Summer 2013 - The Independent Schools' Modern Language ...

OVER AND OUT!
Julia Whyte, longstanding member of the ISMLA Committee who many may
have met at our annual conferences, retires this summer after some 35 years
in teaching Modern Languages. As a parting shot, she looks back over her
career
At the time of writing, I calculate that there
are 30 teaching days left of my career as a
languages teacher (French and German) and
HOD, a career that began all those years ago
in 1977. I originally intended to leave next
year with the big 60, but late in April realised
that were many things I wanted to do and,
without being miserable, could not be sure
whether there would be enough time to do
them!
I did not scale the dizzy heights of great things in schools and have stayed
rooted in the classroom (am not apologising, but sometimes others can make
you feel you should have aimed higher). This has given me an interesting
perspective on how things have changed and has been of great use when
others have come along claiming to have found the Holy Grail of language
teaching when in fact you can remember it being discovered at least six
times before as your career has bowled along. I was also pleased to have
had a variety of experiences in different schools – State and Independent,
some good, some less so – and have taught a massive range of abilities, personalities,
pupils from dreadful backgrounds and others from amazingly privileged
families and everything in between.
Having been taught in a small girls direct grant school run by the Sisters of
Notre Dame, it is probably true to say that my view of languages teaching
was somewhat limited when I chose to become a teacher and thought that I
was going to do the same sort of job! How wrong I was. In between 1972,
when I did A levels (Whitmarsh, six literary texts, essays written in English),
and 1976 when I began my PGCE at Bath University (the course was led by
Bob Powell), a great deal had seemingly happened in the world of MFL which
certainly was not in place when I was taught at my school. One had to use
reel-to-reel tape recorders and play French on them so that pupils could actually
hear the French language. (I swear my right arm is one inch longer
than the left one due to lugging the blessed apparatus around). And what
was more, there were pupils who did not get what you were trying to teach
them. How could this be when I understood it perfectly? Textbooks were: en
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