September 2001 is probably best remembered for a tragic world event. In that same September I started a new job teaching English to adults in a London language school. It had two branches, one near the BBC and the other branch about twenty minutes walk away and not far from the river. Apparently Gustav Holst the composer lived upstairs in one of the pubs on the riverfront. This part of London had a very large Polish population and this was reflected in the large number of Polish students in the school and in the classes. One class I took had twelve Polish students, and eight of them were called Agnieszka. They were all very different, but to indicate which student I was addressing, I referred to the students as Agnieszka B or Agnieszka J, depending on their family names. For our Christmas parties, we would go to local Polish restaurants. Not the best choice for me, as I don’t like cabbage and it seemed to be a staple food in the restaurants. I did learn some Polish words though. ‘Kapusta’ meant ‘cabbage’ and ‘czesc’ for ‘Hello’.
For the first year or so, I taught afternoon and evenings in the school, so had to realign my body clock to deal with my new working day compared to when I’d been working in a bank and getting up very early. One of my evening class students (not Polish) used to turn up for lessons and always fell asleep. I thought perhaps it was because he’d been working all day and was very tired. Then one night another student asked if I knew why the ‘tired’ student smelt of alcohol. I hadn’t noticed, but one evening he decided to involve me in a face-to-face conversation. That evening I received aromatic proof that he’d been to the pub before my lesson. I’m pleased to say that not many students have ever needed alcohol to get through one of my lessons. Not to the best of my knowledge anyway. I made many friends at this school of both teachers and students. I’m still in touch with some of them fifteen to twenty years later. It was probably my favourite school to work in. However, I had decided on English language teaching as a career and as much as I liked working at the school, there seemed to be little opportunity for progress. In my last year at the school and because I was considered an ‘old timer’, I used to get the Cambridge exams classes (then called FCE, Advanced and Proficiency). Some teachers I knew (in all schools) used to coast lessons, but you couldn’t do that with the exam classes. There was a lot of preparation, but I found teaching them enjoyable. Some of my students received an ‘A’ grade for their proficiency exam which is all the more impressive considering these exams would be difficult for some native English speakers. I left this school in early July 2005 and started my next school the following week.
