A little while ago I ran a one-off, 'taster' English class at the local community centre. Most of the 15 people there were from this neighbourhood, including the old man who grows vegetables next door. To be honest, my heart sank when I saw him there - although he's a very nice chap, he's also quite deaf, must be 80 if he's a day and has obviously never studied English in his life. I knew when he was unable to complete the sentence 'My name is ...' that it was going to be a long, long class...
However, during the first activity (a get-to-know-you exercise involving getting up and walking round the class) he and 2 others (including the woman who lives next door to H's parents) took the opportunity to sneak out and run away! I felt really bad that I'd made the class so difficult or intimidating for them that they couldn't even bear to stay until the hour was up. I had been dreading running into them again (but knew that I would), but I saw 2 of the 3 at the community centre on Sunday morning and we all employed the classic, face-saving 'behave as if nothing happened' technique. Phew.
Anyway, the 12 people who actually stayed for the whole session seemed to enjoy themselves and I decided to set up a regular weekly class (despite the miserable, power-gone-to-her-head old biddy who works there. Be glad you don't have to listen to that rant). Today we had our first proper class, with 7 people, and yes, there were still 7 there at the end too :-)
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