Polish teacher wants to work in Ireland.

osarusan

Hi all,

I just had a chat with a neighbour who has a teaching qualification in Poland and was wondering about the possibility of working as a teacher here in Ireland.

She knows about how to do it (get her qualifications approved by the Teaching Council and then register) but wonders if it is really worth her while or not.

She has a degree in pedagogy and then a master's in English-Polish translation.

I'm assuming that without Irish, primary teaching is right out, which just leaves secondary or 3rd level, and I'm wondering where she might fit in there.

Or are there any spots as SNA in primarry that don't require Irish?

BrianBoru00

To do Primary teaching she would need to complete a postgrad in primary teaching and would also need to get the irish qualification on top of that.

As regards second level I would assume that at best she would qualify to teach english and polish and I assume there would be no schools requiring more than a few hours of polish if even that - don't know of any schools offering it as a subject (though it is available as an exam subject)

She would also need a Post Graduate Diploma in Education to qork as a secondary teacher. . . .

So I would think its a lot of work for very little job prospects . . .

anothernight

BrianBoru00 wrote: »

(though it is available as an exam subject)

Anyone sitting the Polish exam would have to have Polish as their mother tongue, as it's a non-curricular language subject. You're supposed to study non-curricular languages as you would English, but this doesn't really happen in practice (e.g., my Portuguese exam was by far the easiest in my LC, and it would've been crazy to actually study two years for it). So a Polish teacher wouldn't have much to do beyond maybe supervising the exam itself. =/

James Bond Junior

It's not unheard of for non Irish speaking teachers to have special status in Irish primary schools. They are restricted to learning support and resource classes so it's not impossible. I personally know of 2 people working in Irish primary schools, one of whom, English is not her mother language.

Part 4 of this circular:

https://www.education.ie/en/Circulars-and-Forms/Active-Circulars/pc25_00.pdf

spurious

anothernight wrote: »

Anyone sitting the Polish exam would have to have Polish as their mother tongue, as it's a non-curricular language subject. You're supposed to study non-curricular languages as you would English, but this doesn't really happen in practice (e.g., my Portuguese exam was by far the easiest in my LC, and it would've been crazy to actually study two years for it). So a Polish teacher wouldn't have much to do beyond maybe supervising the exam itself. =/

The Polish exam isn't that easy, even for native speakers. They expect good formal written Polish.

anothernight

spurious wrote: »

The Polish exam isn't that easy, even for native speakers. They expect good formal written Polish.

Good formal written Portuguese was also expected in the Portuguese exam. The text of the exam I sat was slightly more advanced than I would expect in an English exam, and certainly more formal. The difference is that for the English exams you had to cover literature and remember facts and quotes, whereas for the Portuguese exam you didn't, so if your reading comprehension and writing were reasonably good, you'd do decent enough.

But then, I'd say the same thing for the portions of the English course which required no previous knowledge... and I suspect you'd disagree. I'm only going by my own personal experience, which means little compared to that of a teacher!


EDIT: I should probably take back what I said about the Portuguese exam being easy overall. I found it easy but looking at the published statistics, lots of people do very well in it but a large percentage also fail. Funnily enough, very, very few people do badly in the Polish exam. So my original point still stands.

osarusan

Thanks for the replies everybody. I'll pass this on to her.

Crazyteacher

osarusan wrote: »

Thanks for the replies everybody. I'll pass this on to her.

I know of a guy who has pedogogy degree from Brazil and got specially recognised to teach in a primary school over here. Think he worked in special education while he went and did his Irish. Last I spoke to him , he was fluent and had spent time in the Gaeltacht.

As for your friends degree, they might be interested in her degree for someone to teach in youthreach , Fas, adult education tutoring. There's a degree just in Education in DCU. Might be interesting to inquire what graduates where able to teach after that.

ustazjoseph

Further ed might be worth a look. Youth reach is neither well paid or long term sustainable but can be rewarding