Routes Live - Routes into Language Teaching

Last Friday, I was asked to take part in a Routes into Languages live webinar about Routes into Languages, along with wit Dr. Elizabeth Anderson, Director of Routes into Languages North East, René Kogelbauer, Acting Head of the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences and Director of the North Leadership Centre and President of ALL and Karl Reid, a current trainee teacher. 
It was a fantastic experience, not least because I was able to use Google Hangouts from the computer in my classroom and all of the technology worked!
Here is a link to the webinar, I hope that it proves useful to prospective MFL teachers.

Routes Live - Routes into language teaching

Routes into languages Student Ambassadors Training

Once again, I was asked to speaking at the Routes into Languages Ambassador Training at UCL yesterday. Routes into Languages is a fantastic project that aims to raise languages awareness in schools and promote the continued study of languages at all levels.  Each year students of languages at a variety of universities around the country work as ambassadors, going into schools and running workshops for schools in their region.  This event is to give those ambassadors the training they need in order to be succesful.

The day is split into two sections, the first where all of the students are talked to about their role and where people who are involved in careers that use languages talk about their experiences and how they got into their relevant fields, then an afternoon of workshops to equip students to go out and really motivate pupils into wanting to continue with their languages study.

I took part in the first section of the day, by talking about how I became a teacher of languages and what was involved in training to become a teacher and what life is like as a teacher. I left the talk wanting to become an interpreter or translator as Gloria Vessey and John Evans filled my head full of their fascinating experiences of working with languages but I hope that some of the students left having a better idea of what life as a teacher is all about. It's always easy to promote teaching, as it's such a rewarding job with no day ever the same. I love it and, as I said to the students yesterday, I wouldn't want to do anything else really (despite what I wrote earlier!)

In the afternoon workshops, I ran a session on IT tools that the Student Ambassadors might like to use with pupils for whom they run workshops.  All materials can be found on the wiki that I created here. It was really interesting to find out which tools the students thought would be useful for them and also see their suggestions of how they could use them for themselves.  They all contributed to the Lino that is linked to here.

If you have the opportunity, I strongly recommend that you get involved with your local Routes into Languages Ambassadors.  I know I'm going to be speaking to my SLT about getting some to come into school to promote uptake of Languages as KS4 around options time, as although our uptake is fairly healthy, you can never have too many linguists...

ps... Also you may get lucky and get some fabby post it notes like the ones at the start of this post...

pps...I also got some tasty Christmas cake muffins and an iPad cover from the lovely Heather McGuinness, who I hope has recovered from her rodent-related incident!

Routes into Languages New Ambassadors' Training

Yesterday I felt extremely lucky to invited to take part in the Routes into Languages New Ambassadors' training even at UCL.  For those who don't know who Routes into Languages are, they are a fantastic organisation who work via various regional universities to promote languages is schools.  In particular they have Student Ambassadors who go into schools to promote languages or run workshops at their universities, all with the aim of increasing uptake at all levels of language learning.

After an early start with a 6.08 am train from Yarm (who knew that time existed on a Saturday) I arrived in a wet London and took part in my first activity for the day.  Alongside 4 other fellow linguists, I was part of an employability panel.  Each of us spoke about our passion for languages and where that has taken us in our careers.  I have to say I did feel a little uneasy as "just a teacher", following a business consultant who had loads of experience in lecturing and working all over the world using her languages and someone who worked as a translator with the European Commission and had worked as GCHQ and being followed by a journalist who worked for the BBC World Service.  However I managed to make them laugh and, I think, convince them that teaching wasn't full of lazy, good-for-nothings who are only in the job for the holidays, as some would have people believe and that actually teaching is a great profession to be in. So, I survived the employability panel (which, just for the record was 100% better than having a lesson observation!) and we moved to the afternoon session.

I ran a workshop on Social Media and ICT in MFL.  I wanted the session to be as interactive as possible so spoke for very little of it and created a wiki with all of the information for the session on it.  The wiki can be found here and you can find presentation and everything else from the afternoon there.

All in all, it was a fantastic day.  I met some brilliant people and it was nice to be in the company of so many people with such a passion for languages and all of the opportunities that they can open up for you.