PGCE or MA translation? That iz ze question

I spent last week observing/teaching at my old secondary school, Laurence Jackson School. It was an amazing week, very surreal, nostalgic and weird seeing things from the prespective of some of the wonderful teachers. It was also extemely strange to go and sit in the staff room, the only time I had been in before is when I was in trouble.... Many of the old teachers recognised me "wow, you are now a man" was a frequent comment throughout my time there.


The week has convinced me to go into teaching instead of translation. As I was not always on the "straight and narrow" at school I can now appreciate in finer detail all the hard work put in by teachers to help me turn things around, especially one teacher! I really feel that I can help young people to do the same. I found just one week in a school to be extremely rewarding, so imagine when I get to have my own classes, own form etc. I would find it hard to find a more rewarding job, okay, you could earn more working in a city bank or maybe even for a translation company, but I cannot think of anything more boring or tedious than sitting in an office for the next 30 years of my life. Teaching is unique, no two students are the same, no two lessons are the same...so my mind is made up. (for now...)

I also had the opportunity to teach a Y8 set of Spanish, ie plan the whole lesson myself, design objectives etc. It was not the easiest class to teach as there were some interesting characters to say the least. I decided to teach a lesson on Spanish food (as I like to consider myself an expert...) so I explained the whole concept of tapas and pinchos etc etc, I really engaged the students as not only taught them the language but also made cultural references, I spent a whole five minutes explaning jamón ibérico even going as far to explain about all the acorns the pigs have to eat; the students were amazed; "does it not go off sir?" and "is it not raw sir?", I had certainly got them interested.... We later went on to cover things like "pulpo a la gallega" which they could not believe anyone would eat that. The lesson went really well and I really felt at home up there. The main comments I received were....

• Really impressive lesson (she commented that it was a lesson you would expect from someone who has just finished their PGCE, not someone who has not yet started it.
• Very interesting and usefull
• Managed the classroom well
• Involved all the students and managed to stay on top of noise.

The one thing I cocked up on was well the bell rung for the end of the lesson, I had not finished what I wanted to and got a little bit flustered and just kind of said pack up, where as it would have been better to have a more formal ending, but for a first attempt it was pretty impressive!

So yeah, teaching profession...así sí.