ESOL and Cleaning: Let's Celebrate Success!

Dusters, brushes, mops, polish – you name it - we had the contents of our cleaning cupboard at Coventry Jesus Centre laid out in the main hall where we run classes ... If you can’t find the hoover, folks, or the mop and bucket, it just might (probably will be) in the classroom!

After a visit to the powers-that-be at the Job Centreplus last year, I was told that most of our ESOL students, if lucky to get a job at all, are best placed to be cleaners so I decided to write a tailor-made course for them – ‘ESOL and Cleaning’. (ESOL stands for English for Speakers of Other Languages.)

It was great fun. What better way to learn prepositions? Mop behind the table, sweep next to the fridge and don’t forget to clean under the table!

  
We practised heavy lifting, got our heads around cleaning codes and working with dangerous chemicals, practised putting on PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and filling in accident reports – all with plenty of laughs but what a great learning experience! How about drilling (modelling and practising pronunciation) ‘suspicious object found in the toilets!’

Last Monday was a great day. We gave out certificate for those who had achieved 85% attendance and had a celebration. Why not? Celebrating success is very important to us. For some of our students, our in-house attendance certificates are the first they ever achieve! And, hey, if they manage to get a much-coveting cleaning job they will be better equipped! ‘ESOL and Cleaning’ certificate, here we come!”