ESOL Scotland

The violent events that have erupted across the country in recent days are deeply unsettling and distressing. At ESOL Scotland, we are profoundly concerned for the safety and well-being of our learners, many of whom come from migrant, refugee, and asylum seeker backgrounds. We stand in unwavering solidarity with them, condemning any acts of violence, racism, and hatred that threaten the fabric of our communities.

Scotland has a long and proud history of being a welcoming nation, consistently accepting more refugees than any other part of the UK. This tradition of openness is something we cherish and actively support through our work. We believe that every individual who comes to Scotland deserves the opportunity to build a life in a community that values respect, cultural tolerance, and integration.

Our role at ESOL Scotland is not just to teach language, but to help our learners find a sense of belonging and confidence in their new home. We understand the challenges they face and are committed to providing a safe space where they can learn, grow, and connect with others. Our mission is to empower our learners to fully participate in Scottish society, contributing to its rich cultural tapestry.

In the face of recent unrest, we are reminded of the importance of standing together against those who seek to sow division and fear. Our communities are resilient, and through continued support and education, we will strengthen the bonds that unite us. We are committed to ensuring that Scotland remains a place where all people, regardless of their origin, are welcomed and valued.

Together, we will continue to build a future grounded in understanding, empathy, and mutual respect, ensuring that the values of inclusion and solidarity are upheld in every corner of our society.

We are now ESOL SCOTLAND! 🥳

📚For 20 years, Glasgow ESOL Forum delivered high-quality ESOL services in Glasgow. Now as ESOL Scotland, we hope to achieve more!

💪We want to embrace the depth and range of our expertise, to add further stature to our work and to lend ourselves more to the myriad ways we might expand that work.

💪We hope to grow our reputation as a guiding force for good in ESOL, to strengthen our partnerships and to unite the vast range of community groups, voluntary organisations and ESOL providers across the country.

🙏Thank you to all our volunteer tutors, sessional tutors, staff past and present, community partners, board members and funders. Onwards! 🎉

BIG NEWS! 🥳📣

We have officially changed our name to.... ESOL SCOTLAND!

We are making some changes here at the organisation formerly known as Glasgow ESOL Forum - we want to embrace the depth and range of our expertise, add further stature to our work and to lend ourselves more to the myriad ways we might expand that work. Watch this space!

Our logo, social media and email addresses will change in the coming weeks so WATCH THIS SPACE!

With HUGE thanks to all of you who have supported us for the last 20 years,
The ESOL Scotland Team 🙂🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

SOMETHING IS COOKING 🤫🕵️‍♀️

We are combining our 70+ years of teaching experience and producing something really special for learners and teachers in our community classes. What could it be?

Register your interest now! 👇

Follow this link https://forms.gle/5dfisTd7bKj9PAvV7 to book your place at one of our Volunteer Information Sessions or to register your interest generally. We are running these sessions in our offices in Bridgeton, Glasgow. You can find out about the different ways you can help us, different pathways to teaching ESOL and the work we do - not to mention meeting some lovely people!

Anybody with an English level at Higher or above is welcome to volunteer - we're particularly keen to welcome volunteers with lived experience of the asylum system or with teaching experience, but these are not requirements.

It's that time of year again! 🫶👋

We're saying goodbye to learners as they head for pastures new - a bittersweet time! This is our National 4 class, their teacher Janice, the ESOL in the Community Development Workers Jaclynne and Ellie and also our learner Tony, who is progressing to National 5 in college.

Well done everyone! We wish you the very best with your future plans. Keep in touch! 🥳

What a wonderful time we had at our Refugee Festival celebration "All You Knead is Love" at the Garnethill Multicultural Centre last Friday!

This year we joined together with and West Integration Network and their event "Rise and Shine" event. We were able to watch and taste beautiful flatbreads as they were being made, there were lovely recipe books on offer which many of our own ESOL learners had contributed to. Our partners at CWIN had organised a beautiful art exhibition, some heartwarming ukulele music from their group "Gies Peace", circle dancing which everyone was invited to join in with and their did the incredible job of feeding us all with a delicious and diverse range of dishes!

Thank you to the team at Festival Scotland for all your support and to everyone who wrote recipes, helped out and came along to make this event the joy that it was!

We can't get enough of screen printing! 🎨
This time, visited Ellie, Eileen and the women from one of our closed groups and they had a beautiful session making tote bags. Look at their lovely work 😍

📓🖋ESOL Summer School with Dennistoun Baptist Church!🖋📓

A great opportunity to meet new people and practice your English during the summer at Whitehill Secondary School!

🟠All levels welcome!
🟡Childcare Available!
🟣You must register to attend.

Follow this link to register: https://shorturl.at/6NZYX

Do you have political candidates and canvassers knocking on your door? Now's your chance!

If you'd like to talk to different political parties about ESOL provision in Glasgow, Scotland and beyond, here are some questions that might be good to ask. What other questions might be helpful/do you intend to ask? Put in the comments below! 👇

We're so excited to have Mohammad from Central and West Integration Network as one of our two expert bread demonstrators at our "All Your Knead is Love" event at the Refugee Festival this Friday! He will be showing us how to make Kelaneh, a type of Kurdish flatbread. One of our wonderful ESOL learners Shazia will also be teaching us how to make the perfect chapati.

Bread demonstrations start at 11am and will only run for about an hour so come on time if you don't want to miss this!

Find out more and register at this link - https://www.refugeefestivalscotland.co.uk/events/event/all-you-knead-is-love-العجن-هو-الحب/

FESTIVAL PREP! 🌷

Here are Dinushriya and Sahar hard at work making beautiful decorations for our event this coming Friday! These two and a troop of superstar volunteers and learners made decorative flowers and bunting for the event and had a lovely peaceful afternoon of creativity.

Come and see us at our event 'All You Knead is Love' where there will be bread-making demonstrations, recipe sharing, a community meal, performances and much much more!

The event will be from 11am-2pm at Garnethill Multicultural Centre, 21 Rose Street, Glasgow.

🥳 ONE WEEK TO GO! 🍞

It's one week until our event with for Refugee Festival Scotland 2024! Join us from 11am for a wide range of activities lead by our learners and partners, celebrating this year's theme 'Rise'. You can sign up by clicking the link in the comments below See you there!

Garnethill Multicultural Centre
21 Rose St, Glasgow G3 6RE

ESOL & NUMERACY PROJECT 🗓🧮📐

Last week our learner H received her certificate of completion for her Digital Skills and Numeracy course at .uk ! Well done, H! Excellent work 🥳

Here she is with her tutor Mark and Development Worker John.

And so we come to the end of Volunteers Week, 2024!

This week our Volunteer Tutors have received lovely 'thank you' messages from lots of learners - some sent privately and others shared across social media per learners wishes. The main theme has been the outpouring of appreciation, gratitude and affection for all our volunteers. We couldn't agree more! Thankyou for all your hard work, everyone!

If you would like to register your interest in volunteering with us, click here: https://forms.gle/16vp9ymReWhjhhCa7

Refugee Festival Event 2024!

We are delighted to announce we are hosting an event in partnership with as part of Refugee Festival Scotland 2024 on Friday June 21st. We have taken this year's theme "Rise" literally and our event is based on the theme of bread. You will get to learn how to make bread, talk about bread and eat bread of course! Click on the link to find out more and register for this event.
https://www.refugeefestivalscotland.co.uk/events/event/all-you-knead-is-love-العجن-هو-الحب/

Happy Everybody! 🌈

Glasgow ESOL Forum celebrates Pride month and recognises the LBGTQ+ community, their culture, contribution and struggles. Every person has the right to live freely and fully as their true selves, and we support the right for LGBTQ+ people to seek asylum and safety in the UK, and receive support and safety when they arrive. Homosexuality is criminalised in over 70 countries and people seeking safety need our support.

It is really easy to sign up Easyfundraising and earn us money when you do your everyday shopping. Join us! Thanks in advance

You shop. Glasgow ESOL Forum gets money. For free. Help us when you shop with 7,000+ brands. Join now.

National 2 Class Visit to Kelvingrove Museum

Thank you to Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum for hosting our National 2 ESOL class a couple of weeks ago. The class learned so much and got to practise our listening skills thanks to our enthusiastic and knowledgeable tour guide Laura. We had such a great time!

THANK YOU, GEMMA! 🏆🥳

Gemma Archer is an exceptional ESOL professional, who has recently volunteered with us by running a speaking course for our learners, with focus on her specialist area - pronunciation. She also did a brilliant training session with our volunteer tutors and staff, which was particularly helpful in learning strategies to support learners to understand Scottish/Glaswegian accents.

Her book, Teaching English for a Global World, was published this year and she's also the joint coordinator of IATEFL's PronSIG (Pronunciation Special Interest group). you can find more information about her here: https://glarcher.com/.

ESOL & NUMERACY PROJECT 📐🧮🗒
Learners in our EN class at Pollokshaws Area Network have this week been making some geometric art to practise measuring and naming angles! Look at the concentration and engagement ... lovely to see ☀

ESOL IN THE COMMUNITY 🖊📚
Not your average 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' lessons! This is a lesson delivered by our Sessional Tutor Eileen at Glasgow Women's Library.
Notice the materials: these classes are for adults, so while they are fun they are not materials that would be used to teach anatomy to children. Notice also that the vocabulary extends to 'thyroid', 'uterus' and 'bladder' - which is language many materials would forgo teaching, for reasons we can only guess at.
Teaching ESOL means equipping people with the language to communicate their needs and after all, we all deserve the ability to communicate about and understand communications about our bodies, warts'n'all!

It's National Numeracy Day! 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣4️⃣5️⃣

John's class Pollokshaws Community Hub and Garden have been working on their numeracy skills as part of our ESOL & Numeracy Project, funded by Multiply, and in our National 2 Literacies class learners focused on addition, subtraction and money.

We also have an upcoming Games & Numbers Day for our learners, where we introduce table games, have lunch, and chat all things maths and numeracy!

Numeracy is a skill essential for everyday life and when combined with ESOL, learners can develop language skills around talking about maths.

WE'VE HAD SO MUCH FUN WITH YOU! 🤩

With HUGE thanks to Print Clan CIC and the folks at The National Lottery Community Fund we say a fond farewell to screen printing 2024! Our learners went to classes with a trained ESOL teacher and enjoyed a fully funded 6-week course to develop their artistic skills.

Paul from the National Lottery had some serious tutoring on the art of screen printing by two of our learners/artists. They did an amazing job with teaching him, so much so he came away with 2 prints of his own designs! We couldn't have done it without you, thank you.

Our learners recently took part in course with The Language Hub & The Cafe Hub funded by the The National Lottery Community Fund! Learners worked with a trained barista to understand the properties of good coffee, all in a fully working cafe.

It was such a ... brew-tiful day! ☕
Thanks guys!

📣SHOWCASING EXCELLENT BOARD WORK!🥳
..(and cringeing Volunteers!) This is Fiona and Iona, who teach classes in our Volunteer Tutor Project! All of our Volunteers work hard teaching ESOL in community classes across Glasgow, in The Pyramid at Anderston in this case.

Like the rest of our volunteers, you can see they are far too modest about the wonderful contribution they make to their communities.

You can register your interest in Volunteering or learning to teach ESOL here: https://forms.gle/qeduVvwbQJE7Sf4M9