Case study – learner involvement and journey
Student A is 31 years old and has a British wife. Educated to secondary school level, she worked for 5 years in the Central Asian country she is from, initially as an administrator for an NGO supporting people with AIDS. Later she progressed to lead a national LGBT organisation in her home country. She met her wife in her country which is where they got married.
Student A began studying at Morley College in September 2013 where she has attended three different courses.
In the first term she studied on the ESOL Entry 1 Citizenship and the ESOL Job Club. In the second and third term she continued with the ESOL Entry 1 Citizenship and enrolled on the Tulse Hill Singing Group at Rotunda in the third term. She also started volunteering at the Greenhouse, a local gardening project.
Her class has fifteen students, thirteen women and two men. Seven languages are spoken in the class: Arabic (x2), Kurdish, Turkish, French, Farsi, Tigrinya and Spanish (X7). Some of them are employed as cleaners or in low skills jobs; others are on benefits or being supported by their spouse. They vary greatly in terms of their language and literacy skills. The group is supported by a volunteer in class who works with students who have lower levels of literacy.
Description of LGBT integration within ESOL E1 over 3 terms.
· Term 1 : induction, stories , application forms
The induction of the ESOL E1 Citizenship includes a PowerPoint presentation which features visual representation of a range of people to depict the 9 protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010. During the induction presentation the course tutor elicits vocabulary to describe the people featured (old, young, black, pregnant, Muslim, disabled, etc). The intention is to expose the students to the equality and diversity policy of the college in a way which is accessible to people who have low levels of language and literacy.
The slide shows the words ‘respect everybody’. During the induction a group of male South American students in the group giggled at the mention of the word gay. This was immediately challenged by the teacher. She emphasised that being gay is ok, everyone is ok and everyone is welcome and safe to study at Morley College.
The content of the first term heavily focused on embedding a range of E&D themes within the content of the courses. The class tutor wrote a series of stories which focused on different aspects of the protected characteristics. Amongst the stories studied in class, one featured someone with mental health issues, another had a pregnant single mother and one had a lesbian couple as the focus for developing reading skills, paragraphing and sentence construction. ‘Daniella’ the story featuring a lesbian couple, only mentioned the sexual orientation of the character in the last sentence of the text studied which read: ‘My wife is English and she works in a big office in the city.’ The reaction to the text varied greatly within the group. During the lesson some students giggled and laughed at the story. One student queried the gender of Daniella, being confused by the use of the personal pronoun ‘she’ in relation to wife. She thought that Daniella was a man and could not understand why the text read ‘her wife’. Again the tutor explained that the story was about a lesbian. The students answered true / false comprehension questions about the story and identified the capital letters within the text.
Student A came out to her teacher at the end of that lesson, stating that she had felt uncomfortable by the reaction of some of her classmates, briefly describing how difficult it was to be LGBT in her home country. The tutor reassured her and offered support, clearly stating that it was safe for her to be at the college. She asked Student A to report back any issues that may arise.
Later in the term Student A attended the LGBT student focus group which is part of the EDIF project. She was surprised to see how few people were there and wanted to have further information about why the college was doing LGBT and its relation with ESOL. She stated that she had come to college to learn English, not explore sexual orientation.
· Term 2: LGBT HM (3) , Common Ground exhibition and Curriculum Pilot
Using the cross college celebration of LGBT HM exhibition to further reinforce the work carried out in the first term. The group attended an internal exhibition of 26 famous LGBT people (most of them British) which had an accompanying writing competition aiming to identify the people featured. As most students in this group were not familiar with the personalities featured in the exhibition, the lesson used the exhibition to teach ESOL students 11 jobs and practice the present simple 3rd person ‘s’, for example a singer is someone who sings. The students also practiced following simple directions to get to the exhibition (see curriculum section for further information). The lesson plan and accompanying teaching resources are available to download on the EDIF website as part of the curriculum pilot. http://www.equalitiestoolkit.com/content/educate-out-prejudice
The tutor also encouraged Student A to deliver a presentation as part of LGBT History Month. The programme featured four LGBT perspectives over three weeks:
o Local and national perspectives
o Gender and identity perspectives (including trans* perspectives)
o Musical and artistic perspectives
o International perspectives
Her talk fitted with the day focusing on international LGBT perspectives (see raising awareness section for further information). Student A talked to a group of staff and students about being LGBT in her country. Her wife came to translate questions that were raised at the end of her presentation.
Later in the term Student A contributed to the Queering ESOL seminar on Sexual Migration and the ESOL classroom at the University of Leeds on 29th March 2014 http://queeringesol.wordpress.com/seminar-2/
· Term 3: Dissemination events
No specific work done in terms of LGBT integration in term 3. The topics of the lessons focused on practicalities of living in London, including health and transport.
As part of this project Student A is attending the 3 dissemination events of the project.
A movie was made about her experience which will be screened at the three dissemination events where she will be available to share her experiences. More information about the dissemination events can be found on this link http://www.equalitiestoolkit.com/
Impact of Educate Out Prejudice and the curriculum pilot on Student A
In addition to supporting her language and skills development, the integration of LGBT lives and issues within her class have enabled Student A to achieve / gain:
· Greater confidence in self and ability to get involved in extra-curricular activities
· Raised self-esteem and improved social skills
· Identification of career prospects and job possibilities ( either find a job working for an LGBT organisation in the UK or go to university)
· Increased participation in class discussion and ability to do pair work with everyone in the group
· Taking part in social activities
· Volunteer position within her local community
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