Teaching homeless people basic skills transforms lives
I’m a basic skills tutor at homelessness charity St Mungo’s Broadway. That can mean anything from helping people to read and write from scratch, to advising on how to submit university applications and giving specialist tutorials on study skills and creative writing.
I work at five different sites across London, going to a different one each day of the week. I cycle, so depending on how far I have to go that day, I wake up at about 6:30am, ready to be at work for 9am.
The first thing I do when I get in is to prepare the materials for the day’s lessons, get the room set up and check in with the key workers so they can let the clients know I’m there.
The lessons vary depending on the needs of the clients – they might be group drop-in sessions, or one-to-one tutorials for people who need more intensive help. At whatever level the client is at, the most important thing for me is to start with who they are and what’s relevant to them.
One of the biggest challenges is to reach people who have been failed by the education system in some way and who have an instinctive resistance to anything that looks like traditional education. People might have had a traumatic time at home which impacted on their schooling, or had an undiagnosed need, or been bullied. Whatever it is, they stopped engaging with school.
We overcome that by meeting people where they are in their lives and showing them skills that are relevant to them – it’s no good going through vocabulary about ordering a taxi from the airport with someone who’s been sleeping rough. We work to a standard national curriculum, but we start with things like filling out housing or benefit forms, reading a tube map, sending a text or updating their Facebook profile.
I don’t think most people who take reading and writing for granted realise how disabling a lack of basic maths and literacy skills can be. There was one man I worked with who walked to the sessions each week because he knew the route by foot, but couldn’t read the signs at the tube station.
I often have to start at the very beginning in order to build people’s confidence enough so that they feel they can begin to learn, and that’s a process that can be immensely creative and rewarding. In one of our hostels in Lewisham, for instance, I started by teaching someone how to play the guitar. Once he realised he could learn, he was able to use that confidence to improve his reading and writing. We worked on writing lyrics for his songs. It gave him an outlet for his thoughts and feelings. That was a year ago. I recently bumped into him at a recording studio in one of our hostels in Camden where he is busy making an album.
One of the best things about the job is seeing that transformation, when someone overcomes years of thinking “I can’t do that” and suddenly they can. The other week one learner wrote down his own address unaided for the first time and the look on his face said it all. The impact of the work can be dramatic, especially when you’re helping a small group, say no more than 10 people over about six months.
The most important skills for a job like mine are patience and the ability to really listen and respect where someone is coming from, no matter what their background.
The only difference between many of the clients I work with and me is luck. It’s not just about getting people back into work, it’s about giving people the capabilities to do what they value in life. It’s also about being able to interact with the world around you and enjoy it, for example to be able to pick up a good book and read it.
I love the sheer variety of people I get to meet so I don’t really find the work stressful, but when I do need to relax I play the guitar, read, study or listen to music. I also play five-a-side football on Thursday evenings after work.
Simon Phillips has recently been advising on a new St Mungo’s Broadway campaign, Reading Matters, to help homeless people learn basic skills.
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