How it all began!
Shortly before Easter this year, Kim was approached by the ALL (Associate for Language Learning) with an interesting proposition….
It was towards the end of March and Kim was busy packing up the old language school in Middle Street and just about to collect the keys for the new premises. With a ‘to do’ list that continued to grow on a daily basis, it was arguably the worst time to receive an email from the ALL editorial team of ‘Languages Today’ who were asking if Kim wanted to write an article for their magazine! However, she knew instantly that it was a great opportunity for her!
An Opportunity to reflect on how it started.
The ALL team were planning their content for the Spring/Summer edition and Steven Fawkes (a former ALL President and ever active volunteer) said that he remembered a conversation with another member about my language school. He explained to me in his email that he already knew a bit of my backstory and that it seemed to be a perfect fit with the theme that they had chosen for the upcoming edition - ‘Coming out of your shell’.
The timeframe for writing, editing and approving the article was tight but I really felt motivated to write the article and share my story. And so I agreed, even though at that time, I was super busy and needed a 12 day week and 36 hour days! So, one day as I sat surrounded by paint pots and unpacked boxes in my new language school, I turned on my laptop and started to write. The story took me all the way back to my formative years over in Cheshire, living in the small market town of Sandbach with my Mum (a language teacher), my Dad (an Environmental Health officer) and my younger brother. I started to think back and laughed as I remembered my Mum telling me ‘never to become a teacher’ as she slaved over mountains of marking at the kitchen table! I tried to think about ‘useful’ University courses but thank goodness I just followed my Dad’s advice which, effectively, was to do something that I thought I would enjoy.
Italian at University? Why not?
As a huge football fan, I remember the excitement of discovering that the Italian National squad was going to be staying at the ‘posh’ hotel in our town for the duration of the Euro ‘96 tournament. The squad’s team bus, with blacked out windows, came through the town every day as they headed over to the MMU sports campus at Alsager for their training sessions. I think that this experience combined with a love of watching the Sunday afternoon ‘Football Italia’ show with my Dad, made me decide that I would opt for languages at University and start Italian - as a total beginner….
Fast Forward to London
I loved my time at Uni and my time abroad was amazing. I graduated in 2002 and headed to London where most of my friends were working and I stumbled into a job at the admissions office at London Metropolitan University. I moved through a number of roles and was internally promoted to a post which required me to organise and run the University Open events. I benefited from University life, studying part time for my MA Education, and my job was keeping me very busy; it involved a lot of multi-tasking, was pretty stressful at times but I enjoyed it nonetheless. And in particular, the part of the open event where I had to stand in front of an audience came - to my surprise - quite naturally to me. I worked at Middlesex University after this, co-ordinating administrative teams across Business, Research and Work Based Learning and, to be honest, this is where I fell out of love with admin and wasn’t enjoying being in London. I toyed with the idea of ‘escaping’ to do something different, somewhere different and in 2009 I landed up North where I started my PGCE course at Durham University.
Teaching in Gateshead
My first experiences of teaching were over in Gateshead, and what an experience it was. An absolute joy to start with - 4 languages being taught in one school! Can you imagine that? I went on French camping trips, skiing in Austria and my favourite trip of all was (unsurprisingly!) a tour of Naples, Rome and Sorrento arranged with the History department. Skip forward 8 years and things were starting to look very different; no German; French being phased out; plans to move away from my beloved Italian (because the Academy Trust wanted to ‘align’ all of the schools) and a plan to focus on Spanish. To this day, I fail to see why a school in Salford has to be doing the same as one in Felling but that’s a political debate that I failed to win. I left the school feeling dejected but not defeated and I started a new ‘mini chapter’ of my teaching career at a tiny Middle School in rural Northumberland where I taught French on Monday and Tuesday. I decided that I was going to try and get a little bit of private tutoring work to make up for the drop in my earnings. I was hopeful but uncertain. This is how CasaLingua started…..