What to teach them?

Since July 2022 I have given pro bono English lessons to Ukrainian refugees in my town. I'm not a professional teacher and it was 40 years since I taught English to foreign students in my summer holidays from school and university.

A big range of abilities came to the lessons in the first months, many recently arrived in a strange country with just a few belongings, after a long and harrowing trip. Some didn't know our alphabet, some understood a few words of English and some could hold a halting conversation. There was no syllabus and no equipment, so I created lessons on the fly, adapting them for whoever turned up.

Over these years many of my 'students' have moved and and others have moved in. Some of my 'old' students now send their kids or their parents for lessons with me. Ages now range from nine to 78.

Giving the lessons is easy and fun. We always have lots of laughs. Always. Preparing the lessons is more of a challenge. I create each lesson from scratch, or on the basis of lessons I did before. There are plenty of ESL resources online, but I haven't found any that work for the free-wheeling needs of my students and me.

One of the quiet joys of this work is finding English anew—through beginner’s eyes and ears. I look for small things that make a big difference. Recently, we explored the eight different meanings of just, the subtle difference between make and do, and the most common vowel sound in English: the schwa. It’s everywhere, and yet it has no letter of its own in any language I know. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it’s written as [ə].

Every lesson reminds me that the best teaching often happens when we approach familiar subjects with fresh curiosity, when we're willing to see our own language through someone else's eyes, and when we remember that connection and joy are just as important as proper grammar.

The question "What to teach them?" has evolved into "What will we learn together?" And that, I've learned, makes all the difference.