This is part of our Spotlight series, shining a light on the work happening across KLS.
This month, meet Kirsty, a member of our staff team who leads the Community Learning Programme at KLS, supporting adults to build confidence in English and connect with the wider community.
“It’s not a light version of college. There’s a lot of meat in it still.”
“A few times, people have come and they have started crying because they have not been able to write their name, or their children’s names, and they have never done it before. Some of these women are in their 60s and 70s. This is their first experience of a classroom. They arrive at that first session saying I don’t know anything, I’m never going to be able to do it, translated through their daughters usually. And then seeing them improve, being able to write their name, answering you in fuller sentences when you say how are you. That’s quite touching.
The programme is for people who don’t use English as their first language and are interested in improving their reading, writing, speaking and listening. It’s person-centred and confidence-building. Not based on assessments or grades. It’s about building skills for everyday life, being able to engage with the community, with children’s schools, with public services. Some people have already been through the exam-based college system and it hasn’t worked for them. This approach allows them to make progress in a different way that is helpful for them.
Across the week there are four English language sessions – two focused on conversation and two on reading and writing – alongside workshops from outside organisations and, when the weather allows, a Walk and Talk group. Groups split by level, from new to the language through to more intermediate. It might be a fiction half term, so they’re reading stories they’d then be able to read with their children. Or practising filling in a form for the GP, or writing a letter of complaint. And comparing what they’re reading to their own cultures and backgrounds. Alongside the sessions there are workshops from outside organisations, Citizens Advice Bureau have come in on housing rights and how to advocate for yourself, and a parenting programme covering wellbeing for new mums and building relationships with children. When the weather allows, there’s also a Walk and Talk group.
The free creche is really an integral part of it, and it’s free. Colleges don’t have that facility. It’s expensive, it’s unreachable, and people don’t necessarily trust other people with their children. The creche team are all people who had been students in the programme previously, very embedded in it and knowing the real ethos of it. That trust matters.
It’s not a deficit-focused approach. It’s about what do you have already, what can you bring. The learners teach each other and they teach the volunteers too. If somebody starts talking about something they’re really good at, or their previous experience in the country they were born in, that’s worth more than sticking to the lesson plan.
Last year, someone came who had been in her final year of a law degree when the Taliban came in. She couldn’t finish. She came to the UK with small children and wasn’t able to complete it. Being able to come and improve her language, to then go back to academic study – that’s been a really good outcome. I like being part of that.
There are funny moments too. We were reading The Hound of the Baskervilles and one woman just refused to use the word hound. It’s a big dog, she kept saying, I don’t need this hound word. By the end of the session she was announcing that the hound kills him in the story. And there was an older lady practising the future tense who said, deadly serious, that her dream was to be an astronaut. She really wanted to fly and go to space. Fully serious about it.
Just because this kind of approach is more sensitive and person-centred, it doesn’t mean it’s not knowledge-rich and full of learning opportunities. It’s not a light version of college. There’s a lot of meat in it still.”