Teachers are hypocrites

I know that I am, certainly. At the beginning of my Level 2 (Advanced) course this year I told my students they would have to be prepared to create and maintain a blog as part of the course. I wasn't quite sure what form this would take or what we would use it for specifically but I knew that I wanted the students to start to write in a more natural, more motivated way. I wanted them to write about what they cared about or in a format that suited them rather than trying to shoehorn their writing skills into specified formats that would probably have no further use in the world beyond English classes.

The problem is, with all this insistence on their regular updating of their blogs I have left mine rather unwritten. I give occasional reminders in class or gentle prodding to those who don't make updates, I remind them why it's worthwhile, I tell them how great a reflective tool it is. But I haven't done anything of the sort myself. I have my excuses - this term has included a move to a new building and the various settling-in issues that inevitably arise; I'm having to plan and teach an entirely new course from scratch with no co-teacher; my role has grown substantially within the department and I'm responsible for a lot more than last year. Nevertheless, if I'm expecting my students, with their own busy lives, to update their blog regularly, is it not an expectation I should have of myself too?

It's easy for us to tell students to do their homework, to prepare for their exams, to read books more regularly, to be on time, to be there every day; they're the same things I tell myself I ought to do - and I do try. But life does, quite often, get in the way of being a perfect teacher!

And so, I am updating my blog. Finally. With the news that half of my students have taken to blogging very well. Half only - there is some reluctance from a few students to write online, understandably. Some students made a go at it and then let it become dormant, but then isn't that the case with most blogs: lost in the ether! But a few have made it their own - they are fulfilling the briefs that I occasionally give them as homework but are also adding posts that are of their own devising. I have had thoughts on the unknowability of the future, musings on famous quotations, book and film reviews and, most recently (and impressively), poetry. I love to read the posts and see the huge progress that my students are making. Post by post there is clear evidence of progression. And they are writing. Something that usually provokes groans and resistance when given in class is now proving to be its own motivation in a personal capacity.

So, I was inspired and humbled. And I'm going to try to be better, and a little less of a hypocrite.

Technology lesson - My Blackberry is not working!

This is a quick, funny technology vocab warmer for Upper-Int using the wonderful Ronnie Corbett and Harry Enfield. One list of vocab, taken from the video, was dictated to the class including: blackberry, boot (v), blackspot, crash, juice etc. The class were then split into two groups who had to quickly discuss the meanings of the words. The twist was that Group A had to find technological meanings for the words and Group B had to find everyday non-technological meanings. This is pretty easy for the fruit based words (as they are often the brands) but not so easy for juice (trying to elicit a reference to electricity via thirst metaphors was a challenge) and boot (make sure they know this is a verb).

The groups reconvened, found a partner and compared answers. They then tried to find ways to combine these words in sentences to predict what usage they might hear or collocations that might work, e.g. My Blackberry has crashed. My Blackberry is on Orange.

This all culminates in the watching of the video. Show it once to see if they understand the jokes - I was pretty concerned that my students wouldn't find this funny at all, as puns are such a linguistically challenging step for students to make, but by this time they had embedded both meanings simultaneously and I was pleased to find they laughed. Even at the dongle pun - for which I had not given them a definition, only a suggestion that it may have evolved from dangle!

A second viewing could be used to make notes of the collocations which are actually used in the clip which can lead into speaking practice for complaints about technology glitches. For me this led into a complaint letter lesson. But I think there are plenty of other places it could lead.

Credit for this idea must go to my colleague, Kirsty, who happened to watch this programme over Christmas and suggested it for the 'technology' week we had coming up in the new semester.

Any ideas how you might use the video?

Staff noticeboard with lino-it

Our college is moving to a brand-spanking new building soon and the expectation is that we will all, suddenly, be able to change the habits of a lifetime of teaching and become paper-free over night! To that end we anticipate there will be no staff noticeboard to share messages or information on and a debate has raged (well, quietly bubbled along - we're not savages) about what we can do in place of this.

Thanks must therefore go to Sandy Millin whose blog introduced me to the concept of lino-it - an online noticeboard with the capability to stick post-its, photos, videos and documents up on it for all or a select few to see. Click the pic to be taken to the website.

 This is just a representation of what I started with, as the staff want their noticeboard to stay private, but I can honestly say that within 20 minutes we had very little noticeboard left to play with. And play they did. We are talking about a staff room where the IT literacy and usage is average but no higher, and enthusing staff about new technology is not easy. But they were very excited about this website and we had a spontaneous outpouring of ideas of teaching uses.

This for me is the first little success in what I hope is a new enthusiasm for IT in my department. I'm very grateful so far to all the Twitter users on #eltchat who have such inspiring ideas and who seem to have a psychic ability to find all these online resources before the rest of us have realised it exists.

Action for ESOL (through the summer)

It's time for me to have a break. I'm going to spend the summer away from work, physically at least. But I'm going to be trying to design a new and improved course while I do so. But before I go I have to focus on one of the great unanswered questions of the new academic year as it is still ongoing and undecided even as we break up - funding for ESOL courses has been cut.

What does that mean? 
Well, ESOL students are often the most vulnerable in society: new immigrants; refugees and asylum seekers fleeing wars and persecution; women who have come to join their husbands and often remain within their community without ever learning English. These people are usually on benefits such as income support, or Home Office benefits which are not classified as 'active' jobseeking benefits. This is because they are prevented from working either by the Home Office or because they have kids to care for. These are the people who can't access cheap ESOL classes anymore.

Why does it affect us?
The Conservatives and right-wing press often have a lot to say about lack of integration of new immigrants to the UK. Indeed, they often use this as the reason for extremist behaviour. What better way to integrate people into the UK than to teach them the language? Cutting funding does exactly the opposite. We alienate those who desperately want to integrate; we make them feel an outsider in our land. That only breeds dissatisfaction and segregation. And if we don't teach them English? The people who need English won't simply disappear - they are here and if we don't teach them to speak for themselves we will have to pay for interpreters anyway. It's a false economy to cut English classes. We gain nothing.

What can be done?
Help me to support some of the most vulnerable people in our society by listening to their stories and reading the facts here on a great website put together by Mike Harrison; sign the petition to ask the government to reconsider the funding constriction; or, if you're not the action type, just do me a favour and read about the atrocities committed in Congo, the disappearances in Iran, or just the day-to-day fear of living in Afghanistan and please, try to remember, these are the people I teach. This is the level of suffering I encounter in my students and quite frankly, they deserve more than this awful struggle to learn how to speak English in the country which they believed would give them sanctuary.

I want to come back to work able to admit all-comers to my course, not just the privileged few that can still afford it. Back in 2005 the government had the same bright idea about reducing funding for asylum seekers and it was my job to tell people that they couldn't have classes, despite the fact that I knew they had nothing else in their life and for some these classes were a lifeline. I don't want to have to do that again. It was unnecessarily cruel and, I believe, inhumane. Back in 2005 we fought, we protested and we made ourselves heard and the government capitulated. Let's do it again!

Sense and Sensitivities

(c) Robin Reid

Topics to avoid in the ESOL classroom?

It's the end of the year and the feedback forms have been analysed and, let's face it, I don't even need to look at them to know they're going to be great! Mainly because I spent the final 3 weeks of term teaching my students how to say, "My teacher is excellent and her lessons are always well-planned"!

There were things they didn't like though. There was the classic, "too many games", followed swiftly by "not enough games", and best of all, "I didn't like all the stairs I had to climb every day". However, most potently was the simple comment, "I didn't like when we talked about prejudice".

I knew immediately which lesson this student referred to, and sadly it was probably the most prominent memory he will take away from my classes as it happened during his first week. We had, as a team, decided to teach about the ESOL cuts and in order to illustrate the effects of the cuts one teacher wanted to teach a lesson about asylum seekers and their status in the country. We agreed it could be controversial and inflammatory but perhaps necessary, as we had heard some very ill-informed opinions emanating from some of our European students.

My colleague had a really successful lesson which seemed to enlighten the students and bring a collective understanding of the system asylum seekers were subjected to, whereas my class descended into chaos. The European students questioned what money asylum seekers had access to, and when informed one particular student was outraged and wanted to know why we should fund asylum seekers who could be murderers. This led to a young refugee running out of the room crying and staff being dispatched to find him whilst the rest of the class sat in bewilderment. The new student, who had expressed doubts about the topic at the beginning of the class, wanted to leave too but I asked him to stay and support the point of view of other students who were debating with the Europeans. He stayed, reluctantly, and said nothing, but stood firmly alongside his fellow refugees. He didn't attend for a week after that.

I felt horrible. Was I right to try to teach this lesson? I knew that some of the class held particularly ignorant beliefs and I knew that I had some sensitive students. The new guy told me that he had left his previous college due to the prejudice he had been subjected to and he was angry that I had brought this prejudice right into the room where he wanted to feel safe. Plus, he still remembers it as the low point.

However, I know that, equally, the other students remember it too. They will remember their contrition as they started to understand the situation; they will remember their horror as some of the refugees told their stories candidly; they will remember the tears of a friend who had seemed so confident and unbreakable. And they did learn about each other, and they did come to a collective understanding, even if it wasn't immediate. And I honestly think that the experience was an education that many hadn't expected to face in their daily English class. Would I do it again? Not the same way, no. But though one student has listed it as a negative, I think it has been one step towards tolerance for others. Indeed, one student has said that she has encountered more cultures and languages in one year in our ESOL department than in her entire life.

But are there topics that ought to be avoided in the ESOL classroom? Is it good sense to plough on through our students' sensitivities?

Still trapped but dancing

After a Refugee Week which I spectacularly managed to miss most of (due, in no small part, to it being my last week of teaching and therefore an anxious rush of cramming) I managed to get to a lovely Celebrating Sanctuary musical day out in the park.

Having, just the day before, managed to get my Refugleers up and singing in front of our entire department and not only singing, but in tune and in time, I really wanted to support an event specifically run to celebrate the music of refugees. I have seen my students blossoming this year, especially Entry 1 and 2 students who struggle to communicate, singing their hearts out. Music is an under-rated commodity in ESOL teaching. It's a scary thing to have to present as often students don't see the relevance of it. But it can be incredibly liberating whilst also being a wonderful lexical approach to language! I'm sneaky like that - my students should never forget the lovely lexical chunks of Stand By Me!

So the music was success, and more so the dancing that followed. It seemed that the vast majority of the students, as never before, wanted to dance with each other. We usually just have a bit of Kurdish dancing and the rest fade away and leave. But we had every nationality up and moving together.

Much like the Celebrating Sanctuary event in the park. I had expected to be surrounded by middle-eastern faces and families but found myself in amongst the most diverse crowd you could imagine and I watched them all joining together and dancing. One of my students was there - he is still Section 4 (in case you don't know, that means he is a failed asylum seeker and is no longer receiving support, i.e. destitute) and though the ins and outs of his case are unknown to me he seems like the ideal person to be welcomed to our country. In the years he has been here and had nothing from the state he has constantly volunteered for homeless charities, using his chef experience from home to cater for other homeless people. He is the most generous person I have met and he has had it pretty bad for many years. But the music had all the people that had supported him together in that park. And so he danced.

And do you know what's strange? In all the time I've been in a classroom with him, his English has often been difficult to understand; sometimes a little garbled, sometimes confused or backwards. But sitting there in those circumstances he spoke for 2 hours and he was understandable.

I feel like all this comes from the same place; the feeling of empowerment that my students feel when they take over, when it's their turf I'm on, or when it's them on the stage singing to their peers. As ESOL teachers we sometimes forget they are people; they're adults with skills and qualifications and experience well beyond our own and they rarely get to express that to us. In the last week I have been quite privileged and humbled to see who my students are and what they can do. Best lesson of the year for me, I reckon.

Refuglee! Everyone Sing Out Loud!

It's nearly the end of the academic year. My students sit their exams next week. All we've worked for is nearly at fruition. But this has been a year like no other in my teaching career. This year I have tried and achieved some different things and I am proud.

The thing I am most proud of is Refuglee club. Every Wednesday, in our lunch breaks, a few teachers and a bunch of loyal students gather in a classroom and sing. That's it. And we love it!

It all began at Christmas - it has become something of a tradition for me to take my students to the theatre for the Christmas show, which is usually based on a famous novel and therefore introduces them to a novel and the magic of theatre all in one go. Students who have never been near a theatre in their lives are astonished by the tricks of a clever set and tend to be blown away by the experience. But this year one student in particular bounced joyfully all the way through at the songs in the show. I asked him later if he'd enjoyed himself and he replied, "I want to be there", gazing at the stage.

This led to a (wine-fuelled) conversation about the possibility of running a music group for our ESOL students, especially those who have serious PTSD or other mental problems. We thought it would be a release whilst at the same time being a great way to learn lexical chunks without noticing!

I didn't think it would last all the way through to the end of term. I certainly didn't think we would be putting on a show of our songs at the end of this week. We've attracted a loyal core of singers who come every week to try everything from Beyonce's Halo, through the Beatles' Hey Jude, to Iko Iko. However, our performance will be of a two-part Stand By Me, with the boys being the double bass! Yeah, we're ragged round the edges. Yeah, half of them can't hold a note. But that's not the point and never has been. One of my quietest students turned out to be a piano teacher and has accompanied us beautifully throughout the process (in spite of my appalling conducting) and she has really come out of herself, and her confidence has shone through in her huge improvement in her English.

And that's why we do it. And it's why I keep doing my job even when it's getting hard. Music is hugely important to people and having the opportunity to express yourself freely and without judgement is rare. But that's the first rule of Refuglee club: Everyone Sing Out Loud!