 and year 3.  Despite the fact that curriculum teaching has pretty much ended in year 6 I was able to spend a day with them and spent some time asking the teachers about some of the questions I needed to answer including covering the transition to Secondary school.  As part of these investigations we were supposed to focus on our specialist subjects but I soon realised I wouldn't be getting the opportunity to see any languages teaching.  The school I visited used to have a specialist but they don't any longer and now they use a piece of computer software to teach French.  I enjoyed my week in a Primary school but I couldn't do it all the time.  The kids were great and it was a lot of fun but I think that was helped by the knowledge that I'd be done at the end of the week and not coming back!  All the Primary teachers said to me that they wouldn't be able to do Secondary though so I guess it just comes down to personal preference.

Now that everything has calmed down I've got to get on with my reading, I was hoping to have the bulk done before going to Canterbury but I'm not convinced that is going to happen now!  I'm back up to Lancaster later in the week for my Graduation ceremony and then thats it, I'm no longer a Lancaster undergraduate student!

Why study languages? Three minutes to convince 6th formers to study MFL. #3mins2MFL

This week I've got myself involved in a Speedy Networking event where some students from my university are going to a local high school to 'sell' their course speed-dating style.  I don't know a huge amount about the event, at the moment I'm not sure if it will be going ahead as there hasn't been that much interest from students wanting to get involved.  I hope it does go ahead as it sounds like a good event but clearly will only be successful with a good selection of courses represented.  Anyway, this has got me thinking about how to 'sell' the study of languages in only three minutes.


I've mentioned how useful Twitter has been for me before and so it was my first port of call for inspiration.  Firstly I really appreciate tweeters like @speak2future @thirdyearabroad @TESNewTeachers and @MFLSunderland retweeting my request as it helped me get a few more responses.  I asked Twitter users:

Here are just a selection of the reasons I was given.
Employability and job prospects:

I went through these with the other languages students that are going to be coming to the event, trying to work out how we could use them our in three minutes.  All being final year students we were particularly interested in the tweets to do with employability and were really interested to see that language graduates were something like the 7th most employable.  Of the three of us, two are going into teaching in the UK and one to teach English in France and from our experience of the job market outside of Education we've found that as much as languages are sought after, these are in combination with other things.  For example, marketing graduates with knowledge of French or economics graduates with knowledge of German.  One of the three of us has joint honours with Maths and we agreed that maybe in hindsight taking joint honours with something outside of the languages department may have placed us in a better position.  That said it really depends on what university you go to and what you're intending on doing afterwards as some universities place a lot of focus on language and translation, as opposed to our course which has a greater emphasis on 'culture', politics, literature, history etc.  Just recently the British Chamber of Commerce highlighted the need for more linguists in the UK, here.  In terms of what we take from this for our #3mins2MFL we decided that we need to highlight that there are a range of opportunities out there for brits that speak another language, and not just for those that want to go and live abroad as some students might expect.  An example I like to use is that last summer I worked at a London airport and spoke Spanish every single shift.

Experience and opportunity:

We were unanimous that the year abroad is a vital part of a languages degree and is a great reason to study languages.  The experience of the year abroad is different for everyone, especially due to the variety of things that you can do for the year, but we all agreed that we got something from it.  The year abroad is something quite unique to the languages degree in the UK, students from other disciplines can take sandwich years or study abroad but their options are not as wide as language students who don't have the same linguistic barriers.  Year abroad students studying languages can study at a university, teach English or even find a work placement, there are plenty of opportunities out there.  There is a lot more about this on Third Year Abroad, especially their Graduate Case Studies.

Skills:

 This tweet comes from someone that I've studied with for the last 4 years, she has already headed off into the 'real world' and started work in a job that isn't directly related to her degree subject.  I'm sure she won't mind that I'm using her has a great example of the transferable skills that you gain from a languages degree as she highlights herself in the tweet.  Communication is just one of those skills, recently when re-doing my CV I identified some more which are understanding of other ways of working, independence and self-motivation.

Understanding:

I've briefly touched on this one already, learning a language allows you to see things from another perspective, learning about other cultures, different approaches and new ideas.

Of all the tweets I received we particularly liked this one:

In the end we've decided to take a minute each looking at what you study in a languages degree and the host of other courses you can combine with it, the year abroad and finally where your languages can take you.  If it goes ahead maybe I'll blog on it again after the event.

What do you think are the main reasons to learn a language? Tweet @BexNobes with the hashtag #3mins2MFL and let me know.