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Jennifer Hall

Jennifer Hall (’03) Modern Languages, Oxford
Taught MFL Uxbridge High School
Now Analyst, Deloitte

I’d been to a few other milk round presentations and hadn’t been really been that inspired about joining the City, and I went to the Teach First presentation, and I was just completely blown away by what they were offering and what they were promising. And I applied straight away, and that was it.

My first class was a group of 33, 30 boys and three girls, and there was a frog thrown across the room, they played hide and seek under the desks, and I kind of just stood there and was like “open your books on page 83”, it just didn’t work.

Being yourself I think is really important. In the first term I tried to be very serious and wouldn’t take any messing and, actually, my personality is not to be that serious, and so you have to combine the two and make sure that, yes, you’ve got routines and you’re strict, but the pupils also see who you really are.

Working with children, there’s always some children who have behavioural issues, I suppose, is the right way to describe it, but those sort of issues become less and less important the more time you spend there, because you generally have better relationship with the pupils, and so you don’t experience those issues as much as you did at the beginning.

My first year I had a group of Year 11 German class, and I was basically told none of them were even going to get an ‘F’, there was no point, just keep them in the class and it would be great. And at the end of it they all actually achieved at least two grades above what they were meant to, and that was amazing.

The mission’s become a lot more important to me as time’s gone on. When I first joined obviously I was committed to the mission for two years, but now it’s absolutely part of what I believe in, and every day at work I try and do something which engages with the mission.