In at the deep end – my first experience of volunteer English teaching
A while ago I got my TEFL certificate (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), I did it partly for my own interest but also so that I could consider some volunteer work. I ended up doing my first teaching quite unexpectedly!
I had reached out to a few organisations in my local area and one of them invited me for a chat to get to know me and see how I could help out. I went during my lunch break on a Monday and happened to turn up while they were in a bit of a panic. Monday is the day they usually do assessments to decide which level class to put students in, they were expecting about 4 people but one of them had told all of his friends and 12 showed up! After some introductions and a few quick gulps of coffee they explained the panic and asked me how long I could stick around for. When I said I could stay a couple of hours they quickly set me up to help with the level assessments! I got stuck in and helped some of the students through the level tests which was a bit of a baptism of fire but in the end enjoyable and eye opening.
I supported them regularly for a while but had to stop when the time of the lessons changed and it wasn’t so easy for me to take the time out of work for them. It was a very humbling and eye-opening experience though and I wanted to share some of my reflections
English is hard! It’s the global lingua franca for so many things, and I am very privileged that I didn’t have to learn it as a second language. Phrasal verbs, the very non-phonetic spelling, the endless exceptions to the rules. Every language has it’s quirks of course, but atleast many others are more or less phonetic.
It’s not always best to have a native speaker as a language teacher. I realised that being a native speaker of English in no way qualifies you to teach it. Since doing my TEFL qualification I’ve been in a number of situations where a non-native speaker has explained something in a much better way than me. A non-native speaker can explain the rules of grammar much better because they have been taught them in a systematic way, rather than a native speaker who just learned them by being surrounded by it in context.
The people I taught were all very intelligent and had a rich linguistic background, for example some were from Africa and spoke French and German plus various local dialects. They are much more multilingual than I am, it just so happens that English isn’t one of those languages they know.
Arriving here in the UK with little to no command of the language is a frightening experience. I met mothers panicking about how they would call a doctor if their child was sick, helped people struggling with the overwhelming amount of paperwork they need to access basic services, families who had been split up with mother and children here in the UK and father left behind to fight a war. I imagined being in their shoes, the closest I have been is arriving in China and trying to find the way to my hotel having forgotten that I can’t use google maps there. I was only there for a few weeks as a tourist but always remember the feeling of helplessness – you can’t even ask for help because you don’t know how to articulate that request. Having said that the people I taught are some of the most determined people I have ever met, I’ve genuinely never met a set of people with such a fierce desire to learn.
The people who arrive here and need to learn the language are real people, with memories of who they were before in their own country and hopes and dreams for the new life they have here. I met a wonderful woman from Brazil who was a phlebotomist there and loved her job, she was learning English because she wanted to do the same here someday. Every class she came with pages and pages of her own homework she had done, a true inspiration! I also met a dancer from Ukraine, she told us about the most memorable moment of her life – when the curtain opened and she danced in a theatre for the first time. She was a successful professional dancer but had to leave behind something that she trained all her life for and was very passionate about to start again.
A community was born very quickly with English as the only shared language. There were people in my class from various places – Ukraine, Yemen, El Salvador, Syria, all with different native languages, in fact their only shared one was often English. Despite their limited grasp of it they worked extraordinarily hard to help each other when needed. They shared information about which bus ticket to buy, gave each other lifts to and from the classes, shared tips on looking for jobs and more than once emphatically asked the teacher to stop and explain something again when they saw that a classmate didn’t properly understand. Their classmates were some of the first people they met and formed relationships with when they arrived here, and they stand up for each other! So wonderful to see such collaboration and togetherness come from a difficult situation.
A very worthwhile experience then, and one that I would like to continue in some way, but much harder than I thought!