Teaching English, must have cake!

Each Tuesday I help teach English to people from other countries who are living and working in Weston. It’s purely voluntary and it is great fun – all the joys of teaching without the paperwork. Organised chaos is the best way to describe it – not because we don’t plan, or organise what we are going to do, we do that very thoroughly.

However, because of the nature of the group of students we have, who have other commitments including work and childcare, and those who are learning and improving their English in order to get full-time employment, our classes vary from week to week. We have a core of people who always come, those who come when they can, and those who leave us for various reasons – moving house, leaving England, getting a job, having a baby…

There are other people who come just once and maybe decide our group isn’t right for them, and though they have enjoyed th class, we don’t see them again. Suddenly there might be an influx of new people – one week we had seven new Spanish people we had never seen before! Exciting! Then we had three young men who were refugees – it turned out that they were of school age so they went into local schools. A few weeks ago, three young people from East Timor arrived… we get people from all over the world! it’s wonderful!

For example, today we had one Thai lady, three Malaysian people, about six Chinese people from different provinces of China, a lady from Chile, a lady from Spain, a lady from Poland and a man from Bulgaria. Altogether, over the years, we have had students from over thirty different countries, and from every continent except North America and Antarctica!

There is always a coffee-break…. and nearly always a reason for cake!

… birthdays

…birthdays

…anniversary…

There maybe many words for cake… but the enjoyment is always the same!