Case study 1

Video Transcript

I’m originally from Palestine. I left Palestine when I was in my primary school and then I stayed all my life until my first degree in Damascus, the capital of Syria. I’ve got my degree in literature and English language, so that’s my first degree after I finished my primary and secondary education.

I moved to Jordan for one year. In Jordan I taught English as a second language in one of the private schools in Jordan – in Amman, the capital of Jordan.

Then I had to come to England with my husband for him to finish his Masters and PhD and we decided to stay here. I got my eldest daughter and my son before I came to England, and my little one she was born here in England.

When I came to Manchester, actually I faced a problem of finding an Arabic school, on Saturday or Sunday, for my children to learn Arabic. So this was the main reason why we moved from Manchester to London, because we couldn’t find any place for them to learn Arabic.

I started doing that [teaching my children Arabic] at home, but it wasn’t good enough for me to have them read and write Arabic. So we moved to London and straight away I started looking for a school for them and I found one in Hounslow, which is Hounslow Manor School, where I taught for eleven years.

So I brought my children in this school and I noticed from the school that they are following a curriculum that is not related to the students in this country, it is from back home – it is the curriculum from Jordan. So I started asking questions in my head ‘is it good for them? They are not living in the same circumstances, it’s a different environment.’ And I start thinking of ways of changing this.

At that time actually, there was a lady from Goldsmiths, she was doing her PhD, and she had to come to the school to do observations for the Arabic school. She saw me teaching, she saw me doing some different activities and then she approached me and said to me ‘why don’t you do a PGCE in Goldsmiths? This is the new course and Goldsmiths are offering a flexible one for people like you who have children and other commitments.’

My PGCE and my QTS after that, and even my supervisor because he was so supportive and helpful, they were the key for me to do what I’m doing at the moment, and to be more open towards the education in this country and to be able to teach in mainstream schools.

Video Transcript

I didn’t imagine that a PGCE would be so so good for me – first of all as a mother of three children, [secondly] as a person who lives in this country, and [thirdly] as someone who needs to work and get money at the end of the day, to earn money to support my children.

For a mother I’m not ignorant anymore; with the system of the schools, the system of education and what it is my children are talking about. I can help them [my children], I can talk to their teachers, even their headteachers, I can argue, I can see what’s good for my children and what’s not good for my children, because I’m familiar with the system now.

For me in this country, I feel myself as an important person to be honest. I’m not on the margin of life anymore. I am attending so many courses – I go from one city to another for these courses – I’m working with CILT for workshops, I train other teachers, I go to other countries participating on the examination board, [and then there’s] Asset languages and OCR – developing national curricula and examinations for other countries. So as a person I’m satisfied that I’m getting my self satisfaction out of this. Without a PGCE I couldn’t do that at all.

The last thing is for me getting money and supporting my children financially. Without a PGCE I couldn’t get a full-time job in this country, because having a qualification in my country is not enough for me to have a full-time job here. So I have to have a qualification from this country, do my skills tests, do my GCSE and build on the qualifications from this country.

After the PGCE and QTS, I straight away got my full-time job in the school that I did my placement in – North Westminster School. Now it’s Bridlington Academy. Without a PGCE I would also not be able to attend a Masters degree in this country, which I am really enjoying now.

Video Transcript

As a student of a Masters degree at Goldsmiths, I’m doing culture and identity in education – that’s my field. So my dissertation is about how the complementary school [sector] contributes to the culture and identity of our students in this country.

From my research, I think that we are doing the right thing to be honest. I discovered that, although we are in this country and we integrate in many aspects of this country and the life of SATs and English schools – and I’m with that, to positively integrate with them – in the meantime we have to keep our own identity and to look after it and to keep our culture as well. Otherwise how will our children learn about our culture? They don’t read history about our background, they don’t watch films or drama, they don’t see people who are old to tell them about what happened in our country or what is happening [there now].

What we can do is, us, in the school, to talk to them, to do some activities, to have some people who can come from that background and talk to them. I found that, to compromise and to keep a balance on both cultures and both identities is a very positive way to have a balanced citizen at the end of the day. We need our students as a whole person to be balanced, not to go to the extreme of this culture or the extreme of that culture; they have to compromise on both cultures.