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!

A New Leaf

They say that one of the most regularly written posts in blogs is, "I'm really sorry I haven't been updating this recently but...blah blah blah". This is not one of those posts. I haven't updated this blog in a year because all has been quiet on the Section 4 front. What I mean is, nearly every student for whom I was writing, those suffering under the indignity of Section 4, have been granted Leave to Remain. I had nothing to rail against. I had no fight to fight.

But there was a whole heap of paperwork and the attendant difficulties of becoming a citizen: finding somewhere to live before your month's grace is up and you're kicked out of NASS accommodation; getting your benefit claim sorted in time to be able to pay rent; suddenly adjusting to the fact that after your life's been in stasis, you can finally work; adjusting to realisation that you have to pay tax! All these things take a whole lot of time, and though I've done very little to help, I've had to try and keep their heads straight and get them through exams. Well, the college does have funding to keep, after all.

So, I've been busy with my job. And I am happy about that. But this is where the turning of leaves begins. I've spent a few months now becoming a little more social network friendly and I have realised there is a whole world of ESOL teachers out there writing a whole lot of blogs and websites and I'm a little excited by this. I have also come to the frightening realisation that I know almost nothing about this and am having to learn pretty slowly. There are some people out there who are very knowledgable about technology or just about teaching and it's a big old intimidating world out there.

So I start up my blog again. I won't kid myself, I'm not a regular updater. But if there's stuff to say... why not?

But shouldn't I start up a new blog - entitled something to do with being a techy teacher or something equally alliterative? Nah. I am really passionate about the people I was writing for and they are, after all, my students. I don't necessarily teach for the learning. My pleasure in teaching comes from seeing some of the most vulnerable in society grow and change and improve their lives. And sometimes a little bit of that comes from me and my class, and I'm proud of that. So yeah, I am trapped in Section 4... and I kind of like it.