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.

Sorry, that fist no should say non !

And that should say first

gives up on typing

I’m deeply concerned about the standard of English teachers given the state of your spelling, Piggy

Not that I know of noble!

the government has just managed to make English and the Arts increasingly unattractive so that no girls want to do it, no boys want to do it, fewer will take it at degree level , but that's OK because the country will be awash with reluctant scientists !

Yeah, me too, noble. What shall I teach instead? Oh, maybe physics as then I can be SLT.

Teach First, Piggy. If you’ve got maths A-level, you’re going to be a maths teacher.

maybe physics as then I can be SLT.

Only if you want to be the SLT member in charge of spreadsheets. If you want to be SLT in charge of anything else, you need to be PE.

Not in my pace :all scientists of some kind, every single one. except for the one they ignore who doesn't count

Maybe why your school is so research focused!

We’ve got PE, English, Drama, Humanities and spreadsheets.

If you want to be SLT in charge of anything else, you need to be PE.

That's so true.

Piggy We have a team of specialists and it's a school that looks after staff.

We wouldn't employ some of the trainees that are coming through (specialists and non specialists), which is good for our students, but not good for other students in schools where the only subject specialist us the Head of English who is in their 3rd year of teaching via TeachFirst. I wonder how long it's going to be before lots of schools have standardised lessons for all schools in the MAT and the classroom teacher only has to know and deliver the slides. There's elements of that creeping in already.

@Piggywaspushed - I’ve always found that slt is awash with English specialists who have no concept that Science teaching requires more than a set of books and a classroom but I guess every school is different.

It must be a local thing. Every school local to me has scientists as headteachers. It's like it spreads as a kind of boys' club, as they all know each other.

Surely all science requires is a lab coat??

Couldn't tell if that was irony, noble. My school is not at all research focused . Not one little bit.

Fond memories of Chemistry lessons with my (RE specialist) teacher. He had copied sections of the textbook onto the board and then we copied it into our notes. A productive use of everyone’s time! Oh and the lesson he got us, the Y10 students, to mark his Y7 assessments.

Didn’t your school buy a bunch of books for a staff library, piggy?

Mine bought membership to PiXL.

Just so no one thinks I am exaggerating, we have Head (male; maths , replaced male physicist) ; DH (male Chemist) DH (male physics) DH (female physics) AH (male maths/comp apparently) AH ( male physics) AH (female chemist) and AH [at least so we are led to believe] (male, English).

The nearest two large sec schools have a maths specialist head with PE , science, history , geography SLT.

Nooooo, I bought those books!!

Our SLT is all humanities or English. The one Science teacher (who was excellent) left. PE based AH is absolutely useless, so much so his only responsibility seems to be reading out the briefing sheet!

No Mathematicians which makes them understanding maths lessons/hwk etc very difficult. I wish we had a maths specialist.

IME English teachers getting to Head/DH are rare as hens' teeth. I always assumed the marking load meant it was hard to have the energy to progress when they were at HoD type level.

Our SLT is MFL, economics, maths, science, SEND, PE, ICT history and the English HoD who was invited to balance the other core subjects being there.

A balance us best, I guess. But also, just good leaders.

@Piggywaspushed - isn’t it lucky that anecdote doesn’t make evidence? My last HT and my current HT are both English teachers, and both didn’t/don’t get that Science is at least 2GCSEs if not 3 and didn’t even provide us with white coats (though as a physicist, I can’t say I’ve ever felt the need to wear one!)

@CarrieBlue whereas my SLT is mainly Science who don't get that English is two GCSEs. I suspect the defining feature for many of us is out of touch leaders - and those come in all subject specialisms.

@GrammarTeacher - absolutely, and a mixture of subjects in slt is the ideal. It just gets a little wearing when ‘science’ is blamed for the worlds ills. My suspicion is that the defining characteristic of SLT is not subject dependent!

Not sure when I did that but hey ho!