We are proud to introduce a new ALL initiative amongst our student membership - the creation of a volunteer role of Student Ambassador.
Student Ambassadors will be helping, during their training and into their NQT placements, to share ALL's vision and signpost fellow students and colleagues towards resources and features relevant to their studies and ongoing development.
Our first new ambassadors are, Florence Brown, Matilde Erco and Tessa Stevenson each of whom are training to become secondary language teachers and are taking on their ambassadorial role among the language trainee teacher community.
Florence, Matilde and Tessa will be contributing guest blogs, reviews and features in the coming weeks - and you may even get to meet them at local events!
As a native German and English speaker Tessa was educated in the Swiss education system. German was always her favourite subject - the grammar was satisfyingly complex, a puzzle and the literature resonated with many different meanings that had a bearing on her life and on the way in which she perceived other subjects such as humanities.
With an extended family in Brittany, Tessa was also an enthusiastic French learner and became a fluent speaker whilst completing the DALF diploma course as a teenager. This followed a six-month exchange spent in Brittany during which Tessa attended the local Lycée.
It was because of her love for these two languages and their respective cultures that Tessa went on to study philosophy at BA and art history at MA level, developing a special interest in German Idealist philosophy and French Symbolist art. After graduating from King’s College London and the Courtauld Institute of Art respectively, Tessa went on to work in the art sector as an art gallery assistant and freelance translator of academic art and philosophy related texts.
During this period, Tessa also worked as a freelance tutor of French, German, art history and philosophy and she soon came to realise that she felt passionately about sharing her expertise and enthusiasm for German and French culture, and as a result she decided to retrain as a Secondary MFL teacher.
An appreciation of German and French linguistic and literary heritage combined with a multifaceted academic and professional background mark Tessa out as an individual attuned to the vast potential and immense promise of modern foreign languages. She is motivated to reaffirm their relevance as secondary school subjects and spark in others the same enthusiasm that was kindled in her whilst at school.
Matilde is a fairly popular name in many countries, but it isn’t English (Matilda) nor French (Mathilde), it’s actually Italian in origin!
Born and raised in Genoa, Italy, up until the age of 18, Matilde attended a German school from kindergarten through high school, where she learnt the importance of languages in today’s world. After school, she took a gap year to feed her inner 'need to travel and to discover more about the world,' and spent a year abroad in Australia. In 2013 she started a four year BA in Modern Languages (English, German and Spanish) at the University of Southampton. During this time she developed an interest in teaching and an experience in Peru as an English teacher assistant was the icing on the cake to confirm a passion for the teaching profession. During that time, Matilde took a TEFL diploma - a course which strengthened daily teaching with theory and improved her understanding of cultural differences.
And finally, at the age of 24 she is now continuing her journey on the teaching path by undertaking a PGCE at the University of Bristol!
Florence Brown is currently training to become a languages teacher. She hopes to teach French, Spanish, Italian and German. She has a degree in French and Italian and as part of her degree spent several months in Paris and half a year in Sardinia.
After graduating she spent two years working as a teaching assistant in Spain. Florence is passionate about foreign literature and films. She also enjoys playing netball and the violin.