LadyDarkness Sat 23-Jan-21 11:41:34
Hello everyone,
This is my first post, so please be gentle with me. I need a fresh pair of eyes and some professional career-related advice. xxx Long post alert so, this is a great time to 1- grab a coffee, 2-escape :D
I'm an overseas qualified teacher of English (non-native but with a GTCE recognised QTS in English). I'm into the 11th year of my teaching career in the UK, and I feel that my non-native speaker background is hindering my teaching career. I feel that I have been fighting an uphill career battle, and I am so tired. This is where your professional advice would be greatly appreciated.
As soon as my teaching qualification was recognised by the GTCE, I started applying for teaching jobs. It took me 9 months to secure my first job as a teaching assistant- A bitter pill to swallow but I worked hard and made the best out of it. It took me 2 more years of applying to her a teaching job - as a teacher of Spanish and English. I was thrilled.
Unfortunately, when I started, I was not given any Spanish classes, and the only English class I was timetabled to teach was Option Support, Literacy, Interventions for EAL students. This would become a trend in my career. I'd be employed as a qualified teacher of English, just to be put in EAL interventions, Option Support, bottom sets, Prince's Trust, ELC, IGCSE EAL, resits, non-credit-bearing classes such as extra English.
As most good schools asked for results, I couldn't give then anything, ie making it impossible to secure a role in grammar or private school so I was trapped in special measures or OFSTED 'good' but not really good. As I was here on my own I couldn't afford an MA and I couldn't access Student Finance as I already had a degree.
It wasn't till my 7th year of teaching that I'd finally make it into an outstanding school, where I was given mainly Ks3 classes - just to find out that my GCSE class was a nurture group made of students who were on average 4 grades below their target, kicked out of their classes to form mine. The students felt disappointed, I felt disappointed, but we worked hard and many got 6,7,8s. At the same time, PGCSE and NQT students would take able GCSE classes and even A-Levels.
I knew I was able to teach students to a high standard but this mistrust would really grind me down. I was openly told I needed to be observed more than others to make sure ' I didn't fuck it up', even though my observations were good and good with outstanding. I wasn't invited to take part in the English Dept promotional video, and I can only wonder why. I was refused an opportunity to do a paid MA as my degree was classed as an ordinary degree, even though I had an academic scholarship for an 85% score. I also have an MA from uni which is in the same league as Goldsmiths and Royal Holloway, just abroad. Still not enough to be seen as a GCSE and A-Level English specialist.
I decided to try one more time and applied to a different school, of course in special measures, where I was given an LP role (EAL!) hoping I could follow the teaching and learning path and fulfil my ambition this way. I teach mainstream but the school is tough, fights every day, such low levels of literacy that we have year 11s who only write in capital letters, EAL arrivals who cannot write in their first language. I had an Italian student who didn't know what the Vatican was.
Now this LP role will be taken away and given to someone else as the school just jammed literacy and EAL into one and gave the thing to the literacy person. I was hoping the role could be a spring board to middle leadership, but not for me. I am where I was 10 years ago, in a shitty school, with no career progression. Sadly, we tell our students to believe in equality and hard work, just to treat anything different with suspicion.
I know teaching is hard but it seems that it's impossible to get into a really good school such as GDST with what people see as an ordinary degree from a foreign country when you speak English as a foreign language. Your starting point and your journey, your perspective, doesn't seem to matter. I am not sure if I am really to gibe up the dream to teach English lit in a good school, even though I might consider it.
If I was to follow this dream my options are: to redo my Ba English Degree and do an Open University - Maybe Ba English or Ba English with Classics, English with Philosophy, etc to broaden my horizons. Get 1:1, get onto a master's at Cambridge or Oxford, and shut people up (yes OU is good enough to Oxbridge, I asked and they were a bit surprised I thought it wasn't).
Option 2- suck it up and do a 1:1 at King's College or UCL again Maybe Ba English with Classics, etc I did a course at UCL and the quality of teaching was shocking - 136 slides per lecture, no teaching skills etc. KC still values research more than teaching but it seems as a good uni and education seems to be all about appearances and elitism.
Option 3 - Change the subject and move away from English- I have met many foreign teachers. Ou has Ba Philosophy, Ethics, and Religion - I wonder if my background would be more accepted with this subject. Again would oU be good enough for a nice private school? King's has the same course (the same teachers teach at OU but who will know this?)
Option 4 - Say 'fuck you' to teaching and do a degree in Physics or Psychology, go into engineering, or Educational Psychology.
Now, would you look down upon an OU degree in my situation? would you assume it's easy and I am not a high calibre candidate? How about KC?
Please be honest, I find that people chose politeness over honesty yet discriminate all the same.
What would you do?
Kindest Regards,
LD