Thinking of doing Secondary HDip - Spanish, CSPE

gl123

Hi,

I'm thinking of applying for the part-time HDip in secondary teaching at DCU but I really know nothing about it - I have a few questions, I'd really appreciate your help...

1) Do ye think there'll be any hope of getting a secondary teaching position in three years time?
2) Does anyone know if the combination of Spanish and CSPE would be in demand at all? (Otherwise I'd probably be eligible to train to teach French, though I'd prefer not to...)
3) Is there an option to take more than two specialist subjects?
4) I'd be interested in getting into career guidance/counselling at some stage - there's no way to take a module in that alongside the HDip is there?

Thanks!:)

gaeilgegrinds

French and Spanish would be much better tbh. Check educationposts and see yourself how many jobs you see with your combination, before deciding to teach I pretended I was already qualified and checked how many jobs were out there. I found it helped me decide. Things may change in 3 years but not hugely.
Regarding extra subjects no, you can take modules but are not entitled to teach the subjects, they're merely a taster in case your principal allows it.
There are postgrads you can do in career guidance, it's an excellent area to get into.

gaeilgebeo

To be honest, Spanish and CSPE would not be too much in demand for the simple fact that not all schools offer spanish and as for cspe, in my experience, principals fit who teaches it in around the timetable needs of the school. For example our CSPE co-ordinator is a maths and business teacher. Most of those who teach it aren't cspe teachers per say! I would explore other options like a post grad as you don't want to do the dip and spend 5 years doing dribs and drabs of work here and there or worse still not getting any work.

gl123

Thanks very much gaeilgebeo and gaeilgegrinds for your replies.

I'm now thinking of doing the Grad Dip Ed in French and Spanish, and getting into CSPE somewhere along the way or if/when I get work...

Thanks for your advice about exploring other options, but I find it's hard to know what else to explore with languages... I'm currently working as a translator but getting very little work. I have a masters but even if I were to do a PhD, university posts seem impossible to come by. And there isn't much interpreting work available in my language combination.

I just wanted to check - am I right in understanding that while in a teaching post a teacher can take a short course in CSPE to qualify to teach it?

Dionysus

gl123 wrote: »

I just wanted to check - am I right in understanding that while in a teaching post a teacher can take a short course in CSPE to qualify to teach it?

I hope not as it's going to be one of my two subjects for the year-long PGDE. It would make a mockery out of it if you can teach it with a yellow pack CSPE qualification. Such a course should be about as useful as an online weekend tefl is versus an ACELS-accredited CELT tefl.

spurious

I was involved in setting up the CSPE course, giving inservice and piloting the exemplar materials many moons ago. The TC would probably say I'm not qualified to teach it.

In the real world, schools stick it on timetables to make up hours.

Sir Humphrey

Dionysus wrote: »

I hope not as it's going to be one of my two subjects for the year-long PGDE. It would make a mockery out of it if you can teach it with a yellow pack CSPE qualification. Such a course should be about as useful as an online weekend tefl is versus an ACELS-accredited CELT tefl.

I think you might be confusing teaching methodologies with qualification to teach. Not sure about courses to qualify one to teach CSPE but doing a teaching methodology is a different matter and doesn't qualify anyone to teach anything. In a teaching methodolgy course you get instruction on teaching a subject as opposed to instruction on the subject itself.