1
OUTSIDE, IT IS COLD, wet and windy: England in May. Inside, the windows steam up just a little bit more as the students laugh at my appallingly bad drawing of a woman wearing a sundress. She looks like the Eiffel Tower. This isn’t helping to explain what a sundress is, so I google a photo and a murmur of understanding ‘ahs’ goes round the room. It’s my favourite lesson of the week, my Monday ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class, a safe cocoon of learning and conversation for refugees, fuelled by tea, coffee and biscuits. We are learning the names of different types of clothing and what we wear in different types of weather – hence the sundress. I scribble with my marker pen on the latest in a long line of battered old whiteboards, something I’ve been doing for over twenty years, in a variety of church halls, library rooms, college and school classrooms. This whiteboard is reversible and sometimes, this being a church hall, there are religious quotes on the other side. Today, there is a picture of a dinosaur on the reverse. I’m intrigued to know which bible study class that came from.
The make-up of the class today is like the latest news bulletin. Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine are all represented by men and women who forgive my lack of drawing talent and work hard to understand the vagaries of the English language and the nuances of British culture. These are the people who, depending which newspaper feed you read, are either overwhelming the country or are finding safety here and enriching it. They are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, teachers and taxi drivers, soldiers and chefs, housewives and nurses, lorry drivers and administrators. But, here in the UK, they are known by the one-size-fits-all, collective noun, ‘refugees.’
It feels a privilege to work amongst so many immigrants; to discover the real stories behind the headlines, to learn people’s names, to hear about lives in their home countries, and to hear their overwhelmingly positive stories of how they are treated by British people. In my experience it seems that we are a nation who don’t like the faceless ‘hordes’ but we are very happy to help individuals and families who become our new neighbours. My students often tell me heart-warming stories of the small kindnesses done by their neighbours: help in figuring out the recycling bins, baking a cake for them, giving toys to their children.
My classes are usually relaxed, positive places, but occasionally there are moments that make the ground beneath me shake. Moments like the time a teenager the same age as my son talked about his journey across Europe, sleeping outside and waking up with frozen arms, unable to move them because he had no coat or jumper. Or moments when I am shown a photo on a mobile phone that leaves me struggling for words, and which invades my dreams for days afterwards. When your students are refugees and asylum seekers there is no TV screen to separate you from the stories of horror and grief.
In one class, a ripple of loss turned into a wave that broke across the room one day as every student present recounted a family member lost to the conflicts in their home countries. A son, a husband, a brother, a father. Minutes earlier we had been trying to understand a challenging English grammar point, then a comment was made, and wounds opened. In another class many years ago, just after the horrific 2004 Beslan school siege, a Russian babushka cried as she recounted her years teaching at the school nearby, the families she would have known. Thankfully, moments like this are rare, and the classes usually offer a respite to the difficulties and tragedies which lie outside the classroom.
I have been teaching ESOL for over twenty years and in some ways my career has run parallel to migration trends around the world. My first experience of teaching refugees was with a Bosnian family in 2001. I am now teaching refugees from Ukraine. I have taught students from at least fifty-five countries in the intervening years, many of these students migrating by choice for work and study, many being forced to migrate by war and persecution. And after doing this job for so long, there is one thing that I know with certainty: anyone could be a refugee or asylum seeker. None of us are safe from that label. Because refugees and asylum seekers are people like you and me. The war in Ukraine has forever altered our image of the ‘typical’ refugee. Seeing white Europeans fleeing war, has brought the refugee experience one degree closer to us all. Becoming a refugee is in no one’s life plan, but unfortunately, it may be in the future of many more people’s lives. None of us can be sure that we are safe from this precarious label.
It feels a privilege to work amongst so many immigrants; to discover the real stories behind the headlines, to learn people’s names, to hear about lives in their home countries, and to hear their overwhelmingly positive stories of how they are treated by British people. In my experience it seems that we are a nation who don’t like the faceless ‘hordes’ but we are very happy to help individuals and families who become our new neighbours. My students often tell me heart-warming stories of the small kindnesses done by their neighbours: help in figuring out the recycling bins, baking a cake for them, giving toys to their children.
My classes are usually relaxed, positive places, but occasionally there are moments that make the ground beneath me shake. Moments like the time a teenager the same age as my son talked about his journey across Europe, sleeping outside and waking up with frozen arms, unable to move them because he had no coat or jumper. Or moments when I am shown a photo on a mobile phone that leaves me struggling for words, and which invades my dreams for days afterwards. When your students are refugees and asylum seekers there is no TV screen to separate you from the stories of horror and grief.
In one class, a ripple of loss turned into a wave that broke across the room one day as every student present recounted a family member lost to the conflicts in their home countries. A son, a husband, a brother, a father. Minutes earlier we had been trying to understand a challenging English grammar point, then a comment was made, and wounds opened. In another class many years ago, just after the horrific 2004 Beslan school siege, a Russian babushka cried as she recounted her years teaching at the school nearby, the families she would have known. Thankfully, moments like this are rare, and the classes usually offer a respite to the difficulties and tragedies which lie outside the classroom.
I have been teaching ESOL for over twenty years and in some ways my career has run parallel to migration trends around the world. My first experience of teaching refugees was with a Bosnian family in 2001. I am now teaching refugees from Ukraine. I have taught students from at least fifty-five countries in the intervening years, many of these students migrating by choice for work and study, many being forced to migrate by war and persecution. And after doing this job for so long, there is one thing that I know with certainty: anyone could be a refugee or asylum seeker. None of us are safe from that label. Because refugees and asylum seekers are people like you and me. The war in Ukraine has forever altered our image of the ‘typical’ refugee. Seeing white Europeans fleeing war, has brought the refugee experience one degree closer to us all. Becoming a refugee is in no one’s life plan, but unfortunately, it may be in the future of many more people’s lives. None of us can be sure that we are safe from this precarious label.
2
I AM IN A HOTEL BAR at 9am on a Wednesday morning. Sepia lighting hazes from the dusty glass light fittings. There are floor-length red velvet curtains at the windows, hunting scenes on the walls, dark oak furniture. It feels like a Berni Inn, circa 1980. A mirror-glazed bar runs along the width of the room from which my English worksheets keep sliding off – no sticky alcoholic crescents to keep them in place. As I teach, my wonky-legged whiteboard and I are reflected in the mirrors that run behind the row of (empty) alcoholic optics, an unsettling experience. The beer taps, trophies of an alcohol-loving nation, are empty. The bar has been dry for over a year.
I am teaching a group of Afghans, resettled here by a UK government scheme after the Taliban takeover in 2021 and all living temporarily in this hotel. The small round tables which would normally hold pints now hold pens and worksheets, flashcards instead of beer mats. There is a baby sleeping in a car seat half under one of the tables. Her mum is keen to improve her English but worried about her other child who is in their room upstairs with dad, too sick to go to school today. The class is punctuated by the comings and goings of the students. Most of the men have Job Centre appointments today, and at half hour intervals, politely excuse themselves, ‘Sorry, teacher, I have appointment’, and walk into town to tell the Job Centre that no, they haven’t found work yet. Their level of English is a barrier to finding employment and starting their new lives. That is why I am here with teaching colleagues, providing an intensive English course. In the break, I hear of the students’ frustration in not being able to work, not being able to provide for their families, not having their own home, how they would be happy to build their own houses. They are anxious for their new lives to start.
For this class I have an interpreter, an unusual thing in an ESOL class, but because of the relatively low levels of English and the miraculous availability of some extra funding, this is a wonderful opportunity for everyone involved. The students ask me lots of questions about British culture and the English language. The question today is why British people put their elderly relatives in institutions rather than caring for them within their family. Other questions have been asked about why London doesn’t have more skyscrapers, whether my husband and I drink alcohol, and why travelling by train is so expensive in the UK. Some questions are easier to answer than others.
We have many military men in the class, several teachers, drivers, nurses, a PhD science student, a chef. These are highly skilled people. There is a group of young women, newly arrived and incredibly keen to attend lessons. They seem desperately disappointed when called away to do some domestic task for their family or babysit their younger siblings. These young women in their late teens absorb the lessons in a way that many of the older students aren’t able to, and their quick progress sends a thrill of satisfaction through me which is tempered by a leaden unease about their uncertain future. There is an older man in the class, tall and serious in his Afghan pakol hat who has very little English. I learn, from the interpreter, that this man is considering returning to Afghanistan. He and his wife are finding the many challenges of life in the UK too exhausting. After three days in the class, I am heartened to hear the man say a simple sentence in English. Then he smiles. I don’t know which of us is more thrilled.
I am teaching a group of Afghans, resettled here by a UK government scheme after the Taliban takeover in 2021 and all living temporarily in this hotel. The small round tables which would normally hold pints now hold pens and worksheets, flashcards instead of beer mats. There is a baby sleeping in a car seat half under one of the tables. Her mum is keen to improve her English but worried about her other child who is in their room upstairs with dad, too sick to go to school today. The class is punctuated by the comings and goings of the students. Most of the men have Job Centre appointments today, and at half hour intervals, politely excuse themselves, ‘Sorry, teacher, I have appointment’, and walk into town to tell the Job Centre that no, they haven’t found work yet. Their level of English is a barrier to finding employment and starting their new lives. That is why I am here with teaching colleagues, providing an intensive English course. In the break, I hear of the students’ frustration in not being able to work, not being able to provide for their families, not having their own home, how they would be happy to build their own houses. They are anxious for their new lives to start.
For this class I have an interpreter, an unusual thing in an ESOL class, but because of the relatively low levels of English and the miraculous availability of some extra funding, this is a wonderful opportunity for everyone involved. The students ask me lots of questions about British culture and the English language. The question today is why British people put their elderly relatives in institutions rather than caring for them within their family. Other questions have been asked about why London doesn’t have more skyscrapers, whether my husband and I drink alcohol, and why travelling by train is so expensive in the UK. Some questions are easier to answer than others.
We have many military men in the class, several teachers, drivers, nurses, a PhD science student, a chef. These are highly skilled people. There is a group of young women, newly arrived and incredibly keen to attend lessons. They seem desperately disappointed when called away to do some domestic task for their family or babysit their younger siblings. These young women in their late teens absorb the lessons in a way that many of the older students aren’t able to, and their quick progress sends a thrill of satisfaction through me which is tempered by a leaden unease about their uncertain future. There is an older man in the class, tall and serious in his Afghan pakol hat who has very little English. I learn, from the interpreter, that this man is considering returning to Afghanistan. He and his wife are finding the many challenges of life in the UK too exhausting. After three days in the class, I am heartened to hear the man say a simple sentence in English. Then he smiles. I don’t know which of us is more thrilled.
3
THE FAINT SMELL OF CAMPHOR signalled that my core group of students were arriving. Smiling, elderly Nepalese men and women walked into the church hall calling out a chorus of ‘hello teacher’. A group of retired Gurkha soldiers and their families had been resettled in the local area after the success of the Gurkha Justice Campaign and each Friday a large group of them attended our community ESOL class. Almost all were over retirement age. Most of the men, retired military men, had decent English but most of the women had very limited education in their own language and very little English. We tried to separate them into small groups depending on their level of ability, an imperfect technique especially when friends refused to be separated!
Our lessons with the lowest level group in the early days were frustrating, it felt like no progress was being made. I would point to the small whiteboard showing the same words week after week, draw bad pictures and gesticulate wildly all to no avail. Blank smiling faces stared back at me, almost beatific in their confusion. The women (and an eighty-year-old man) didn’t seem to mind at all and once we realised that this weekly jaunt was a group outing for them, less about language learning and more about exploring their new environment together, we adapted both our lessons and our expectations. We all started to have more fun. Not long afterwards a new phrase was born: ‘same same’. Whenever we stumbled across one of the thousands of synonyms in English, we teachers would use the universal sign for same (two index fingers together) and say ‘same’. This would cause the students to murmur, ‘ah, same same’, and eventually we began to use this instead of our finger sign. I still use this phrase with students today, years later.
The women were Himalayan culinary angels, as evidenced at our Christmas parties or special class events when the classroom tables turned into sumptuous feasts of spicy vegetables, fragrant salads and deep-fried treats. So we tried to equip them with the vocabulary they needed to be able to go to the market in their little groups and buy groceries. The outdoor market was a short walk from the church hall and when the students left our class they all headed up to buy their fruit and vegetables from the market traders. After months of them attending classes, it was with huge satisfaction that I walked past on my way home one day and saw some of the women with the market traders asking for bananas and mangos by themselves, without relying on their husbands. A chorus of ‘hello teacher’ followed me as I waved and smiled, feeling proud as a mother hen. And I’m sure I heard a murmur of ‘same same’ as they picked over the fruit and vegetables.
Our lessons with the lowest level group in the early days were frustrating, it felt like no progress was being made. I would point to the small whiteboard showing the same words week after week, draw bad pictures and gesticulate wildly all to no avail. Blank smiling faces stared back at me, almost beatific in their confusion. The women (and an eighty-year-old man) didn’t seem to mind at all and once we realised that this weekly jaunt was a group outing for them, less about language learning and more about exploring their new environment together, we adapted both our lessons and our expectations. We all started to have more fun. Not long afterwards a new phrase was born: ‘same same’. Whenever we stumbled across one of the thousands of synonyms in English, we teachers would use the universal sign for same (two index fingers together) and say ‘same’. This would cause the students to murmur, ‘ah, same same’, and eventually we began to use this instead of our finger sign. I still use this phrase with students today, years later.
The women were Himalayan culinary angels, as evidenced at our Christmas parties or special class events when the classroom tables turned into sumptuous feasts of spicy vegetables, fragrant salads and deep-fried treats. So we tried to equip them with the vocabulary they needed to be able to go to the market in their little groups and buy groceries. The outdoor market was a short walk from the church hall and when the students left our class they all headed up to buy their fruit and vegetables from the market traders. After months of them attending classes, it was with huge satisfaction that I walked past on my way home one day and saw some of the women with the market traders asking for bananas and mangos by themselves, without relying on their husbands. A chorus of ‘hello teacher’ followed me as I waved and smiled, feeling proud as a mother hen. And I’m sure I heard a murmur of ‘same same’ as they picked over the fruit and vegetables.
4
SOMETIMES I WONDER what kind of language student I would be if I had been forced to flee my home country. Would I feel able to learn another language? Would I be able to make the strange sounds of my new language? Contort my lips, my tongue and my throat into new patterns? Would my hands be able to make the shapes of the new alphabet, maybe write from right to left? Would I want to? Would I try? Would I be too traumatised from loss, too exhausted? Too distraught from losing my home, my family, my career? Too devastated from the loss of status and respect that I had in my previous life to be able to concentrate on the basics of a whole new language?
Would I be like Amir who speaks louder and louder the more he is misunderstood? Or would I be like Veronika who has developed her own dizzyingly idiosyncratic style of English that enables her to communicate to a certain level but is unable to progress any further, even after ten years in the UK. Or would I be like Farzad, talking confidently and fast with most of the right words but in the wrong order. Or like Oxana, with her grammatically accurate writing lulling you into thinking that she can speak with the same degree of accuracy…or like Abid whose error prone writing belies the fact that he is verbally proficient. Or would I be like Mohib, frustrated that he doesn’t understand more, unable to express himself in this strange new language that he lives amongst and forced to communicate in child-like sentences that cause him pain as they leave his lips.
These are questions that keep me awake in the small hours of the night when safety and security seem like a gossamer thin roof over my life. Today I am a teacher. Tomorrow I could be a student. Tomorrow I could be a refugee.
Author’s note:
Thank you to the students from the following countries who I have had the privilege to teach over the last 22 years and who have tolerated my truly awful drawing skills. I hope my teaching skills are considerably better.
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Bosnia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Guinea, Congo (DRC), Togo, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Cote D’Ivoire, Libya, Egypt, Kuwait, Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, French Guyana, Mexico, Philippines.
Would I be like Amir who speaks louder and louder the more he is misunderstood? Or would I be like Veronika who has developed her own dizzyingly idiosyncratic style of English that enables her to communicate to a certain level but is unable to progress any further, even after ten years in the UK. Or would I be like Farzad, talking confidently and fast with most of the right words but in the wrong order. Or like Oxana, with her grammatically accurate writing lulling you into thinking that she can speak with the same degree of accuracy…or like Abid whose error prone writing belies the fact that he is verbally proficient. Or would I be like Mohib, frustrated that he doesn’t understand more, unable to express himself in this strange new language that he lives amongst and forced to communicate in child-like sentences that cause him pain as they leave his lips.
These are questions that keep me awake in the small hours of the night when safety and security seem like a gossamer thin roof over my life. Today I am a teacher. Tomorrow I could be a student. Tomorrow I could be a refugee.
Author’s note:
Thank you to the students from the following countries who I have had the privilege to teach over the last 22 years and who have tolerated my truly awful drawing skills. I hope my teaching skills are considerably better.
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Bosnia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Guinea, Congo (DRC), Togo, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Cote D’Ivoire, Libya, Egypt, Kuwait, Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, French Guyana, Mexico, Philippines.
Vicky Turner lives in the South of England and has spent over twenty years teaching English in both the UK and the USA. As a writer, she is often inspired by her teaching work with teenagers, refugees and asylum seekers. As well as being a teacher and a writer, she is a runner, a reader and a traveller.
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