Philippa Parks, our guest blogger this week, is an associate professor and teacher educator in ESL at the University of Sherbrooke, Quebec. She is also the Quebec National Representative of the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers (CASLT). Her research looks at how language teachers form their professional identity during teacher education, particularly how they build self-efficacy and resilience.
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I thought teaching would be easy. It was something I was passionate about and something I had done for most of my life in one form or another, as a babysitter, as a swimming instructor, as a summer camp counselor. So, when I got my first contract as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in a French high school in Montreal in the late 1990s, I had no idea how hard it would be.
The teaching part itself was difficult enough, but what I had not anticipated was the mental load it took to navigate through a French school every day. I had gone through the French immersion program in Ontario and felt that my French was pretty adequate. I also had a Quebecois boyfriend, and I was picking up the Quebecois language and culture in my spare time.
At my school, staff meetings were all in French. When I needed something from a secretaire or le service de l’entretien, I had to muster as much charm as I possibly could – in French. Emails and phone calls to administration and parents were all in French. Parent-teacher meetings were all done … in French.
There were a few members of staff who spoke English, and I learned very quickly who would show tolerance for les profs d’anglais, but generally it was frowned upon to speak too much English in the halls – even to my students. Luckily for me, the other two English teachers, novices like myself, were also des anglos from other parts of Canada. We shared an office, and behind our closed door, we vented about students, parents and the administration. We griped about the separatist History and French teachers who stirred up anti-English sentiment in our students, and the service à la vie d’étudiante that once cancelled afternoon English classes to show our students a Pierre Falardeau film about separatist Patriotes hanged by the British in 1839. We felt an unspoken animosity that first confused, then riled us.
I learned to circumvent the hostility and integrate with the staff by chatting about television shows such as La Petite Vie, Infoman, and le Bye Bye that I had taken to watching – along with much of the francophone population of Quebec on Radio-Canada. I tried my best to be amusing, and eventually, accepted. Ten years passed.
In 2012, I became a course lecturer at university, instructing future teachers enrolled in English as a Second Language (TESL) programs, and later, in 2016, a researcher in Educational Studies. I was inspired to start research into ESL teacher identity after years of undergraduate students telling me stories of their struggles in classrooms, how they felt ill prepared and overwhelmed. At first, I focused on trying to find what I needed to teach them to better prepare them. What I discovered was that they didn’t want to learn the what so much as the how. They didn’t need to have their performance critiqued, so much as given access to teaching spaces to try. They needed encouragement to make mistakes and support in figuring out how to do better next time. They also needed to feel welcomed in their schools. They did not.
Research with a colleague and mentor helped me understand that although the political landscape in Quebec has changed dramatically since the 1980s and 1990s, resentment of les anglos was still present, if less overt. We learned that ESL teachers will still be told off for speaking English together or with students in the corridors. We heard stories of English teachers in secondary school banding together, finding solace being an insider within a group of outsiders. In primary schools, where ESL teachers are often the only Anglos, we learned that they still feel the staff room is an unwelcoming place and that many eat lunch alone, in their classrooms. We saw how our students on their practicum in the French schools needed to demonstrate fluency dans la langue et la culture de Québec if they want to be accepted by their French colleagues. Their experiences recalled mine. I survived, I realized, because I had other English teachers at the high school to lean on, because I married a Québecois de souche and because I had learned the culture of ma belle famille.
I am starting a new chapter in my life, a new partner, a new city, and a new career. The hardest parts for me, now, recall my struggles in my early career. After nearly ten years of working, researching, and teaching mostly in English, I am now immersed in a French work environment. Meetings with colleagues are in French, university communiqués are in French, research proposals, ethics applications, and most of the teaching is done in French, and yet there is a lot more tolerance for my Anglo self. I rely on some of my old strategies and a couple of new ones: leaning on my Quebecois partner for extra practice, seeking out colleagues with whom I can be my English self and using translation software when I feel stilted and irregular in my French writing. With time, a little effort, and some help from my friends, I will rebuild the softened muscles of my French tongue and shake the dust off my French persona. I will (re)learn how to navigate the crossings between les deux solitudes, between my Anglo self and my French environments. My goal now, is to find a way to help my Anglo ESL student teachers do the same.
