Training to be English teacher

[absolutelyflawed]

Hi - I’m going to be training to be a secondary school English teacher but my degree isn’t in English ( I have English A level)
What questions am I likely to be asked at interview?

What would be good reasons for saying I want to teach English?

Any other ways to prepare?

What do you enjoy about teaching English?

Thank you.

What is your degree in and why do you want to teach English and not that?

Have you considered a subject knowledge enhancement course?

I’m going to be training to be a secondary school English teacher

If you don’t have a degree in English I wouldn’t count on that...

What is your degree in? Why can’t you tracks something more related to that?

I would really want my children to be taught English by someone with a degree in English. That is probably desperately old fashioned though .

Have you actually got an interview lined up? I’m amazed if you can be an English teacher without an English degree. I wouldn’t want you teaching English to my dc.

What would be good reasons for saying I want to teach English?

Try telling the truth?

How bizarre to ask others to tell you why you want to teach English - surely you know why you want this?

In agreement with pp, you'll struggle to get a training position without the degree. English isn't a shortage subject, and it's not a rare degree to hold, there will be a lot of better qualified candidates.

A girl on my course did journalism as a degree and is now on a secondary english pgce so not impossible!

My last 3 Scitt or teach 1st candidates had a Law Degree and want to teach En glish. . It's pretty clear they would never have got into Law training as it's over subscribed. One has made a passable teacher, the other two are still training. Depth of knowledge required to teach Shakespeare at GCSE, for example, requires a real focus. The students deserve dedication, they don't get to repeat content year after year. Be prepared to listen to advice in the first two to five years. After that seek feedback! It's not impossible without an English degree but I'd be more impressed if you, say, worked as a TA for a few years while doing an OU degree. Then apply. It shows you mean it.

I’ve taught with some great English teachers without English degrees...however, they tended to know why they wanted to teach English?

Could you tell us why you want to?

Op, whats your subject?

What's your subject?
Why do you want to teach English?
How will you ensure your subject knowledge is comparable to an English graduate?
Why should we employ you over a subject specialist?
What's your understanding of teaching?

I'll be honest, if you are a non-specialist asking strangers on a forum to give good reasons to want to teach English then as a mentor I'd have huge reservations about letting you near my classes.
I'm not saying that to be horrible by the way, but knowing what you want to teach and why is the very minimum we'd need.

I’ve taught with loads of English teachers with degrees in other disciplines. They were not assigned top sets or A level groups with the (probably justifiable) reason that their subject knowledge wouldn’t be up to it. They were cool with that (some people have a bit of a way with bottom sets and don’t like the nitpicking of top sets anyway). How would you feel about that OP?

I've said this before here - I've just picked up a PGCE trainee on 2nd placement whose first degree is in Japanese! She had to do a subject knowledge enhancement course with the uni last summer and having seen her teach a couple of times last week, she is doing fine. I imagine she may struggle with some of the demands of GCSE esp at the higher ability end, and is certainly a bit unsure with a level.

keiratwiceknightly But I bet she is able to come up with her own reasons why she wants to teach English.

To be honest I still find it difficult to get on board with the idea of putting non-specialist staff with lower groups. If anything, the weakest students need staff with excellent subject knowledge who can anticipate likely misconceptions in advance and draw on broad subject knowledge to scaffold learning that's more than "when you do a paper 2 question 3 you need to use PEAL" if the gaps are going to close.

I know there's a shortage of teachers, but I really struggle to get on board with the idea of training people to teach out of specialism. It's bad enough when strong, and/or experienced staff have to teach out of specialism on their timetable.

having seen her teach a couple of times last week, she is doing fine. I imagine she may struggle with some of the demands of GCSE

You see, to me that’s the very definition of not doing fine. You’ve got a trainee who you know will struggle with ks4 and cannot do ks5. That’s 4 years out of 7 that she’s training for. She should fail her training at that point if she can only teach years 7,8,9 well.

Not only that potteringalong but with any situation where a teacher isn't strong throughout the age range, theres usually a question mark on the level of challenge in KS3 teaching and someone else up the school has to plug the gaps later. My y8s this year were comparable to a middle set y10, and their creative writing would probably score 30+/40 on the GCSE mark scheme so a teacher who struggles with GCSE demands would have a significant impact on that group's progress.

Also the knock on effect when departments are staffed with a number of non specialists then means that specialists end up having 2-3 or even more GCSE classes to protect results, which has consequences for workload and stress.

I'm not sure how we fix that though.

Oh I am quite dubious about her knowledge. I wouldn't want my kids taught by someone with her background theoretically. But the uni have allowed her into the course and, short of making subject knowledge one of her main priorities and also one of my areas for scrutiny ( which I am doing, obviously), I can't prevent her from progressing.

And Tbf, she has exhibited much better skills in general pedagogy, and perfectly good knowledge so far, even with a high ability Y10 class. As I've said, jury's out.

*much better skills... than some English graduates I've seen/worked with, I meant to say.

I see what you mean keiratwiceknightly. I was speaking more generally.
I've seen some questionable subject knowledge from some English graduates, admittedly from local courses that aren't well regarded.
It's frustrating that subject knowledge is one of the standards and yet some training providers seem quite willing to overlook quite substantial issues in that area. It doesn't help the trainees in my opinion.

Whilst training to teach primary (I did the 3 year BEd course with QTS recommendation), I had to go to a secondary school for a day. During a meeting about the transition process between primary and secondary, I was asked if I would consider teaching secondary as I would definitely be considered. I’m not interested in secondary teaching.

I don’t have a specific subject degree and they knew that but I think some schools are desperate.

I don’t have a specific subject degree and they knew that but I think some schools are desperate
They are, but also some secondary schools like to employ primary teachers, particularly in their Maths/English department because of their skills. Someone with a primary background is really well placed to teach some of our weakest students who come up not ready to access he secondary curriculum. I've seen it work well in schools who set at KS3.

@LolaSmiles

Very true.

I think no English teachers on staffroom think English has no recruitment issues, and so all English depts. are lucky because they have 100% degree specialists with 2:1s from good unis.

This is not at all true.

We have started taking more and more people with tenuously linked degrees (such as TEFL) and even trained someone with a psychology degree(never understood that one!)

The people with English degrees are training to be maths teachers.