Full of examples of how to successfully integrate students, two teachers at a secondary school with a high percentage of pupils from immigrant and refugee backgrounds share their techniques for helping students settle in.
Bristol Metropolitan Academy has over 30 language backgrounds, with students coming from countries as varied as Somalia and Poland.
Teachers Basia Everett, from Poland, and Deborah Lewisohn Aikman, from the USA, both love their work. As strangers in a new country they empathise with the fears of their pupils and have both devised an approach which especially allows for pupils to express their feelings as well as learn English.
Both teachers describe how their motivations have helped them work with SEN students and how their teaching goes beyond EAL issues, and includes making their pupils feel safe place and happy about their new home.
