Keeping IT Going: Sustaining Professional Growth 2015 Symposium

 What is keeping me going at the moment is the preparation for the Symposium 2015 which will be held on 4-6 th March and the theme is the title above. The keynote speaker, Angi Malderez, will be talking about the "it" as in what is it that keeps you going as a teacher and we have  started an #itis twitter campaign which involves teachers, mentors - in fact everyone involved in our ELTDP. So I now have a twitter account which I'm still not sure what to do with and have two followers but fortunately there are other people who are more into tweeting than me and it seems to be catching on and I have even been photographed and tweeted. I really had to think about what had kept me going in the teaching profession for all of 35 years. I started as a class teacher at the age of 22 and was full of enthusiasm and would spend hours after school, preparing and planning the exciting and wonderful lessons for my class. I had always wanted to be a primary school teacher and there were so many special moments in those first few years as a teacher -  projects; concerts; clubs; pupils starting the reading journey; laughter and fun – that I felt I had the perfect job. It was after a few years when I started my own family and curriculum pressures of conformity started to weigh on me, that my own enthusiasm weakened and I felt that I had had enough.

A class of 3 children at the village school

  Andrew and I decided to give-up our jobs and move to rural France with three young children under 3 and a dog. We were going to start a new life in France; become self-sufficient; spend time with our children and turn our backs on our former careers. However, within a month of my three year old daughter attending “Maternelle” I had somehow been elected as the new English teacher at the local school and the headline in the newspaper read “Anglais pour Cambremer!” which unfortunately for the school the Monsieur school inspector read and demanded to know why he hadn’t been informed! This was the start of my long and not very distinguished career in France teaching English to French primary school children.

Visiting a school this week over a river and into the jungle

  I couldn’t speak French and had no idea how to go about teaching English to children so I did what I could do- which was sing with my guitar, recite nursery rhymes and read my children’s stories to them. If they couldn’t say it then we sang it and I think there is a generation of French children in Normandy who think English is a strange opera-like language! There was no curriculum and no support so I just made it up as I went along. The part-time work became full-time and gradually English over the next fifteen years was made compulsory in all the primary schools and a more structured approach was put in place. My biggest challenge was to enthuse in the children a love of learning a new language, which is a very tall order in a country where English is not spoken. If I could make young children enjoy speaking in another language then the foundation for their future would be laid. I decided that my best tactic for the battle was to make it fun for the children and make my enthusiasm contagious.

The only way to carry your shopping home!

 Of course over the years there might have been days when that enthusiasm has waned slightly but still today when I go into a class I need to have their attention and to see them wanting to learn but most of all enjoying themselves. I was invited by a teacher to read a story to the new Year 1s last week and immediately welcomed the opportunity. There were thirty-five pupils and of course a group of boys who were more interested in what was going on outside the classroom. This was going to need my special story and lots of enthusiasm. By the middle of “I know an old lady” I had most of the pupils on board and by the end I had managed to get all of their attention. I was exhausted! Teaching is exhausting and frustrating at times and we have to think of a million ways of teaching the same things and our creative talents can be stretched to the extreme. However I believe that if you can keep “it” going then it is the most worthwhile and rewarding profession in the world. That is why my #itis  Endless Enthusiasm”.

A water village that I visited this week