Movement is helping my traumatised ESOL students to engage

Sometimes looking around an FE ESOL class can feel demotivating, when you’re greeted by blank faces, drooping eyelids and surreptitious tapping on phones under the table. As ESOL teachers, we carefully plan our lessons and it is disheartening to see students not focused and engaged.

Many of our students arrive in our classes desperate to learn English so they can build a better life in this country. Sometimes it can feel frustratingly difficult for teachers to find ways to fulfil that goal.

Perhaps we need to look closer at the reasons students are unable to concentrate.

Many have experienced war, poverty, trafficking, or other traumatic events over several years. Recently, I had a student from Sudan who was constantly taking bathroom breaks, falling asleep in class and failing to make any progress in his English skills. After a one-to-one tutorial, it became clear that he was carrying an avalanche of unprocessed trauma from a war-torn childhood. Along with navigating the UK visa system and temporary accommodation, he was struggling to take in any more of life, let alone my lesson on the present perfect continuous.

I started to investigate how trauma affects learning, which led me to the work of Bessel van der Kolk. In The Body Keeps the Score, van der Kolk argues that trauma is not only stored as memories or thoughts, but also in the body. When an individual remains in a constant state of threat over time, the part of the brain that affects concentration, memory, and emotional regulation can be severely affected. Therefore, traumatised students might find it hard to focus or remember information, and their emotions can be unpredictable.

Thankfully for ESOL teachers, students’ behavioural challenges are often signs of stress, not a reflection of bad teaching.

Van der Kolk discusses different practices to ease the effects of trauma, one being yoga. Kolk maintains that yoga helps to reconnect traumatised people with their body and brings them back into the present. It helps to regulate breathing and calms the nervous system. In traumatised individuals, it can encourage self-awareness and mindfulness, a pause that allows a sense of safety in the present, instead of dwelling in past danger.

So how can we work with yoga in the classroom? Should teachers be wearing Lycra and burning incense?

Well, research would suggest that even small moments of movement can help students calm their nervous systems, focus, and feel safe enough to participate in learning. Some simple activities which include movement, such as ‘find someone who’, where students move around the classroom talking to classmates to make a survey, can activate a sense of physical awareness.

Running dictations can not only reinforce reading, writing and speaking skills but also get the heart pumping and bring a sense of ‘now’ to the classroom. Stretching, reaching for the sky, and swaying to the left and right eases tension in the shoulders.  Rubbing hands together until they get really hot gets students ready for writing. Balancing on one foot helps foster focus and awareness of surroundings before heavy grammar lessons. Simple box breathing exercise – breathe in for 4 hold for 4, out for 4 hold for 4 – can reset focus and reduce stress before assessments. Asking students to give themselves a hug always brings smiles to their faces. Encourage stamping of feet if there’s no one under your classroom!

All these activities are particularly useful before assessments, speaking activities or presentations. Over time, they can help students self-regulate and raise confidence in themselves.

This year, I have incorporated more movement in my classroom.  At the start of the class, I open the windows and we run through our exercises. The students now anticipate movement throughout the lesson. There’s nothing quite like seeing a row of glum faces dissolve in giggles as they watch classmates try to stand on one foot. And my Sudanese student? I’m happy to say that after a year, he has progressed to the next class.

Successful language learning needs risk-taking, concentration and self-belief.

Students are far more likely to learn when they are mentally and physically in the classroom with you. Movement encourages a link to the present while also giving students a chance to communicate and learn. In ESOL classes, movement is not a distraction from learning – it can be what makes learning possible.