Why teaching?
When I tell people I am going to train to become a Secondary MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) Teacher, I receive questions such as “why do you want to be a teacher?” or “why secondary and not primary?” or “why teach languages?” While I am no way obliged to answer these questions, I know that these will be the questions I will be asked in future interviews for NQT and Teaching jobs.
Therefore I thought I would write a blog post about why I want to be a Secondary MFL Teacher.
We all remember our favourite teachers from school, whether they were the ones who inspired us to study a subject at university, or the ones who injected a sense of fun and excitement into their lessons. I had several of these teachers, my A Level French teacher being one of these teachers. She also taught me in year 7 when I very first started learning French and my journey into languages. I also keep in touch with this teacher today and the fact I will be able to “share” my teacher training journey with her (through conversations and blogging etc.) is amazing! One lesson which I will never, ever forget, and hope to be able to emulate or develop one day is when she played Pour Que Tu M’aimes Encore by Il Divo in a French lesson and I realised then more than I had done previously that languages are everywhere – in music, films, TV, literature. Since then, I have adored Il Divo’s music and been fortunate enough to have seen them live twice – the first time in Zurich while I was on my university year abroad in Geneva, Switzerland. The second time, in a field just outside of Reading the day after finding out my degree result, accompanied by my French teacher! She has inspired me to persevere with learning languages and to enjoy doing so. I want to be that teacher for someone. I want to be the teacher that students can not only be inspired by to learn languages, but also to be the person they can turn to if they need a chat or advice or support, or just a quiet place to sit and read, draw, write or study.
At university, the name of my degree was Modern Languages, Translation and Interpreting. I especially enjoyed the translation side of my degree, and discovering new words and vocabulary not only in the foreign language but also in English. Ahead of starting my PGCE in September, I have been learning German. There are so many benefits to learning languages and being multilingual, including that it helps to starve off dementia and Alzheimer’s; additionally, multilingual people, especially children, are skilled at switching between two systems of speech, writing, and structure and are therefore better at multitasking. Also, multilingual people are better at observing their surroundings. They are more adept at focusing on relevant information and editing out the irrelevant. You also improve your own language by learning foreign languages. Aside from all of these benefits of learning a foreign language, I love learning languages and exploring the links between different languages – the similarities and the differences, but I also adore reading, writing and listening to music in the foreign language. I want to share this passion and these benefits with young people. I want students to experience the same joy of learning languages that I experience – whether they go onto study languages at university or not.
A quote by Nelson Mandela says “if you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language that goes to his heart.” I think this is important and ever so true. If you think about how we appreciate people coming to our country to work, study and live and we appreciate that they take the time to learn English. It is the same for other countries; the locals appreciate you trying to have a conversation with them in their language and they generally become more welcoming. Also, being able to speak and understand even just some basic words and phrases in a foreign language, makes travelling to a country where that language is spoken much more exciting.
I want to be a languages teacher to encourage students to enjoy learning languages, to be inspired and pleasantly surprised by their linguistic achievements. I want to make a difference to the lives and education of young people. Also, I want a job which is exciting and varied and enables me to be an inspiration and make a difference.
