During the COVID-19 global health crisis, most church ESL programs are cancelled. Some programs continue online. Other teachers may be thinking of creative ways of connecting with their students either individually or as a class. We’d like to offer some resources during this unusual time.
COVID-19 ESL Resources
Quite a few ESL lessons that pertain to the COVID-19 situation have already been written and many are available for free on the web. Here are some:
https://breakingnewsenglish.com/2003/200304-covid-19.html
and many more COVID-19 related lessons on https://breakingnewsenglish.com/
https://www.eslvideo.com/quiz.php?id=34780
https://esl-voices.com/the-coronavirus-what-we-need-to-know/
https://en.islcollective.com/video-lessons/what-is-coronavirus
https://www.linguahouse.com/esl-lesson-plans/general-english/coronavirus
You can google <covid 19 ESL> or <coronavirus ESL> for more.
The ESL Library, originally a subscription service, is offering a cluster of COVID 19-related ESL lessons for free (PDFs). See https://www.esllibrary.com/blog/teaching-with-digital-resources-during-the-covid-19-pandemic, scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the cluster of free lessons. You need to sign up for an account but at no charge.
Tutela.ca is an online community of ESL teachers and a repository of many resources. You can join for free and after you log in, click on “Resources” and type “Covid 19” in the search box, and you’ll see the related lessons.
Online Learning Resources
You may want to consider or try various means of online teaching at this time when in-person meetings with the students are suspended. This issue of the ESL LINK offers some ideas. TESL Ontario recently recorded a webinar on online instruction which is made available on their YouTube channel:
Coping with COVID-19 Using Online Instruction – YouTube link
The Alberta TESL organization (ATESL) created and posted a Google Drive folder on its webpage that has rich resources on online learning including a list of learning apps, online tools for learning and teaching, etc.
If you are new to online teaching, here is a three-part article that provides some guidance on the basics like which platforms to use, screen sharing, etc.:
A Beginner’s Guide to Teaching Online (Part 1); Part 2; Part 3
Mental Health Resources during COVID-19
At a time of crisis like this, we want to be looking out for one another. Are you keeping in touch with your students? Some students I encountered have expressed fear about the current situation. Here are some resources about how to deal with (first of all our own!) fears and anxiety this season, and how to adjust our lifestyles etc. They are COVID-19-specific:
Manage Anxiety & Stress (from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Mental Health and the COVID-19 Pandemic (from CAMH)
Resource Hub: Mental health and wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic
Looking after mental health and wellbeing during COVID-19
Looking after your mental health – UK National Health Service
While you are staying at home, make sure you do the following things (UK)
5 Tips for Staying Productive and Mentally Healthy While You’re Working From Home
Other ideas
Perhaps you can think about asking a doctor to speak to your students about personal hygiene and precautions in this season. If an in-person meeting is not possible, think about an online meeting/webinar via Zoom, for example.
There will be many lessons to learn during this season. When the situation stabilizes and when we can go back to our normal face-to-face classes with students, there may be new measures to take at your ESL classes like providing hand sanitizer at the snacks table, or switching to individually wrapped snacks only.
COVID-19 presents unprecedented challenges to churches, ESL classes and us personally. It also presents unprecedented opportunities for creative thinking and practices. We are seeing many new ideas springing forth: whether it’s new ways of doing church, new ways of conducting “ESL” or new routines and practices in our daily lives. May we not waste these opportunities; despite our very real fears, may we rise up as a people of faith and as Christian ESL teachers to reach out, to care and to continue to bring the Good News to our students.