Bethany Houghton
When I was a sixth form student at Wirral Grammar School for Girls, I studied sociology, business studies, and English language. Although I loved sociology (debating what is wrong with the world with Mr Johnson) and business studies (deciding who would be best suited for The Apprentice with Mr Trussel), my favourite subject at A-Level was English language. We studied how language changes depending on a person’s gender, social class, or friendship group, as well as how children learn to talk. I found this so interesting and decided to take it further by studying it at university.
Choosing which university is right for you is one of the most important decisions you will make. You need to consider the course content, the entry requirements, the city/location, the accommodation options, and how far away from home it is. The sixth form teachers at Wirral Girls helped with every aspect of the process, from checking over our personal statements and writing our references, to helping us look at the universities critically to ensure we made the right decision. After much deliberation, I decided that my top choice was the University of Birmingham. I picked this due to it having realistic (but also aspirational) entry requirements, it was only an hour and a half away on the train, and the course offered some really interesting modules.
After working incredibly hard during year 12 and 13 to achieve the A-Levels I needed, I secured my place at Birmingham and moved there in September 2017. Although I suffered from homesickness, I loved my course as I was able to study ‘Psycholinguistics’, ‘Business Discourse’ and ‘Sociolinguistics’, to name a few. My A-Levels really prepared me for these modules as I had the knowledge of Business jargon to apply to ‘Business Discourse’ as well as a critical eye from Sociology to study ‘Sociolinguistics’.
In my first year of university, I realised that I had a passion for English. After watching my mum go into the profession just 7 years before, I decided that teaching could be the perfect career to be able to share my passion with others. In order to increase your chances of being successful at the teacher training interviews, it is important to gain work experience in schools. I completed my first week of experience in December of my first year at university, at a school in Ellesmere Port. I then completed another week the year later at a school in Liverpool and finally completed a few extra days back at Wirral Grammar Girls. The three different experiences confirmed to me that teaching was the route I wanted to go down.
There are different routes you can choose to do your teacher training, however, I decided to go for the university based route of a PGCE (post-graduate certificate in education), as I would be going straight from being a student to being back in a university setting.
My time at Wirral Girls has prepared me so much! The teachers always set us aspirational goals, which means I now have high expectations for myself and always push myself to do my best. I have built up a strong resilience to make sure I can pick myself back up when I feel like everything is going wrong, especially graduating and training to teach during a pandemic! I felt so much support during the tough sixth form years at Wirral and I don’t think I would have achieved what I have without that support and the foundations they gave me. It is incredibly scary being a little fish in a big pond again, but it is so worth it when you look back and see how far you have come and how proud you are of yourself.
