Teaching English at Homeless Charity

Hello I’m Jagtar and I teach English at IH London. I am currently working on a special IH project teaching ESOL at a homeless charity called Crisis.

What is ESOL? It is an acronym for ‘English for Speakers of Other Languages’ and it is what we teach foreign students who live in an English-speaking country.

Teaching at Crisis
The students who I teach at Crisis are either homeless, have been homeless within the past five years, or are at risk of being homeless. Many of the students are economic and political refugees so teaching them is very interesting as well as challenging.

During the past term I have taught classes at Elementary, Intermediate and Upper-intermediate levels and each class has changed slightly during our term as sometimes students come and go, and we need to change our courses to accommodate the changing students.

Raising Money for Classroom Materials
This year at IH we put on an event called IH The Musical (which I was a part of) and the money raised went to Crisis and the Pakistan Flood Appeal. With the money, I have managed to buy the necessary items to make the Interactive White Board in our classroom work. The effect this has had on our students has been phenomenal, and it’s great seeing students respond well to the fabulous technology.

Teaching English with Music
I am currently working on a short ESOL and Music course which is based on the popular musical called The Sound of Music. Students will learn language through the songs and explore the themes raised. Hopefully this will end with the students recording new versions of the songs, although I will have to see how much they respond to the course first!

In my next post I will tell you how the course is going and also give you a more in-depth report on what we do at Crisis.

Bye for now,

Jagtar Behal