Starting a Program

1) Pray! Without prayer, your plans will fail. Cover every step with prayer. Ask a few others to pray alongside you, and keep them updated as to what to pray for. Do you have a few people in your church who are known as prayer warriors, or some elderly people who aren't able to get out to physically join the church? Recruit them to pray.

2) Outline a plan. What do you envision this program looking like? What are the needs of the internationals in your community? (You may need to do a preliminary needs analysis for this.) What might such a program cost? How many people will be needed to run it? (We estimate that you will need at least 10 volunteers to get started.) What kind of funding, volunteer, material, and prayer support do you need? Make a list of everything that needs to be done that can later be divided among volunteers so that no one takes on too much of the work.

Don't feel like you have to reinvent the wheel - there are a lot of resources to help you, like Mission to North America's "Starting an ESL School" page, other English program directors at various churches and community organizations, and other teacher training resources. Do a quick google search to find out if there are other programs close to where you live and ask if you can visit a class and speak with their director to learn more.

Make sure that you include childcare planning into your overall plan, since childcare is often one of the biggest reasons internationals aren't able to attend English classes. If you live in a place without a good public transportation system, and your location is not within walking distance of your students, you might consider also offering transportation through private cars or a church bus.

3) Speak to your church leadership. Share with them your vision, your plan, and your heart. Be specific about what you are requesting - a line in the budget? Opportunities to make announcements in church? Rooms at church one day or evening per week? Work with the leaders to come up with a plan that is approved by all. Be sure to ask about church policies about who can unlock the church, nursery workers, kitchen use, etc. If you are considering including volunteers from other churches, be sure to ask about your church's policy on this, as well.

4) Begin recruiting volunteers. While making announcements in a service is great to raise awareness, the best way to recruit volunteers is on an individual basis. Pray (and ask your prayer team to join you) for wisdom in who to approach to teach. While asking current or retired teachers and homeschooling parents is always a great idea, you might be surprised at who else God raises up to teach an English class! When you ask someone to help, be specific about what you need them to do and why you are asking. Do you see that the person is uniquely gifted for this role? If they need time to think and pray, encourage this, and send a follow-up email with the vision, time commitment, and needs, and gently ask for a response by a certain time. Note: it is a good idea to ask volunteers to commit to a longer period of time, such as teaching or helping with classes each week for one school year, so that they can really build relationships with students and demonstrate their commitment to those relationships through their consistency.

You might consider hosting an event to share about this, like a breakfast or dessert night. Consider asking someone who has taught English in another church-based program to attend and speak about his/her experience. You also might want to plan a launch date for classes to begin to have more of a sense of urgency in the need for volunteers and update your church members about progress.

We recommend that you have at least ten volunteers to start: one program director, three pairs of teachers who can team-teach (one pair each for beginning, intermediate, and advanced classes), two childcare workers (or more, depending on the church's childcare policy and the anticipated number of children), and one hospitality volunteer (to take care of refreshments). Be sure to let teachers know that you will arrange for their training before they begin teaching, so they won't be expected to teach without experience.

As your program grows, you may add more volunteers, such as a registrar (to register and assess new students, since you will often have new students come throughout the semester); a nursery coordinator; a larger hospitality crew (or even a team to prepare a full meal each week); some "befrienders" who might help in class, welcome in students, and build relationships with them; someone to share a devotion and/or lead music during a large-group class time or break time; drivers to transport students to and from class; and bilingual volunteers to help out in beginner classes and with registration. You may even decide to add tutors for school-aged students to work on their homework or volunteers to organize games and activities for the children; take time to get to know your families and their needs, and pray about how God might use you to meet those needs.

5) Arrange for teacher training. See the Teacher Training page for options.

During and after this training, spend time talking with your leaders and teachers to develop a cohesive plan of what you hope to achieve and offer to your students. As you get to know your students better, this plan may change, but it's good to start with an idea of what you're hoping to provide and make sure everyone is on the same page. Your teachers should be united around these common goals. Be sure to discuss your plans for evangelism: will you talk about the Gospel during normal classes, during a special Bible class held after your regular class, only at special events, or only in personal relationships? We recommend sharing a short prayer and devotion at the start of every class and making sure that students know you will do so ahead of time.

You may choose to personalize your training with other information you've learned from your community needs analysis. For example, if you think you'll primarily be serving one ethnic group, consider inviting a speaker to share about them, such as a leader in that ethnic church, a member of the community, a refugee resettlement office staff member, or someone else who is deeply knowledgeable about that group.

6) Start advertising. (See the advertising tips page for more information.) At this point, you'll need to have determined your registration/placement day and your class start date.

As your volunteers take advertisements around the community, encourage them to ask questions of the people they meet who might be interested or know people who are interested. What are the demographics of these people? Why do they want to learn English? Take note of these things as you consider the plans for your classes.

7) Choose your curriculum. Your trainers can give you ideas of different books that work well. Check out the textbook series and lesson plans and curricula pages for more ideas. You can also contact publishers and ask them to send you desk or sample copies of books so that you can look through them; most will send them to any English program.

You might also choose to have separate Bible classes and citizenship exam preparation classes.

Note: After you hold your registration day, you will have a better idea of the students who will come. For this reason, you may choose not to order books until after registration and plan lessons that do not rely upon textbooks for the first 1-2 sessions to give yourself time to order them.

8) Prepare for registration day. Sometimes this can be a chaotic event, so it's best to plan it out ahead of time! For further information, see the "Planning and Carrying Out an Effective ESOL Registration Event" document at the bottom of this page.

Some of this information is taken from Teaching English in Church by William Bradridge and Louisa Walsh.