Eventually, one agency which I visited, took pity on me. I can’t explain any other reason for agreeing to hire me, since I couldn’t type nor do much else in the way of office work. However, because it was for such a short period and the firm wouldn’t have to pay taxes on me, or some such thing, I was hired at minimum wage. I read incoming applications from parents seeking a placement for their child or children in private schools which came under the umbrella of the agency. I soon discovered that private schools didn’t pay their teachers as much as did the regular system, and that not all students in private schools were highly academic and well-adjusted. The only thing they had in common was that their parents were rich.
So, by March 1972 I was searching through the Times Educational Supplement newspaper for French teaching positions in regular high schools. To my mind, I needed a coeducational Grammar School, preferably in the south of England. I didn’t trust going to a Comprehensive or Secondary Modern School, because the students here were less academically inclined, so I had decided that they might be unruly. Not so, of course, I now realize, but I didn’t know anything much about the school system in England in 1972, and was frightened of what I might have to deal with in the classroom if the students were not interested in French.
However, it was imperative for me to get a teaching position for the start of the April term. I had almost no money and could not stay any longer at the agency where I was temporarily employed. I was worried, but I was also determined to find something, somewhere that would suit me. I kept telling myself that I was single, almost 25, fluently bilingual, and I had two degrees. There had to be a job out there that I could do. I simply had to find it.
