From classroom to career: how my English teacher changed an EAL student’s life
Author: Snezana Rosic
Snezana joined Yipiyap as a Tutor in 2019 and is now the Regional Director for Leeds.
Tuition can make a tremendous impact on a young person’s life. Imagine someone at the age of 10 who moved from their home country and settled in an English-speaking country with zero knowledge of the local language. Not a dicky-bird! But then, they later decided to pursue a career in English just being inspired by their tutor. Pretty impressive, right?
Now that’s what an impact a tutor can have on your life; they spark your interest in a subject, see and trust your capabilities and abilities beyond yourself, and push you to achieve something that you always thought was impossible!
Now, one-to-one tutoring accelerates the speed of this process with unimaginable results! It gives students space and freedom to learn subjects according to their pace without any competition or judgement, as students don’t have to worry that others are learning faster than them or doing what they perceive as better than them. It provides learners with the comfort to speak up when something doesn’t click and highlight their difficulties in comprehending a topic without any hesitation. One-to-one tutoring also provides the right amount of attention that they require to build their confidence and to make friends with the subject!
And that’s what Yipiyap specialises in. Our mission is to help every learner gain the confidence to take ownership of their educational journey and encourage them to keep striving, whatever setbacks they face, in the pursuit of their most ambitious academic and personal goals.
We can’t talk about the impact of tutoring on young lives without mentioning Snez's story. Snezana, now a Regional Director at Yipiyap, describes how her own English tutor impacted her life and inspired her to pursue a career she hadn't imagined in her wildest dreams!
English as an additional language (It’s not easy!)
Moving to England at the age of 10 was one of the scariest experiences in my life. Back in Serbia, I had studied French as an additional language, so I arrived in my new home with no English at all.
My first day at St Matthew’s was terrifying. Although my teacher was lovely, I had a bunch of peers who were difficult to understand and left me baffled. The only lesson I could take part in was maths, and - I have to be honest - maths was never my strongest subject, so I knew this was going to be a real struggle.
After a few weeks of carrying a dictionary everywhere with me and using a lot of hand gestures to communicate with people around me, I was introduced to my first tutor - Mrs. Burnley! She was a teaching assistant at St Matthew’s. However, as I was struggling, she was asked to work closely with me so now, instead of being in the classroom, I followed Mrs. Burney everywhere around the school.
How my teacher supported a scared EAL student
Mrs. Burnley was the loveliest and the kindest person I had met in the school. One thing I’ll always remember about her is the amount of patience she had. There was no rush and no wrong answer. The atmosphere that she created during our lessons made me want to stay after school for extra English sessions amidst my terrifying experience.
Mrs. Burnley took time out of her schedule to create and build resources that were so useful to me as she knew I couldn’t understand the topics my peers were comprehending. So, we used a lot of books with pictures that were aimed at younger children, and lots of hand gestures, and when we were really stuck we turned to Google Translate (though she tried her best to avoid this).
What helped massively was that she would spend a lot of her time trying to speak to me, which wasn’t easy; however, she didn’t give up. We would spend hours trying to tell each other what we did during the weekends, and holidays, helped by the fact that, as aforementioned, Mrs. Burnley had a lot of patience.
During the English lessons, she encouraged me to participate even though I was always scared of pronouncing the word incorrectly or giving the wrong answers. This has helped to build my confidence massively and made it easier for me to communicate with my peers. She would suggest specific cartoons to watch with subtitles. Of course, this was the golden rule so I could absorb as much as possible this way. After 6 months, Mrs. Burnley’s patience definitely paid off as I was able to confidently communicate with my classroom peers and also participate in lessons sometimes, even without my tutor.
The next step was going to high school on my own without any help, however, having a stronger grasp of English knowledge and being able to speak with people around me was a massive step forward. In high school, I attended extra English lessons alongside other EAL students, and slowly as my English became better I was able to read books with no pictures and my love for English literature grew.
I decided to take English Literature as my A-level and absolutely enjoyed my time in the sixth form studying this subject. This was partially due to having an amazing English Literature teacher who was always willing to help as she knew English wasn’t my first language.
How did I become a tutor?
“I decided to give this a go in the hope that I would make a difference in someone’s life the way that Mrs. Burnley did. ”
I wasn’t sure about my next steps so, when a Yipiyap presentation was delivered to my cohort, I decided to give this a go in the hope that I would make a difference in someone’s life the way that Mrs. Burnley did.
Yipiyap’s mission to provide extra, small group support to help students really struck a chord with me as I know how much value that individual attention would take and make an impact in students' life.
As a tutor, I made sure I always had a lot of patience for my students and the key was in my experience to build a relationship with them. Most EAL students lack confidence so creating a comfortable learning environment where they are looking forward to your next sessions is key!
My experience taught me the importance of teachers and tutors. Having someone willing to put in the hours and work closely with you to achieve your goals is incredible, and being a tutor for three years before my current role really showed me how rewarding this experience is.
Teachers and tutors really do make a difference in young people’s lives!
The whole idea behind Yipiyap’s mission is to positively impact young people’s lives and help them strive, in spite of any setbacks they face. We help students overcome those learning blocks and provide them with a solid foundation to forge their future career path. Stories like Snezana’s show just how important tuition can be to young people’s lives, so we take our responsibility to do it the right way seriously.
If you are a school leader looking to support your EAL learners, you can read about Yipiyap’s evidence of impact, or get in touch with us to discuss your school or college’s specific requirements.
Alternatively, if you know which Year 13s at your school could follow in Snezana’s footsteps and change lives before university, speak to us about gap year opportunities or book in a recruitment presentation.