Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 2; March 2001

Pleasures and Regrets Running an EFL Support Unit in a UK private School

Q:: Could we start off by my asking you exactly what this job is because people out there don't know.

A: : I am called the Head of Foreign Student Support, within an independent school. So I teach English to students whose first language isn't English.

That's from beginner level to advanced, so from year 5 at primary level to A'level. So from ten to eighteen.

I teach full-time the students who have no language, um, and I also teach the ones who are in the main school who come for three or four lessons a week, to top up their English or to have help with curriculum subjects.

Pastoral Work

Q: Is your job only language teaching, is it simply a question of getting people to a certain standard of English?

A: No, I think ninety per cent of my work here is pastoral support, and to listen and to help to decipher what the students are trying to say, what they are trying to understand and just to help them emotionally to cope with the change of culture, change of food, change of living and to help them to acquire the language, but not just the language, also the ability to survive within the environment, within the school.

Q: Hmm. Could you tell us a little more about that second part, the ability to survive within the school.

A.: It would go from teaching them the ideas of stress and intonation, often people in England forgive you if you use the wrong grammar and the wrong vocabulary but they certainly, I feel, don't forgive you if you use the wrong stress or intonation. So, it's from that level right up to, so we're looking at behaviour as well as language, right up to coping with a new culture, not just in England, but in a specific place like an independent school, how do I live and survive, and do well within this environment.

Q: Could this be fairly described as a kind of middle class, upper middle class environment?

A: Yes. With specific rules socially as well as academically, which these children, they're not used to.

Q: This is a bit general, could you me an example?

A: : We could look for example at, um, a Korean boy, who in Korea would certainly never ask a teacher or challenge a teacher and ask them questions directly.

Um, in the main school he's certainly silent in lessons, he doesn't ask for when he doesn't understand, but within this unit he has developed a way of challenging us as teachers and as people and asks for explanations: " What does this mean?" "How does this fit into language?" "How does this fit into the culture?"…. and he's very good here at understanding how the words fit into what he will find outside.

I think that's been important for him in assimilating within the boarding house, to understand what people mean. It will help him eventually academically because when things are said in the class it will eventually become clear.

Q: What kind of problems do these various nationalities face in integrating into a very tight cultural system like a British boarding school?

A: Well, I think one of the things about coming here as a foreign student, and you don't speak very much of the language, is you are completely disenfranchised, I mean you're disenfranchised as a child anyway, as a learner, but I think it's even more so for them, because there is nothing which is familiar to them. They have lost their sense of being of who they are and they have nothing to attach themselves to and I think this is why this unit is important because it gives them a sense of belonging, and a sense of identity and we appreciate where they have come from and where they fit into their own culture and we can respect that and give them time to adjust to a different register, different ways of being.

Q: Again could you come down from the general to something very specific, here, thinking back over the last three or four years?

A: Umm, lots of experiences, but there's one Chinese boy I was thinking of who came here speaking no English at all and he has learnt English in the boarding house, English everywhere, and he does not know of appropriacy of tone and so he's able to practise with me different tones. And every time he comes in and says something I will reflect it back, I'll be a mirror, and this is what it could mean to X, Y and Z, so I'll put it within a social context. And for him, it has helped him a lot. The last time I spoke to him he came to me and asked me very formally for permission to do something and that was him practising how he would speak to a teacher, in the main school. Because when they learn how to speak to each other in the locker room they think they can transfer it, and they get into a lot of trouble, and it's not just tone it's also vocabulary. And I have made help to him to be aware of the different tones he can use, the different registers with people.

Q: You use the word "disenfranchised" when they arrived which sounded to me like a very strong word. Are they disenfranchised by the system, by the teachers, by their classmates or by everything?

A: I think everything has disenfranchised them, umm, there is a traditional teacher-pupil relationship within the main school but not within this unit.

Q: Two different cultures?

A: Two different cultures, er, if I'm teaching formally there is a traditional-ish relationship, but when the lesson's ended it then becomes less formal. And so I have many roles, mother, father, sister, but I also try and exercise that teacher role in the traditional way. Sorry, I've forgotten the question you asked.

Q: The question was about how many different ways people get disenfranchised.

A: Oh, right. So, in that way they're again not used to that.
They are used to their own system, within their own countries.
Home, I think, is particularly important, because they don't have their own privacy, there is no bedroom where you can go and hide. They're in dormitories and you could be in a dormitory with four different nationalities you don't understand and often there is conflict there, but it depends on the nationality the conflict they keep to themselves. Often they come here and tell us about them. So I think,

Q: There's a non-acceptance of them by other foreign people and also by the English students?

A: And I think also in the classes they can be disenfranchised if we don't monitor the groups - who they are sitting next to - so I think it's important that when they are in the main school, that we think carefully about who is sitting next to them. Will this person support and encourage them? And I think that that's a sort of school policy that should be looked at because the odd comment can completely floor someone and they're lost again. Something as simple as walking into the dining room and not knowing where to sit. There could be ten tables ……

Q: Are there set places?

A: There are, unofficially; within any group there are unofficial places to sit. Nobody tells you and you learn this. I learnt this myself when I first came here and I sat at a table where the sixth-formers would normally sit, because nobody had said well this is where the sixth-formers sit. It was inappropriate for me to sit there, and it reminded me of what it was like for the students, even at that basic level of where to sit, when you are on your own. And so that's why I think the buddying system, linking them up to someone who will be sympathetic to their needs is important.

Q: Is there a system like that in place?

A: Um, I've been promised it, but I don't see it working very well. And that's one of my regrets

Q: What degree of co-operation do you get from the main staff?

A: Most of them are very good, um, academically we will share materials and share a common ground for how these students can develop and advance, but there are others who are not aware of what we could do to help. And I think awareness building has to come through an inset, but it's the usual thing: "I don't think it would be good for me to do it here". It needs some one from the outside to come in and do it.

Q: Okay. Are there any particular examples which come to mind of main school colleagues being very, very co-operative?

A: Um, the history teacher. Yes, he's wonderful, before he delivers a lesson he will give me a worksheet and he will tell me what the subject is. I will go through it, highlight the vocabulary needed, the new terms, new ways of expressing various things, and when the students then go to his lesson they are prepared for the new vocabulary, the new topic, and they're able to assimilate it easier, both the language and the topic and do well. There's one Japanese girl who has done amazingly well, because she's had this sort of support, and the students come in their own time, um, I leave two mornings, I say to them "I'm here early, come at quarter past eight," and so we don't take up time within their lessons.

Q: Is a lot of your work one to one?

A: A lot of it, yes. Um, I do work with groups. When people need individual help they'll use this room, and it's not just the foreign students - there are other students who will come if they need help, they know that there's a room here where they can just come and seek help.

Q: The title of this article is 'Pleasures and Griefs'; we've looked just now at some of the pleasures. What about some of the griefs?

A: For me the griefs, are, you see it's giving me a lump in my throat, I feel that my way of being, living, teaching, has carried me through three years when I had colleagues who appreciated - ( The interviewee struggles against welling tears )it's really touched a raw nerve.

Q: So you were saying that it was good on the whole when you had support group colleagues who shared the same ideals and beliefs?

A: Yes, yes, yes. And it's made me realise that if you don't have colleagues who have the same beliefs and a belief in what we're doing - that you are lost and you are isolated and it's a very lonely isolating position and I think I can't teach without my heart, I can't teach without . ( tears )

I've got to go out there. You see that's something else - the kids, um, they have seen me as I am, as I live, as I teach, I mean I've had an incredible emotional lesson with one group where one girl had written a letter home to her grandmother; her English wasn't good enough to explain it; she'd written it in Russian; there was a boy whose English was good enough and he - there was a sort of simultaneous translation of the letter. She read it in Russian and he spoke in English and shared it with the group and it made me cry: it was the most amazing letter. Um, and I think it's important to allow people to be who they are, and for them to feel supported within an environment that doesn't threaten them.

Q: And this corner of this school is an environment like that?

A: Yes. And I think we are in danger of losing it if we begin teaching in the way that, um, the mainstream teachers teach, in the way where we're passing on facts - because we are not passing on facts, We could be in a way looking at grammar, but what we're passing on is a way of being, it's a way of living, it's a way of experiencing life. What we're teaching is not just language, it's about emotion and it's about people and it's about wanting to learn and share. And you cannot do this in a clinical environment.

Q: Mmmmm So the new colleagues you have the support unit are not on board with this thinking?

A: No, I think I'm too emotional as a person. Too emotional for our current group, of colleagues, yes, of staff, and I think, um, yes, and I think that's the difficulty for me and for them. Because it's different and we don't have a common meeting ground.
I can appreciate that other people teach differently and it doesn't bother me, but I don't want to be stopped from teaching the way that I teach.
Um, and that's what I feel I would have to do to make it work for every one. But it wouldn't work for me.

Q It wouldn't work for you; so it wouldn't work for every one, would it, by definition?

A: I think that's my regret; that I didn't recognise that buying into a belief system was probably more important…… This is probably dictatorship. I didn't realise how important it was to have common ground.

Q And with the two former colleagues, did you have common ground?

A: Yes. So I think if I could have my time again I would probably highlight the pastoral side of the work. I'm not supportive of my colleagues, pastorally, I don't think, because I think I give out all my emotional energy to the students. And I think that is one of my failings . And I think that's one of my regrets is that I don't emotionally support my colleagues. I will give them practical help, but the emotional side - I'm completely burnt up by the time it comes to them. So, I'm…… that part of my job I don't do. I'm also not good at managing people - not managing people who have different ways of being and thinking in terms of that. What I should do is teach, not manage. So, it's been good.

Q Are there any other griefs or pleasures which we haven't touched on?

A: Lots of pleasures from seeing students and ego probably. I love it when students who've left phone up and tell me how they're doing.
I had a call at Christmas from a girl who left, and she's at university and doing well and it gave me a huge buzz and it was wonderful, and it was followed up by a letter and I think it's really good when that happens. I also think there's a part of me which enjoys when the students don't have to come back here to the unit, when they come back just to share what they've done.
They come back, just to say what they've done or they've played in a piano competition and I think that gives me a huge buzz. And so, it hasn't been a total failure.