Employment

Teaching in a bilingual school is a very rewarding experience.

Compared to schools with only one or two sessions a week for Languages, students in bilingual schools have the opportunity to immerse in the target language and learn other curriculum areas through the target language. Seeing students make visible and rapid progress in literacy, language proficiency, intercultural understanding and other curriculum areas is very motivating for any driven and passionate language educator.

Whether you plan to teach in English or the target language, it is important to have some understanding of the common bilingual models around the world, the specific model used by the school, bilingual teaching methods and current trends in bilingual education, before you apply for a position in a bilingual school.

To help you, we recommend you access the following resources:

• Bilingual Teaching Methods - a quick reference guide for educators
• Sections A6 and B6 of Bilingualism - an advanced resource book by Ng Bee Chin and Gillian Wigglesworth (2007)
• Chapters 1-3 of Curriculum Integrated Language Teaching - CLIL in Practice, edited by Kim Bower, Do Coyle, Russell Cross and Gary N. Chambers (2020)

For language-specific preparation and requirements, we recommend you reflect on your own professional practice as a language educator using the suite of Professional Standards resources developed by the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Association.

When you are ready, start searching for vacancies in DBP schools and prepare your Key Selection Criteria responses to show that you are able to speak the target language and the language of bilingual education! (Please note that all vacancies in DBP Schools are advertised through Department of Education and Training Victoria's Recruitment Online website.)

Best of luck!