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Diary of a Week Teaching
English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)

By Anne Cullen
Anne.cullen@gateshead.ac.uk

I am the ESOL Course Leader, at Gateshead College of Further Education (FE). Gateshead is south of Newcastle, or Newcastle is north of Gateshead depending upon whom one asks! The college is a medium-sized FE college with about 300 full-time and 60 part-time ESOL students.  90% of them are asylum seekers or refugees. Numbers are high due to the government's dispersal programme, which means that asylum seekers are placed all around the UK where provisions can be made to accommodate them. The ESOL programme has now become the biggest single operation in the college. We are lucky to have a settled team of enthusiastic, motivated and dedicated teachers. Also, we have a supportive management. Of course, despite the excellent team, as the following (honest!) diary reflects, things here do not always run smoothly. 

Monday

Unusually, I feel a slight heaviness of heart at going back in to work today.  The weekend wasn’t long enough to recover from the exhaustion brought on by The First Week Back.  I can’t believe that three weeks ago I was worried that we might not hit our student target!  

The heaviness of heart wore off quickly.  Teaching day today, three hours this morning.  Incredibly, the whole team are bright and cheery, despite the rigours of last week.  We discuss the latest worrying news from Afghanistan, the home country of many of our students.  How are the students coping?  We had tears in one class last week, a bit of a shouting match in another, but on the whole the students are also remarkably cheerful.  Those with family left in Afghanistan are worried, of course, but most of the students seem pleased that their country’s problems are finally getting some high level publicity.  As yet, we’ve heard no reports of harassment out of the College.

The corridors are strangely quiet - my classroom is strangely empty!  I had 19 students this time last week, now I’m starting the lesson with only six!  What did I do to chase them away so quickly?  On second thoughts, nothing, they seemed to enjoy the lessons at the time.  Then I remember, it’s the first day of the wonderful Bus Pass.  We managed to persuade the College to find funds for bus passes for asylum seekers living beyond walking distance of the college.  Unwelcome suspicions pop into my head - are they all flitting from bus to bus around the borough, intoxicated by their newfound freedom?  A quick check of the register shows that most of the missing students are not bus pass beneficiaries.  Suddenly I remember - of course, it’s Monday and twice a month that means it’s “money” day.  My students are probably all standing in a long queue at the Central Post Office, about one and a half hours’ walk away.  

I get the class started and the students drift in one by one until we reach a grand total of twelve.  We’re on job vocabulary today and it’s a popular choice.  The students always seem to enjoy having the opportunity to talk to their classmates about what they were before they had to “go back to school” and about what they’d like to do in this new life.  I’m amazed at how modest they are about their achievements and ambitions.  Among the students present there are two primary school teachers, a successful self-employed businessman, an air traffic controller, an accountant, a welder and a chef.  We talk about the relative merits of different professions - they’re baffled at “estate agent” - and the time passes too quickly.  

On to the next class.  I need a diagnostic grammar exercise so I have decided on a grammar auction and give each group a budget of £500.  I expected to have problems explaining the concept but they grasp it quickly.  It turns out that many of them have been to auctions here to pick up affordable furniture.  The auction is great fun.  The students seem to get excited at having so much money to spend.  The bids come thick and fast - £100, £200, £250, £350, £500, £1,000!  Everyone has a good laugh and I manage to find out where some of their weak spots in grammar lie.  All in all, a good morning’s work.

Tuesday

A typically frustrating day in FE.  I have a pile of work to get through - I need to get Friday’s classes organised, which means getting the classes roomed and staffed.  I need to let all the students know today about all the extra-curricular activities organised by the Student Union.  If they don’t find out now, they’ll have to join the end of a long queue and miss out on some good opportunities to let their hair down and to mix with local people.  The English on the Student Union leaflets is too difficult so I have to do a simplified version to put up in our classrooms.  But I am frustrated at every turn.  I can’t get on a PC in the staff room because there are only four PCs - 3 modern, 1 ancient - and an Apple Mac for 30 members of staff, not counting part-timers.  Two of the four PCs aren’t working so you have to join the queue for the other two.  The only photocopiers working in the building are those in the Xerox centre and you have to book those jobs in two days in advance.  That means that staff are printing multiple copies on the laser printer, which gives up the ghost by lunchtime.  I want to cry.  Why is equipment for teachers always at the end of the shopping list?

The day improves markedly when I go round to all the classes to talk to the students about their Student Activity choices.  I am delighted at the level of interest.  I knew we had quite a few footballers, some of international standard, but I didn’t realise how many musicians we could muster.  They are thrilled at the prospect of getting a chance to show what they can do.  I have visions of a multi-national, multi-cultural band jamming away in a hall somewhere in town - why not?

Wednesday

The day starts with a two-hour CALL session in one of the computer suites.  I approach the room with some trepidation.  The IT technicians assure me that everything is up and running - but that’s what they said this time last week.  After a very successful activity to set-up their task for the day, the students had been locked out of half the computers and the software wouldn’t load on the others.  I took them to an empty classroom and winged it for the next 90 minutes.  Never mind, this time I’m prepared for any eventuality.  In an ideal world, I would have checked the computers before class but there just isn’t time.  I got to work early specifically to do this but every time I stepped out of the staff room into the corridor I was surrounded by students.  One has a letter from his solicitor.  He thinks it says he’s been refused and he is distraught.  In fact, it says that the decision to refuse him has been withdrawn.  Another student wants to ask me where she can get help with her child so that she can come to class.  Like so many before her, I have to tell her to try Social Services but not to hold out too much hope.  Two students come to tell me that the wonderful Bus Pass isn’t so wonderful after all.  It doesn’t cover the bus company that serves their part of the city.  I curse the bus company under my breath but smile reassuringly to the students and tell them we’ll sort it out.  

Now on to my class.  It’s a miracle!  Almost all of the computers are working and the software loads without problems.  After an initial buzz, a wonderful hush falls on the class as the students become engrossed in their listening task.  I breathe a sigh of relief.  I am really proud of all the CALL work that the ESOL team has done over the past nine months, since we got our new computer suites.  Every class gets a 2-hour session per week but they always want more.  There are now so many different things that they can do on the computers that it’s hard to keep up!

The technological success of the morning leaves me with a warm glow but it doesn’t last long.  I go to the main site and decide to go and check on how our lovely new multi-media language lab is coming along.  It isn’t.  Everyone’s arguing with everyone else about what should be done.  I spend too much time listening to who should do what and leave feeling completely frustrated again.  It dawns on me that it is now mid-afternoon on Wednesday and I still have eight hours of classes on Friday to staff.  If I can’t get them covered, I’ll have to cancel again.  I’ll try to work out a last-minute compromise.

It’s my low point of the day - I am so tired that I can barely believe that I have a three-hour teacher training session still to do tonight.  I decide to go home, have a cup of tea, walk the dog, put my feet up for a while and come back in time to start the class.

It works.  By six o’clock I’m ready for action!

Thursday

All forward planning has gone out of the window.  I have a two-hour class this morning.  It’s twenty minutes to the start of class and I still don’t know what I’m going to do.  I suddenly remember a lesson I did a couple of years back that went very well.  I make some notes and off I go, feeling very grateful for the years of experience behind me.  We spend two hours working on some common idiomatic phrases used in social situations.  This class has gelled so well that they need very little prompting to make their contribution.  They tease and encourage each other in equal measure and the time flows by effortlessly.  When 11.30 comes, everyone seems reluctant to leave, especially me!

Back to the paperwork.  We have to get 300 timetables distributed to all the full-time students by the end of the afternoon so that they all know where to go tomorrow.  Their Friday classes are different from their Monday to Thursday classes as they have a range of options to sign up for, so they can choose what they want to concentrate on.  The element of choice is nice for the students but it’s a nightmare to organise and I’m still short of teachers.  We thought we would have this all sorted out last week but we underestimated the amount of work involved.  It’s just part of the steep learning curve we are all on.

Friday

Are we getting an extra IT teacher for this morning’s classes or aren’t we?  One source says yes, the other says no.  We work out a contingency plan, cross our fingers and hope for the best.  We’ll do okay for today and sort it out on Monday.  

Everything else goes wonderfully well.  The teachers all turn up at the right place, ready for action, and the students go to the right place and start their class more or less on time.  We round up only about 20 lost souls and point them in the right direction.

I’m enrolling again today - we do this every Friday so that new arrivals in the borough aren’t kept waiting for classes.  Along with one of my fellow teachers, I give the new arrivals a placement test and interview and then squeeze them into a class at the right level.  Almost all students want to come full-time and at this point in the year we can still accommodate them, thanks to an amazingly supportive management team here at the college.  We have the go-ahead to create more full-time groups if it becomes necessary.  At the moment, we’re waiting to see how things settle down.  Attendance is always a problem because of all the appointments that students have to keep, not only for themselves but also for their children.  This area is untypical in that we have a high number of asylum seeker families, rather than the usually predominant single young male asylum seekers.  That fact helps to keep up retention, however, because families are more settled than single people.  

During enrolment today I meet a lovely young Sudanese couple who have only been in the UK for four days.  One of the many great things about this job is how you are constantly reminded of your own good fortune in life so you are much less likely to take it for granted.  This couple are wide-eyed at everything they see but particularly the grass and the trees.  They tell me that this is the most beautiful place they have ever seen - everything is so green.  We stand looking out at the view. The college is on top of a hill and has beautiful views over the park and the valley beyond.  I can’t count how many times I’ve looked at this view but they are right, it does look altogether more beautiful today.