More Work

Almost a year after I passed the interview, I had my first paid work for the Newcastle ESOL Service tonight. The students were beginners, factory workers and cleaners from Poland and Slovakia, Latvia and Iran. The classroom, located so far up Westgate Hill that I started walking past signs for the airport, was a museum piece: narrow wooden tables arranged in schoolboy lines, conjugated verbs on the walls and a tiny whiteboard propped up on a filing cabinet. We studied questions and the past tense. I got home just in time for supper.