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thelinguist.uberflip.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016 The Linguist 31 OPINION & COMMENT Muriel Huet is taking a one-year sabbatical from her role as MFL teacher at a London secondary school. TL MURIEL HUET Teacher on tour My one-year trip around the world has come to an end. Coming home to Europe is a rollercoaster of emotions, mixing the joy of seeing loved ones with the desire to continue the adventure. Now is the time to digest, to write and to reflect. The most enriching experiences have come from the people I have met. They have taught me to push social boundaries and prejudices; to allow myself to be surprised and inspired. One aspect that has been ever present is the importance of sharing teaching practice at an international level. Regardless of our nationality, culture or background, we are all professionals who share the same passion: to educate young people. In all three of the continents I visited (Asia, Africa and South America), educators face similar challenges. Thanks to the internet, young people today have much easier access to the world. Even in some of the more remote places in the world, they are surrounded by new technology. Their interests and needs have changed. It is time for more creative approaches to teaching. Education systems around the world might be very different, but young people are similar. How can we motivate them, show them the importance of learning a language and tackle discipline problems? Are we not supposed to be researchers as much as teachers, seeking new pedagogies and adapting our teaching to the needs of children? Yet I found that teacher training is rarely a priority. Many governments prefer to invest in new equipment rather than raising teaching standards. I have run workshops in the languages universities of Hanoi and Beijing about innovative teaching approaches, such as the use of short films. I have visited schools in Asia, Africa and South America, among them special needs schools in South Africa and alternative schools in Chile and Argentina. I have worked closely with teachers in Uganda, and with the Ministry of Education in the Seychelles. They all had one thing in common: that desire for change. It is lack of money, motivation and expertise that stops this change from happening. Knowledge sharing is key. Whoever we are, wherever we are and whatever we teach, we can learn from each other. Doing so will help us to get back to the roots of our profession: teaching and helping children to grow in a fast-changing world. The world is full of young people willing to learn languages; they have restored my faith in our duty as educators. The world is full of teachers who want to make a difference. Let's support each other and share our knowledge to make education stronger and at the heart of countries' priorities. Reflections on a trip around the world's schools It has been a busy few months for language news, what with Brexit, and GCSE and A level results. Just before the referendum, a piece in The Guardian warned that "leaving the EU could lead to an irreversible decline in language learning". Clearly, though, it was not the Brexit vote that caused a further drop in numbers taking language exams this summer. The Independent called for a "shift in attitudes" to show that Britain hasn't turned its back on other cultures after it voted for Brexit, while the BBC blamed the slump on financial pressures in schools. The Times and The Telegraph both led on the issue of "native speakers", supposedly putting other language learners at a disadvantage by artificially boosting standards, a matter which Ofqual is looking into. It has certainly not been a good period for speakers of other languages in the UK. The Sun reported that workers at a Sheffield factory face disciplinary action if they are caught speaking anything but English, and linguistic intolerance reached an appalling apogee with the murder of a Polish man by teenagers who had heard him "chatting in Polish". As if this wasn't enough to put anyone off learning another language, The Sun ran a feature on "how to spot a demon", revealing that one of the signs of satanic possession is "understanding and speaking foreign languages previously unknown". We did hear, though, that Melania Trump, would-be First Lady of the US, speaks five languages. This gem was accompanied by "steamy new pictures" from a "saucy photoshoot" that the wife of the presidential candidate had posed for in 1995. The big Brexit language story was the report that English could be dropped as an official language of the EU once the UK leaves. The Mail, The Sun and The Telegraph were among media reporting that French politicians want to "kick out" the English language from the EU. Teresa Tinsley is Director of Alcantara Communications; www.alcantaracoms.com TERESA TINSLEY