Imagine returning home to Nova Scotia from Japan and almost immediately volunteering to organize an ESL program for Kosovar refugees. This was exactly the situation facing EFL teacher John Hall about nine years ago. Fortunately for the Kosovar students, John had received his CTEFLA (now known as the CELTA), and had over three years experience teaching English in Japan. The other volunteers, however, included public school teachers who were willing to help but untrained in ESL and “a handful of underemployed university students with nothing better to do.” Given that somewhere around 80% of the 300+ refugees had no English at all and there was a shortage of Albanian language interpreters – organizing these ESL classes was no small task.

But let’s start at the beginning - how did this whole scenario come to be?

In 1999, refugee camps sprung up in Macedonia to temporarily accommodate Kosovars who had been driven from their homes by Milosevic’s military forces. Around the same time, Canada began to consider accepting Kosovar refugees. “It just so happened that some new buildings were also just getting their finishing touches put on them at the military base in my hometown, and what better place would there be to put the refugees upon arriving in Canada?” The stay at the military base was also temporary; ultimately the refugees would either stay with sponsors elsewhere in Canada or perhaps return to Kosovo later on.

John got involved when a friend talked him into volunteering for a well-known NGO, initially intending to teach English for a couple of hours a week. But when he discovered that he was the only one with EFL experience, John ended up volunteering to take a real leadership role.

“We had no books and no volunteers who knew how to teach English except myself…So, I had to be administrator, teacher-trainer, and teacher all at the same time. Needless to say, I soon found myself going to the military base early in the morning and leaving late at night, every day.”

Visit the TEFL Logue to find out more about the students and what classes were like, as well as John’s insight on the specific ESL teaching skills he utilized and built on in this experience.

One additional challenge – and one which is probably not all that rare for volunteers – was a bureaucratic one:

“After I had been running the “program” for a month, the NGO’s lawyer informed us that the NGO does not teach English. Suddenly, I was entirely on my own, and not responsible to anyone. I also realized that if I went to the Canadian immigration authorities at the base and told them that, then probably my English classes would be put on hold indefinitely…So I didn’t say anything about it! People were used to seeing me come every day, and I just continued to do everything as usual.”

The program ended almost as quickly as it had begun after three months, when the refugees moved on. Head back on over to the TEFL Logue for the final chapter of the story.

Overall, I think this is a great example of the value of the volunteer labor of those with appropriate professional experience and qualifications. Of course for the refugees learning English is a very practical skill. But I think there’s another reason why classes are so useful: the experience of being forced out of your home, transplanted to another country halfway across the world, and left unaware of what has happened to many loved ones must be overwhelming. And on top of all that – you have little to do all day except dwell on that. I think in that light the benefits of classes are even clearer. So hats off to John and others like him, who use their professional experience not only to help the “recipients” but also to train others to do the same thing.