Everyday MFL

I woke up today with this feeling
That better things are coming my way

Five

You have been teaching languages for a couple of years and you’re starting to think about the future. This post is intended for those thinking about moving up in the near future and thinking about the kind of things that could make you stand out.

How can I progress?

Schools tend to have a limited array of progression routes:

• Head of Department / 2nd in Department / Head of Key Stage 3/4/5.

• Head of Year / House / Pastoral.

• National Leads (some academy trusts have these for subjects).

SENDCOs and SLT are not really in the scope of this post although some of the experiences outlined below could be used towards applications in those areas. This is an MFL blog so we will not cover pastoral matters however if that interests you – plenty of MFL Teachers are or have been pastoral leaders – then as someone who was a Head of Year I would argue the ideas in the menu below are easily adaptable.

If the thought of heading towards one of these jobs is exciting and sounds like something you might like to do, please keep reading.

Do I get paid?

These roles are leadership roles and come with remuneration.

TLR payments are awarded if you’ve taken on added responsibility, such as becoming head of year or head of department. When you are paid a TLR, you receive an additional payment on top of your standard salary.

TES Article – TLR values included

How do I secure a role like this?

Roles like these can be advertised internally and externally. You will find plenty on the normal job websites. You can set up notifications for the kind of roles you are interested in.

There is one small trap that a lot of teachers can fall into through no fault of their own:

You can’t get the job without experience.

You can’t get the experience without having the job.

Part of the solution is to accumulate leadership competencies and experiences before you hold the title. I remember going for pastoral roles earlier in my career and the feedback being “You did a great interview but we appointed X because they had more experience”. Make yourself the best possible candidate you can be so that you hold up well against other experienced candidates. You can do all the right things and still not get the first few roles you apply for. Treat every application and interview as part of your development rather than a judgement on your worth as a teacher.

While there are things you can do to make yourself stand out, I cannot emphasise enough that refining your craft and developing your classroom practice while building up to one of these roles is extremely important. Firstly, if you are aiming to lead a department then you should want to be one of the best teachers in that department. Secondly, departmental leadership and pastoral leadership roles take time. Depending on the size and strengths of the team you are managing, they can be quite encompassing. Consider for instance a small department in a school of 600 students against a school with a sixth form that contains 2200 students.

Be a great language teacher first.

Lots of leadership experiences cannot compensate for shaky classroom practice. Chances are that the experienced Heads of Department or Heads of Year in your school who make it look easy have done it for a while and may not have to think quite so hard about some of the mechanics of classroom practice.

We’re going to divide this blog into three sections asking the question: “what can i do to stand out?” We’ll start in your department, look beyond your department and also consider some professional development.

It is worth remembering that many of the ideas below are also helpful for those heading towards UPR applications. The language used in the STPCD states:

1. that the teacher is highly competent in all elements of the relevant standards; and
2. that the teacher’s achievements and contribution to an educational setting or settings are substantial and sustained.

Above all, whatever things you decide to do to boost your chances, please keep returning to the concept of IMPACT. What impact did your initiative have? How did it impact your learners for the better? How did it impact learners beyond your classroom? How did it impact departmental practice? If you can demonstrate impact you put yourself in a much stronger position in interviews.

Before you start reading, it might be good to consider your personal circumstances. Some of these ideas may be impossible Please consider this a menu of possibilities. It is not a checklist of “must haves”

In Department – What can I do to stand out?

You do not need to do all of these things. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. The aim is to identify one or two opportunities that genuinely interest you and allow you to demonstrate leadership, influence and impact.

Take responsibility for an area – By taking responsibility I mean looking for opportunities where you can identify a problem, propose a solution, implement it and evaluate its impact.

SEND / PP / EAL – Schools have many priorities. In your department, can you take the lead on provision for the more able, SEND or pupil premium? How could you help improve outcomes in these areas? Can you come up with some effective strategies that could be shared across the team? Can you conduct some student voice that would yield actionable intel to improve practice? Could you assist EAL pupils with some resources to help them access your lessons quicker?

Language Exams – Many schools do foreign language exams for students who speak Urdu, Turkish, Polish, Italian, Arabic, Chinese etc. Can you help with preparing the students for it? Your exams officer will likely recruit people for the speaking exam. Can you help the students in preparing for the format? What things do they need to say to score a good grade? The students may have a good command of their spoken language but struggle with writing. Others may be able to ace the writing but need help matching their writing to the requirements of an exam board mark scheme.

Assessment – You could take responsibility for assessment within a department. Could you improve how Key Stage 3 assessment is conducted? Could you lead some moderation at Key Stage 4? Could you train to be an examiner? The latter of those three comes with a time commitment, training and remuneration. You might want to speak to others who have done it to find out the potential benefits and drawbacks of exam marking. Volunteering to coordinate assessments or lead mock moderations can yield valuable experience of organisation, quality assurance and data analysis. Again with any of these the question to return to is impact. If you are an exam marker, how have you used your knowledge to help your department? If re-inventing KS3 assessment, did it help students to be successful?

Feedback / marking / homework – Could you – with the blessing of your boss – experiment with a different way of doing these? You could then evaluate the impact and share it. This would give you experience of leading an initiative, monitoring its progress and evaluating it before pitching it to a senior leader.

Develop a curriculum / Scheme of Work / Program of Study – Many aspiring department heads gain experience by writing a scheme of work. This could be for a module, year group or particular part of a course. You could produce the resources for a particular scheme of work and share them amongst your department. If you are taking this on, it is likely your head of department will have a format in mind. If your school follows a textbook then the question is how can teachers maximise their outcomes from that textbook? Could you come up with something to keep Year 9s going after they have done their options?

Trip – This could be very workload heavy but is a great experience. Organising a trip develops planning, budgeting, communication, risk management and problem-solving skills. Your best way into this one is probably to accompany a trip run by an experienced trip leader. If you then want to try your own, use them as a sounding board. If your school has never run a trip abroad or has not done so for years, do not let that put you off. Some schools run activity days at the end of the year with trips; you could lead one somewhere in the UK if the thought of going abroad sounds like too much too soon. There are plenty of companies that will help put together the trip and likely some experienced staff members in school who can support you.

A brief search of Secondary MFL Facebook groups will give you some ideas of places, which companies are helpful, what can be done, as well as what to do about visa rules.

Trips will challenge you as they almost always present you with a situation you were not expecting. You learn from these. On one such trip to a theme park, a TA came to find me and explained that “<insert name here> has just fallen in the bumper boats pool.” Trips are also extremely rewarding. You get to see students in a different environment who you may currently teach or discover you are teaching next year. They may also suggest you join them on the water ride at the theme park and then duck at the opportune moment. From these examples you can see that I learnt dealing with a minor crisis, risk management and stakeholder relationship building (along with identifying a need to improve my reaction times). Joking aside, they deliver a lot of skills. It is also likely that you will go with other staff so you are not alone.

Lead CPD at department meeting or INSET day – This could be as simple as demonstrating something you do in the classroom that is effective, or taking some recent research and showing how colleagues could apply it in their classroom. Leading CPD is an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to influence practice beyond your classroom. If you are looking at a future Head of Department role then being able to explain how a new idea, initiative or vision should look in a classroom is a vital skill.

Potential Pitfall: You may have to navigate experienced colleagues who may be a little bit skeptical of the latest new thing. In this case the skill is helping those colleagues see why and how a strategy might improve outcomes whilst making them feel heard, understood and their experience appreciated.

Mentor trainee– If your department has trainee teachers you could offer to mentor one. Mentoring a trainee will involve producing a timetable, handing over classes to them, observing their lessons, giving feedback and helping them to become the best teacher they can be. This can be extremely rewarding. They will try stuff that they have picked up from their course or reading which sometimes is a nice bit of quick CPD. This can be extremely frustrating and emotionally demanding if you have a trainee that is struggling. A good mentor who gives constructive feedback, who makes you want to be the best you can be is worth their weight in gold.

If the mentoring of trainees is already held by someone else then maybe you can request that the trainee takes 1-2 of your lessons a week to develop that experience of giving feedback and supporting a trainee. Mentoring gives you experience of coaching and demonstrating the ability to improve somebody else’s practice in the classroom. Depending on the trainee, it might also present opportunities to have difficult conversations addressing underperformance or concerns around professionalism.

Mentor an ECT in department – Like mentoring a trainee, the skills being developed here are coaching and mentoring. Your meetings and observations will be slightly less frequent but the work you do here is critical in helping someone just starting out to refine their craft and gain that understanding of what the best version of themselves in the classroom looks like. They are likely to have some battles (e.g. behaviour, increased workload etc) and the skill to develop here is helping them to develop ways to work through those and come out stronger.

Invite in – Not every year group can go on a trip. Some schools are in areas where trips are tricky to run due to deprivation levels, attitudes to languages or where schools have had their fingers burnt with trips. Organising enrichment activities such as these demonstrates project management, budgeting, communication and stakeholder engagement. Some of the groups below could be worth looking into:

(courtesy of a post by Ange on Secondary MFL Matters)

Rainy Day List – Most Department Heads will have a thing they have always meant to look into but never got around to. You may not able to do some of the things on this blog as other people in the department are already doing them. Ask your Head of Department, what’s on their rainy day list? What is that thing they always wanted to bring in but other priorities got in the way? Is there anything on their results analysis or SEF that they have just not managed to do. Could you take a lead on that? Or what is the one thing they would like to see more of across the department? How can you help with that?

Beyond Department – What can I do to stand out?

Ideally, you will have had an impact in your department first before looking beyond.

Shadowing – Your Head of Department will have some form of meeting with other subject leaders and senior leaders. As long as they do not feel that you are gunning for their job, they might be happy for you to tag along for part – or all of that meeting – to get an idea of what is discussed. You might need to check with the leaders of that meeting that they are happy for you to attend.

Potential Pitfall: Watching leaders is useful, but eventually you need responsibility of your own. Observing leadership is not the same as demonstrating leadership.

Professional Tutor – Many universities and PGCE providers have a nominated person in school that oversees trainee teachers. It might be the same person for all courses; it might be different people for different courses. This person’s role is to liaise with the university and oversee the work of mentors. It could involve coordinating visits from university staff, leading CPD sessions with trainee teachers in your school, observing them teach during their placement, discussions around under-performance and monitoring steps being taken to address it. Often it helps to have been a mentor first.

Primary Liaison – immediately you might be picturing teaching someone else’s primary class. This does not necessarily have to be the case.

Option 1: Build on an already existing link with a feeder primary

Option 2: Start a link with a feeder primary where they are struggling with language provision

Option 3: Send out a form to feeder primaries asking what kind of support would be appreciated. Pick something and tackle it.

Potential Pitfalls: Primary schools likely have a different timetable to you. You are probably also trained to teach secondary. Primary is different. Do not assume you can immediately go in and teach a Year 2/3/4 class like you teach a Year 7 class. Go and watch a little bit first if you can.

Whole School CPD / Trust-wide CPD – Similar to suggestions above about leading CPD in a meeting. If you have done a substantial amount of team-based CPD already then maybe the next step is to look whole-school. Could you speak to the Teaching and Learning SLT in your school and lead some CPD that is for the whole school? Perhaps there is a whole school teaching and learning priority that you could deliver some input around.

Some academy trusts have regional inset days or online twilight training, or even a mix of both. If you are keen to move into a national lead practitioner position then leading some CPD at one of these could be a sensible way forward. Some trusts also have their own centralised curriculum. You could develop a resource or series of resources that help with delivering this and share them with the current lead practitioners.

Offer to speak at a CPD event – If you use social media such as X, BlueSky, Threads, LinkedIn etc. You may find that there are CPD events where contributions are sought. ALL (Association for Languag Learning) often run CPD events in different areas of the countr, keep an eye out there. Linguascope also offer regular CPD events and you could investigate them.

My own development – What can I do to stand out?

A professional profile can raise your visibility and create opportunities. It should complement, rather than replace, evidence of impact in your own school. The following are useful if they help you reflect, share practice or build networks. They are useful if they help crystalise your thoughts and beliefs around language teaching or propel your practice forward.

Masters / Research Project – Some teachers engage in Masters Research Projects or PhD. Some complete a masters with a view to investigating a particular aspect of classroom practice. Dr Kedi Simpson (experienced language teacher you can find on BlueSky) wrote a PhD which you can read about here. Some schools also conduct their own in-house research projects as well.

Guest Blog / Blog – There are plenty of blogs out there to read. This link will explain how I got into blogging if you are curious, or struggling for sleep! If there is something you are particularly passionate about or an idea you have but don’t want to commit to a whole blog then there is no harm offering a guest post. If that is something you are considering then it is probably better to have the majority of the post written for the person you are sending it to. They can then give feedback and it can be polished prior to publication. Blogging forces reflection. To write a post you have to have a clear idea of:

What am I writing?

Why it’s important?

What evidence supports it?

How can I explain things in such a way that people can instantly replicate it?

While blogging will not make you a Head of Department, it does demonstrate an ability to communicate ideas or articulate a vision, which you will have to do as a leader of a department.

Courses – Courses alone will not make you a Head of Department. Three things however might be useful to you. Firstly, some course providers offer courses on leading departments. Secondly, you could do an NPQML in Leading Teaching. You can complete these at any point in your career. Doing one prior to attaining a role shows you are serious about the direction your career is going in. Sometimes schools are able to fund these. Thirdly, some schools have very much thrown themselves into Gianfranco Conti’s EPI (Extensive Processing Instruction) philosophy. If you are aspiring to a job in an EPI school then maybe EPI accreditation could be a way to go.

Final Thoughts

If you are looking to progress then there are plenty of ideas above. However, please keep in mind the three questions below:

1. How has what you have done impacted your learners for the better?
2. Has this influenced and improved practice in your classroom or beyond?
3. What have you skills have you learnt from it that have developed you as a teacher and leader?

Interview panels are not simply counting experiences. They require evidence that you are a leader of people. They are hoping that you can improve outcomes and move the dial on results. Your job is to show them how the experiences you have gathered make you their ideal candidate. In that endeavour, I wish you the very best of luck.