‘The Greatest Lesson International Teaching Has Given Me’

Becoming the newcomer  

The first few weeks were challenging in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Professionally, my cohort surprised me. Many had very limited English, and I quickly realised I wasn’t simply teaching the British curriculum in another country. I was also teaching children learning through a language that was not yet familiar to them.  

My PGCE had given me the foundations. But I quickly realised that I needed to build the rest of the house differently. The principles and pedagogy were still there, but the strategies, resources and approaches I had imagined using needed to change to meet the children in front of me.  

While figuring that out professionally, I was also learning how to live in Madrid.  

I didn’t know anyone. I had arrived in the middle of August, when it seemed as though the entire city had left for the summer. My two weeks in a hotel were disappearing quickly, while agencies were closed, landlords were away and finding an apartment felt almost impossible.  

Everything that had once been automatic became a small challenge.  

I didn’t have a car. I had to learn the Metro and navigate unfamiliar supermarkets. Everything around me was in Spanish. Even ordering a coffee sometimes required a moment of thought — and, occasionally, a quick translation.  

I was learning to build a life while learning to teach in a completely new environment.  

Then I realised something that would fundamentally change the way I thought about my students: I was experiencing, in a small way, what they were experiencing every day.  

I was living in Spanish without always having the language to express what I wanted. My students were learning in English without always having that language either.  

My experience was obviously different. I was an adult who had chosen to move to Spain, with the resources and agency to do so. But for the first time, I had a personal understanding of what it felt like when the world around you makes sense, but the language doesn’t always come easily.  

It made me slow down and listen more carefully.  

It made me more conscious that when a child doesn’t immediately understand, communicate or participate as we expect, there may be far more beneath the surface than we see.  

Seeing my students differently  

Before Madrid, I understood learning another language intellectually. Living it made that understanding personal. I began to notice the small things differently.  

The child who knew exactly what they wanted to say but couldn’t find the English words. The child who watched another child before joining in because they weren’t quite sure what was expected. The child who understood far more than they were able to express. The child who might appear quiet, hesitant or disengaged when, in reality, they were simply trying to make sense of what was happening around them.  

I became more conscious of the difference between not knowing and not being capable.  

That distinction has stayed with me throughout my career.  

When a child doesn’t immediately respond, participate or understand, my first instinct is no longer to ask, “Why aren’t they doing this?”  

I’m more likely to ask:  

“What might be getting in the way?”  

Perhaps it’s the language, environment, expectations or simply needing more time. Or perhaps they need someone to show them it’s okay not to know yet.  

Madrid didn’t give me the same experience as my students, but it gave me a window into what it feels like to be surrounded by things familiar to everyone else but not yet familiar to you.  

It reminded me that sometimes the most important thing a teacher can offer isn’t another instruction or correction.  

It is the feeling that they belong here, even while they are still figuring everything else out.  

I also understood that children don’t arrive at school as blank canvases.  

They arrive with languages, cultures, family experiences, expectations and ways of understanding the world developed long before they enter our classroom.  

Our job isn’t to erase those differences. It is to understand them.  

Learning to adapt  

Moving to Madrid also challenged something else I had assumed about teaching.  

I had spent a year learning to become a teacher and initially thought good practice could simply transfer from one setting to another. The foundations travelled with me: my understanding of child development, planning, observation, assessment and pedagogy remained important. But the context had changed.  

My students were learning through English, many while still developing their language skills. That meant thinking differently about communication, introducing concepts, supporting understanding and creating opportunities for children to demonstrate what they knew.  

Sometimes the barrier wasn’t the learning itself. It was the language through which the learning was being delivered. Sometimes I needed to model differently, use more visual support, give a child more time or approach learning through a different route. The important lesson was that adapting my teaching didn’t mean abandoning what I knew.  

It meant being willing to reconsider how I applied it.  

I had to become comfortable with not knowing, asking questions, listening and observing before assuming. I had to accept that someone else’s way of doing something might be different from mine without necessarily being wrong.  

That lesson didn’t end when I left Madrid.  

When I later moved to Chicago, I found myself doing it all over again at the British International School of Chicago.  

The school culture, colleagues and expectations were different.  

Again, I had to listen, observe and learn.  

Each move has reminded me there is rarely one perfect way to teach. There are principles that travel with us, but the way we bring those principles to life has to respond to the people, culture and environment around us.  

So, what does it mean to be a global citizen?  

The more I have travelled and taught internationally, the more I have questioned what it actually means to be a global citizen.  

For a long time, I associated it with travel: visiting lots of countries, experiencing different cultures and perhaps speaking more than one language.  

I see it differently now.  

I think being a global citizen is less about how many places you’ve been and more about how willing you are to learn from the people and perspectives you encounter.  

It is being willing to ask “Why?” rather than deciding that something is wrong simply because it is different from what you know.  

It is recognising that your own experience is only one way of seeing the world. It is being willing to adapt when the environment around you changes. And perhaps most importantly, it is having enough empathy to recognise that you rarely know the whole story of the person standing in front of you.  

My experiences of living abroad have repeatedly reminded me of that.  

• I’ve been the person who didn’t understand the language.  

• I’ve been the person who didn’t know the routines.  

• I’ve been the person watching others navigate something effortlessly while I was still working it out.  

• I’ve been the newcomer.  

• And each time, I’ve had to become comfortable with being the learner.