Lockdown teacher Holly King-Mand helps Ukrainian children learn English

An English teacher whose free online lessons helped thousands of children during lockdowns has set up free English classes for Ukrainian children.

Holly King-Mand, 38, from Bedfordshire, said she first offered free passes to her regular classes for refugees and was "overwhelmed" by interest.

As a result she has set up a bespoke class to help the refugees learn to listen to, talk and write English.

"I hope I can - in some small way - help," she said.

The former secondary school teacher already has 55 families registered which she estimates could mean helping about 100 children between the ages of five and 15, some of whom have not yet arrived in the UK, but who want to improve their English before they get here, she said.

Ms King-Mand, from Leighton Buzzard, had been on maternity leave and was yet to return to the classroom when the first coronavirus lockdown started in March 2020.

She began hosting free 30-minute lessons on Facebook from her home to support parents home-schooling children all over the world.

The popularity of her classes saw her initial 74 Facebook followers rise to about 60,000 across three social media platforms and this wide reach has continued, leading to her latest response.

She now does one-to-one tutoring and online workshops but has always offered free classes to disadvantaged children. But the level of interest in her offer to help Ukrainian youngsters led her to something different.

"It became clear that I needed to create something special, suited to the needs of children who had just arrived in the country or could be about to," she said.

The classes, which start on 30 April, will be a "combination of images and demonstrations, mostly centred on confidence building and talking English", she added.

The teacher said she will not be using Ukrainian at all because she wants to "create an immersive learning experience", but the instructions about how to join will be translated.

"I feel really privileged to be in a position to be able to attract that many people and to be able to help them," she said.

"I'm really looking forward to meeting the children and in the past two years I've learnt it's entirely possible to build relationships through online lessons."

Rhianon Lucas and her son Wilfred, 10, are hosting Natalya and her ten-year-old son Illia who arrived at their home in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire from Kyiv, via Warsaw and Dublin, a couple of weeks ago after an "arduous" three-week wait for visas.

She said she "signed Illia up immediately" because she found that while her "amazing" local authority had processes in place to support adults with English, there was "no specific language tuition for children".

"As we are in an area of very small village primary schools it's going to be very challenging to get much language teaching for Illia in school, so we have been on the look-out for other types of support," she said.

"Natalya's English is excellent, and she's really keen that Illia's English improves quickly - he is due to go up to high school in September, so we want to ensure he is best-placed to have a good start there."

Ms King-Mand has also enlisted 10 of her regulars as her English Learning Ambassadors or "teaching assistants". They are students who she has built a relationship with and "trusts them to come into the classes to help".

One of them, 12-year-old Eloise who lives near Letchworth in Hertfordshire, joined Holly's first ever Facebook live lesson in March 2020 and has continued to learn with her.

She said she was "very proud" to be able to "help people who have been through so much over the past few months".

"I think these classes are an amazing idea of Holly's as it will really help refugees settle into our country by being able to communicate with us better," she said.

"It is incredible that these classes will be able to help them catch up on the vital education that they must've missed over these horrifying few months."

Harriet, 11, from West Chiltington, in West Sussex has also been learning with Holly from the start and said she was "happy to help" Ukrainian children and was also "excited to get to know them and talk about our different lives and cultures".

"I've seen the distress that Ukrainian families on the news have been going through and it can make me feel a little helpless at times," she said, "so I feel as if this is a way that I can help them, even though it's not much, I hope it will make a difference."

"I feel that the lessons aren't just to learn English but that they will also help all the children understand that they are not alone and that British children will welcome them," she added.

Ms King-Mand said she had not set an end date for the classes but feels they will run "certainly for the rest of the year".

"I'll have to see what it becomes because these hare-brained schemes of mine tend to evolve," she said.

"I want to make sure good things like this still happen, I accidentally gained this platform and even though I'm also weaving a business from it, I always want to make sure to use it for this kind of thing."

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