domingo, 24 de marzo de 2013

Difficult roads in to teaching



After months of laziness I am back to my blog.

In all this time I have been  thinking, analyzing and, at the end, I took  the big step of changing my career. 

A big step to take at  the end  of my first half of century of living. I have decided to  change from journalism to teaching.

We thought that was easy. When I say ' we' I mean my wife, my mother in law and me.

First of all, there is a need for qualified professionals who would like to be involved in teaching.

Secondly, there is a need for teachers of Spanish  because the UK government suddenly realised that Spanish it is one of the most frequently spoken languages in the world and that the economies of Latin American countries are doing much better, at the present time, than many in Europe.

Thirdly, it is easier to learn Spanish than Chinese. That  was our  logic.

So, there we go. We decided to embark on the journey.

But it was a mistake to thing that it was going to be straightforward. Nothing is easy in this country and teaching or trying to teach or becoming a teacher is now quite difficult. 

First of all I had  to convert my qualification into the British standard ones. And even though I had passed more subjects than the average UK student with distinction, my Bachelor degree and BA degree have been regarded as  “mediocre".

Yes, mediocre, even when I had General History, General Literature, Maths, Geography, Spanish Grammar, English, physics,  Chemistry and Astronomy. Can you imagine? Astronomy. Who studied Astronomy at normal school in this country?. In addition, the application system is a nightmare: very difficult to understand and complex. 
 
Recently we discovered that the government department with the oversight of the Education System was offering advise on something that they called ‘ The Road in to Teaching'.

So we went, of course, my wife and me, to try to get some advice about how to make my dreams come true.

There we discovered that after all my qualifications and my British M.A I can be the perfect teacher but, and always there is a ‘but’,  it will be difficult for me to apply for the best programme because, according to the British standard, my qualifications are deemed mediocre.

          I wont be able to get a place at teacher training college as a Modern Languages
          teacher unless I  can speak another language preferably French which is very difficult 
          at this stage of my life. 
        
          There is another way. I can pay 9000 pounds if I can find a place as an English teacher
           but I don’t qualify for a student loan because I haven’t been here for long enough.

          However I’ll carry on trying and maybe next year I will have a new post saying that I’m
          already on the road to being a teacher.
  

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