Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)
Submitted by Carla Dobson-Pérez on Wed, 18/09/2019 - 11:59
English teacher, Samantha Orciel, grew up in Gibraltar before coming to the UK as the first in her family to go to University. Now, as Head of English at Notre Dame High School, a state secondary school in Norwich, Samantha is finding inspiration for herself and her pupils through the Advanced Subject Teaching Master of Studies (MSt) at ICE.
"I started my ICE Master’s degree last summer and it’s already given me so much energy and so many new ideas to improve how I teach the subject I love."
“I took some courses with the Prince’s Teaching Institute, a charity that runs brilliant Saturday courses for teachers, some of which are delivered by ICE tutors. That’s where I learned about the part-time Postgraduate MSt at ICE. It had never occurred to me that I could study at this level and still work at the same time."
“The course is really opening my mind and our group supports each other so well. The residential elements with subject experts are fantastic, immersive experiences. They’re like a retreat. In one session, we studied the same four lines of Shakespeare over and over. It could have been incredibly boring – they’re lines we all teach and thought we understood – but everyone in the room had a unique perspective. It was genuinely refreshing to see something so familiar in so many new lights.”
“I’m lucky enough to receive a bursary from ICE that covers part of my tuition fees. At the time I signed up I wasn’t a Head of Department and didn’t know for certain how the course would inspire me, so it was a tough decision to spend money in this way. I met the financial criteria for the bursary and it really helped take the pressure off my finances.”
“Coming on this course is only partly about me. The real aim is to help inspire my students, and I’ve already started re-visiting the way I teach. For example, at GCSE and A-level, there’s no requirement for poetry writing, so I set out to see if writing poetry makes A-level students better at analysing it. The results have encouraged me to set aside two weeks next year to focus on it fully. It might be a different stimulus for another teacher; the point is that Advanced Subject Teaching helps us use our passions to improve students’ experiences.”
“My second-year project will focus on whether teaching students about culture improves the way they write about context. Every fortnight, I deliver a University-style lecture to my A-level students about an aspect of culture and society – for example, the American Dream or People of Colour in Europe before 1900 – that includes referenced handouts and opportunities for questions.”
“At first, the students thought it was a bit unusual, but the response has become more positive and I believe I’m seeing more nuanced responses when we ask them to write about the context surrounding the publication of a particular book, say. In helping students learn the importance of cultures and contexts, I hope we’re developing empathy too.”
“The point of my research project is to prove if what I’m doing is making any difference. I want to explore questions like whether this is really part of an English teacher’s role, whether it should happen prior to A-level and what influences my own biases have.”
"Taking this course has given me space and confidence to see how I can make English teaching better for everyone in my classroom."
To find out more about the Master of Studies in Advanced Subject Teaching, visit: www.ice.cam.ac.uk/mst-adv-subject-teaching
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This article was originally published as part of the 2019 Michaelmas edition of Inside ICE.
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