What do they know of England who only England know
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06 / 10 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
Last week in the staff room a year six teacher proclaimed “Much as I love my job, I wouldn’t want to be doing it for another 30 years.”
He made teaching sound like a dead end job, whereas in my experience it is an occupation with a much wider range of opportunities for variety than most.
You only have to look at the types of school that exist in England to see that even the schools themselves offer variety. There are State Schools and Private Schools, Comprehensive Schools and Grammar Schools, All Boys Schools, All Girls Schools, Junior Schools, Middle Schools ( 8 -12 or 9 -13 ) Secondary Schools and Sixth form colleges. There are Catholic Schools, Church of England Schools, Muslim Schools and plenty of other denominational schools.
Even within what is called the mainstream there are inner city schools, huge campus schools and tiny village schools. I even know of a few teachers who teach their own children at home.
That represents the orthodox view of teaching children in the classroom in term time.
Outside of term time I have come across a lot of vocational schools that run language courses for children from abroad. What might seem a daunting way to spend your holidays can indeed be a refreshing eye-opener.
They teach English in the morning, go on trips of discovery in the afternoon and have group activities and games in the evening. It makes for a fascinating cocktail of national traits and individual personalities.
The teaching qualification in England has also doubled as a qualification for teaching adults. This harks back to an era when adult teaching centres were indeed called night school and were staffed by the self same teachers who were teaching there in the daytime – very often in the self same classroom. Either by default or by a rare outburst of an understanding that if a thing ain’t bust you don’t have to fix it, that arrangement still continues and offers yet another string to the qualified teachers bow.
Lastly there is the opportunity to teach abroad.
Those who teach abroad can hardly envisage live being any other way but I have often felt that they could act as ambassadors for the likes of the man in the staff room who could not envisage teaching for a lifetime.
Teachers who work abroad know that there are countries where a place in school is treasured. Teachers who work abroad often work in classrooms where policing is not part of a teacher’s duties. Teachers who work abroad often work with limited resources and they also realise that they in turn get more out of their experience abroad by learning the native language.
In short teachers who work abroad can spread the word that teaching abroad is a two way transaction. It is a quirk of circumstance that English is a world language but we in turn are lazy when it comes to learning other languages and this is to our detriment. It is a feature of our time that education is not clearly seen as a tool of upward mobility by everyone in England whereas it is obvious to children and families abroad.
But one feature of my stints of working abroad stands head and shoulders above the rest. I noticed almost from day one that a teacher was a revered member of the community. It was a strange sensation at first but one that ultimately makes you a better teacher. Perhaps that is what was missing in the mind of my colleague in the staff room. For all the resources and job security it is the teacher in England who feels the least appreciated. That seldom happens abroad.
