From Poglish to C2, and everything in between.
Britam wasn’t just a language school; it was a small ecosystem with its own distinct weather. The main branch on Górnych Wałów sat right in the center of Gliwice, close enough to my apartment that I could walk there in ten to fifteen minutes or cycle in five—provided the dreaded spider junction traffic wasn’t stacked against me.
Inside, especially between classes, the building hummed with an intense, organized chaos: teachers drifted in and out of classrooms, students clutched grammar books, and an infamous photocopier chugged and rattled away like an old steam engine in the corner of the staff room. Between lessons, the stairwells became rushing rivers of noise as students thundered up and down the steps—some heading home with visible relief, others looking more subdued as they braced themselves for another ninety minutes of extra schooling. On the busiest afternoons, the staircases were so packed that the crowds would part just enough for me to squeeze through. It was a kind of accidental Moses moment, minus the staff, carrying two heavy bags slung over my shoulders while entirely breathless but pretending otherwise.
I always tried to remind myself that no matter their age or linguistic level, most of these students had already survived a grueling full day at school, university, or work. By the time they reached our lobbies, they were tired, hungry, and trying hard to stay afloat. Meanwhile, I was doing my best impression of a functioning civilian adult, weaving through the crowds and climbing what felt like a frankly unreasonable number of stairs to reach whichever classroom I’d been assigned for my forty‑five‑minute slot. Sometimes I’d arrive outside a door completely breathless, my heart thudding like a man who had just discovered he was not, in fact, as fit as he remembered being in his twenties.
I’d stand in the corridor for a brief moment, trying desperately to get my breathing under control and attempting to look like a calm, collected professional rather than someone who had just been soundly defeated by a flight of stairs. The trick was to enter the room as if I hadn’t just completed a brutal mountain stage of the Tour de France—calm, unfazed, and hoping no one noticed the faint wheeze that followed me across the threshold like an uninvited guest. It was a school with real structure and high expectations—timetables that ran like rigid railway lines, levels stretching from ‘Poglish’ to C2, and an academic culture that beautifully balanced seriousness with a surprising amount of internal warmth. And somewhere in the middle of it all, I was learning how to belong.
What made those early months even more surreal was the presence of two close friends who had previously worked alongside me back home as police volunteers in an award-winning community cohesion project. Now, by some bizarre twist of fate, we were reunited in Poland. Except this time, I was the complete outsider, and they were the established professionals: graduates in English philology and trained, confident educators. I had stepped entirely into their world. One was based at Górnych Wałów, the other in Britam’s Bytom branch, and the sheer improbability of the setup never quite settled. It felt as though vivid episodes of my past life had quietly traveled across Europe ahead of me, taking their places in the classrooms before I had even arrived.
If Britam had a heart, mine was anchored firmly in the teachers’ room at Górnych Wałów, thanks to a colleague who quickly became my absolute rock. She was always ready to decipher a cultural nuance, always genuinely happy to see me, and always pressed a warm drink into my hand before I’d even managed to unbutton my winter coat. She taught me the vital, unwritten rituals of the academy: arrive the exact microsecond the doors open if you want any mathematical chance of conquering the dreaded photocopier; never trust the blinking toner light; and always, always keep a backup worksheet tucked safely inside your pocket. Between her presence, the school itself, and my other friend teaching down the line in Bytom, it felt as though an invisible safety net had been gently arranged beneath my feet.
The Bytom branch only added to the dreamlike sense of unreality. It occupied the upper stories of a traditional, grand kamienica on Dworcowa—a street lined with architecture so ornate and expressive it felt like walking through an open-air art gallery. Inside the school, the ceilings were extraordinarily high, the doors felt enormous, and the fixtures carried a beautiful, old‑world dignity. Yet the academy branch itself was tiny—just four classrooms tucked into the building like a quiet secret. I would never have found the entrance without a local guide, who navigated Bytom’s maze with the absolute certainty of a man who had surveyed every corner of Silesia twice. Stepping into that cupboard-sized teachers’ room and seeing my friend sitting there didn’t even feel surprising anymore; it just felt quietly unreal, as if this version of my destiny had simply been waiting for my legs to catch up.
I wouldn’t be able to write honestly about Britam without including Pani Grażyna, the Director of Education and one of the school’s founders. Pani is the traditional Polish honorific for “Mrs.,” but it carries a soft depth of respect that English translations fail to capture. She possessed that rare, beautiful blend of natural authority and gentleness that steadied your nerves the moment she spoke. Nothing was ever too much trouble for her. She arranged my complex timetable with an almost maternal care, doing everything within her administrative power to keep my Fridays and weekends free, and she patiently guided me through the labyrinth of local tax forms and the quiet bureaucratic hurdles of an international move. She was calm when I was panicking, patient when I stumbled over terminology, and unfailingly kind. I couldn’t have asked for a better employer or a more welcoming introduction to working life in Poland.
Yet, one of the most surreal moments of those early days occurred the very first time I walked through the main doors at Górnych Wałów and found myself face‑to‑face with a life‑size British bobby. There he stood, smiling politely beside a classic red telephone box, holding Britam leaflets inside his cardboard pocket like a multilingual constable on recruitment duty. He was almost exactly my physical height, which only multiplied the absurdity. I’d safely been in Poland for perhaps five minutes, and a cardboard caricature of my past career had already beaten me to the job. Every day I entered the school, I’d pass him on my way to the stairs, look him in his glossy eye, and think: Well, Gary… you really couldn’t make this one up.
Hello..hello… what’s going on here than? My cardboard doppelgänger greeting students at the front door.
A Learning Curve and a Satsuma
My actual working day with school classes didn’t begin until the afternoon. That was when I’d begin my circuit of running conversation classes across all five Britam schools which were mapped out weeks in advance. Conversation classes sound simple. They aren’t. The real challenge wasn’t just listening; it was coaxing, persuading, and sometimes flat-out begging tired students to speak to me — or, heaven forbid, to each other — in English. The classes themselves were interactive sessions focused on speaking and listening fluency. Communication always took priority over grammar rules, so I was constantly planning activities — quizzes, role-plays, group discussions, topic-based chatting — anything that might build confidence and practical language skills.
I used all manner of props too, whatever helped spark a conversation. Some days it felt as if I was pulling rabbits out of a hat — a slightly bewildered, TEFL-qualified magician hoping the trick would get them talking. In the very early days, it sometimes seemed like dentistry without anaesthetic — slow, awkward, and not something anyone wanted to repeat. I was learning fast — I had to — if my new career was going to work.
When I tried explaining conversation classes to friends in the UK, some would blink and say, “So… you’re paid to just talk?” They meant no harm, but it showed how invisible the real work was — the planning, the balancing, the coaxing, the quiet emotional labour of helping people find their voice in another language.
Each school was colour-coded on a timetable that told me exactly where I needed to be from 3:30 p.m. until 8:20 p.m. It also included any business classes that might occur during school hours, along with the times Pan Bronek would collect me and ferry me between branches like a one-man transport network. Some companies were local — based within the city, so I’d use my bicycle to get from school to the company, or vice versa. A conversation class took up forty-five minutes of the usual ninety-minute lesson, which was shared with their usual teacher. I either had the first forty-five minutes or the last.
I discovered that my timing had to be absolutely precise — not just for my own sake, but out of respect for the usual teacher. If I had the first forty-five minutes, I needed to be fully packed up and ready to slip out the moment they appeared at the door. And if I had the last forty-five, I had to be outside that classroom exactly on time, ready to knock and take over smoothly. It sounds simple, but in reality I was often tearing up and down staircases between lessons like a madman, trying to keep everything running politely and on schedule.
I occasionally had a ninety-minute conversation class with very advanced learners, which sounds like a long time for a conversation class — even a difficult amount of time — but I actually found the extra time easier to plan and then to guide than the usual forty-five minute lesson. I loved working with CAE (now called C1 Advanced) and other advanced students. They challenged me as much as I challenged them, and it mattered to me to recognise their level with real respect. I thoroughly enjoyed creating conditions where I wasn’t ‘teaching down’ to them.
If I had no business clients in the morning, I’d spend the first half of the day preparing lessons, meeting friends for lunch, or settling into a corner of KAFO with coffee, sandwiches, and whatever cakes I could justify. The Wi-Fi there was strong and reliable, and it became my unofficial office long before my first class began.
Then, at some point in the afternoon, Pan Bronek would appear, as dependable as dusk, and take me wherever I needed to be. If the lessons were at the main school, I’d make my way to Górnych Wałów, nod to the cardboard Bobby as if he were clocking in for the same shift, and slip into the teachers’ room for a drink, a joke, a quick look at the timetable, and hopefully avoid jamming the photocopier before the evening rush began. It was a routine that looked chaotic on paper but felt strangely steady in practice — a life stitched together from colour-coded schedules, familiar faces, and the quiet comfort of knowing exactly where I needed to be.
The school in Zabrze was nothing like Gliwice. Not only the school itself, but the surrounding buildings were unlike anything I had seen. The atmosphere was heavier, the energy different. The school sat in a Familok, one of those old Silesian brick buildings with deep courtyards and stairwells that glowed amber at night. I’d never experienced anything like it. In winter, the surrounding buildings looked almost theatrical, their windows lit against the darkness, the air carrying that unmistakable Silesian mix of cold and coal.
Britam school in Zabrze. A winter snapshot — outside, bitterly cold — the smell of coal smoke in the air.
It was my third or fourth visit to the school in Zabrze. I had three classes, the first beginning at 4:15 p.m. The first two lessons went well with no obvious problems; as far as I could tell, it had been an enjoyable experience for both the students and myself. Maybe I was beginning to feel a little too confident. I made my way to the last group of the day — two or three minutes late and slightly flustered. I knocked on the door and was invited in by the teacher. I could see she was packed up and ready to leave. I was very apologetic, but she laughed kindly, said it was fine, and told me not to worry. She then spoke to the class in Polish. She was direct and rather stern; I didn’t understand fully, but it felt like she was instructing them to be on their best behaviour for me. She seemed concerned — it was not uncommon to hear a teacher light-heartedly warn their students to be good for the new native speaker, but this felt different.
Then she left.
Had the atmosphere shifted? Or was it just me? I looked at the class — a group of teenagers who looked as though they’d already lived three lifetimes that day. I understood it. They were tired, hungry, and the last place they wanted to be was in a classroom with a new British teacher who appeared to be trying just a little too hard. I began with introductions — coaxing as much information as I could from each student without giving them a chance to use a simple yes or no. Most of them were lovely — funny, bright, and doing their best. However, I couldn’t help but notice one girl sitting directly in front of me who began peeling satsumas, eating them slowly, and staring out of the window as if I were a passing cloud. I asked her politely not to eat during the lesson. She ignored me. I asked again. And again. Her friends began to laugh and flick bits of peel at each other. Most of the class looked mortified.
I didn’t feel angry. I felt humiliated — not by her, but by my own helplessness. I could sense they’d spotted a weakness in me, and I didn’t yet have the tools to manage it. Something in me, perhaps the part that had once worn a uniform and knew when a situation was slipping, simply thought: Right. Enough. I gathered my books and props, apologised to the students who were actually trying, and told the others, as calmly as I could, “Good luck explaining this one to your parents. I’m out of here.”
Then I walked straight to the secretariat, where the lovely lady who spoke no English listened with saintly patience as I attempted to explain, in catastrophic Polish, that I was refusing to teach the class and she needed to call the Director of Studies.
Oh boy.
When I finally spoke to Pani Grażyna, she was devastated. Embarrassed, saddened, and deeply apologetic, she kept repeating how sorry she was that I’d been put in that position. Then, in a tone that made my stomach drop, she explained that letters would be sent to every parent of every student in that class. At that point I was thinking, Oh dear… what on earth have I done? I’d only been in Poland a few months and now, apparently, I was triggering a full-scale administrative response. She asked me which student had been eating fruit, ignoring my requests to stop, and throwing peel at her friend. I could feel myself shrinking into my chair. All I could think was,
Enterprise… one to beam up, please.
When Pan Bronek rang to say he was waiting at the usual spot to take me back to Gliwice, I could hear something unsettled in his voice. He didn’t ask directly, but he didn’t need to. I travelled back through the dark Silesian streets thinking, What have I just unleashed? I wasn’t feeling good about it at all. Pan Bronek tried gently to discover why he’d been called to collect me earlier than planned, but I didn’t know how to explain it in a way that didn’t make me sound foolish or dramatic. I think he already knew. The journey back to my apartment felt longer than usual that night — the kind of journey where the silence says more than either of you can.
Walking to meet Pan Bronek, who’d wait for me a short distance away. I turned to take this shot on my phone. The immediate area was always slightly surreal; you can just make out Christmas decorations in the distance.
The next day, when the dust had settled and my nerves had stopped jangling, Britam didn’t scold me or question my professionalism. Instead, they did something far more disarming: they supported me. Pani Lisowska explained, gently but firmly, what the expectations were — not as a reprimand, but as guidance. Teenagers, she said, especially exhausted ones in winter, will test boundaries. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t a failure. It was part of the job. She told me that removing myself from the situation had been the safest option, and that the school would handle the rest. My friend at Górnych Wałów echoed the same message later that day, pressing a drink into my hand and telling me, with the kind of warmth only she could manage, that every teacher has a story like this. “You learn,” she said. “You get stronger. And next time, you’ll know exactly what to do.”
And she was right. Something shifted in me after that — not confidence, not yet, but a sense that I wasn’t alone, and that the culture at Britam wasn’t about blame. It was about helping you grow into the teacher they already believed you could become.
In the days that followed, something in me began to shift. I realised that the problem I had faced at Zabrze hadn’t just exposed a gap in my teaching skills — it had exposed a gap in my instincts. For years, my default mode had been shaped by policing: but classrooms aren’t crime scenes, and teenagers aren’t suspects. They’re tired, complicated, hopeful, chaotic human beings trying to survive winter evenings and exam pressure.
The strange thing was that in twenty-three years of policing — most of it spent in a small rural town surrounded by hills and fields — I’d worked with countless young people. All ages, all temperaments, all kinds of trouble. I was never their friend, of course, but they treated me with respect because I treated them with respect, even when I was angry, frustrated, or quietly heartbroken by something they’d done.
My default mode had never been challenged. I knew their parents, their grandparents, their teachers, their local doctor, the shopkeepers, the people who ran the youth club — my patch was a web of relationships, and I understood how to move within it. But Zabrze was nothing like anything I’d been prepared for. I was no longer someone in uniform, no longer someone with authority woven into the fabric of the community. I was a foreigner with limited Polish, no shared history, and no instinctive sense of the cultural rules.
That simple thing — a student eating a satsuma — should have been nothing. I’d dealt with far worse, far more serious behaviour, countless times. But the flicking of peel, the laughter, the sense that I had no footing at all… that tipped me over. It wasn’t the fruit. It was the sudden realisation that every instinct I’d relied on for two decades was useless here.
I should say here that the ladies who ran the secretariat at Britam were not to be trifled with. To me, they were always warm, helpful, and ready to assist — but to students and parents they carried a polite, professional, and quietly formidable authority. Think British GP receptionists, multiplied by three.
The Zabrze secretary in particular had a presence that could silence a corridor. She seemed genuinely concerned for me that evening, and after speaking to Pani Lisowska, she ascended the wide staircase with a sense of purpose that made me instinctively step back.
There had been a brief, stunned silence from inside the classroom after I’d left, followed by a rising murmur of voices and laughter.
Then she went in.
I heard her speak in Polish — calm, firm, entirely in control. The laughter stopped. When she returned a moment later, the silence behind her held.
It was the first time I realised that at Britam, authority didn’t always sit in the Director’s office. Sometimes it sat behind the front desk.
The secretariat’s intervention — that calm, formidable presence restoring order with a few firm words — taught me more about classroom authority than any training manual ever could. It wasn’t about power. It wasn’t about control. It was about presence, consistency, and the quiet confidence that comes from knowing you’re not alone. Britam had my back. My colleagues had my back. And slowly, I began to understand that teaching required a different kind of strength — one that didn’t come from a uniform or a badge, but from patience, empathy, and the willingness to grow.
In the weeks that followed that night in Zabrze, I found myself relearning instincts I’d taken for granted. Not replacing them — just adjusting them to a world where the rules were different and the cues were subtler. I began to understand that authority in a classroom didn’t come from history or uniform or community ties. It came from presence, consistency, and the slow, steady work of showing up. I watched other teachers, listened to the secretariat, paid attention to how students greeted each other, how they joked, how they tested boundaries. I learned when to step in and when to let something pass. I learned that silence could be more powerful than a raised voice.
What surprised me most, looking back, was how Zabrze slowly became one of my favourite places to teach. I loved all my classes, but something about that school — the students, the grit, the honesty of the place — began to mean something very special to me. And inside that old familok building over the next three years, I had some of the most rewarding lessons of my entire time in Poland. The same teenagers who once tested my limits became sharp, funny, hardworking young adults preparing for their matura with a seriousness that humbled me. Zabrze taught me more than I ever taught them — about patience, resilience, and the quiet beauty of showing up again after a difficult night.
Zabrze, a view from a classroom. A Silesian skyline: familoki, tiled roofs, chimneys —
the quiet rise of modern apartments in the distance.
And slowly, almost without noticing, I stopped feeling like a foreigner trying to keep up. I didn’t arrive at Britam thinking of myself as a teacher — not really — but over time, something shifted. I began to feel like I could teach again, not as the person I’d been before, but as someone shaped by this place, this culture, and the trust people placed in me.
Britam 2011 to 2013
When I returned to Britam after the summer holiday of 2011, something had shifted. I’d decided to dedicate all my time to conversation classes, business groups, and the small portfolio of private students I’d gathered along the way. For the first time, I felt I was beginning to understand the dynamics of each group — who would talk, who would hide, who needed encouragement, who needed space. My schedule was still built around those 45-minute lessons, the strange Britam rhythm that shaped my days.
I felt comfortable with most of my colleagues and respected them deeply. Many had studied English, education, linguistics, or other languages at university. They were trained teachers in a way I wasn’t, and I never forgot that. But there was a surreal edge to it too. A few were slightly uncomfortable around me, though they never said so directly. A friend explained that some colleagues might be worried that a native speaker might notice a mistake, or catch something they’d missed. The idea felt absurd to me — I was the one learning from them, not the other way around — but I understood the pressure they felt.
There was also the matter of the 45-minute lessons. When a native-speaker class was scheduled, the Polish teacher who normally taught that group simply lost that lesson — and the pay that went with it. An entire 45-minute block gone. It wasn’t personal. It was just the structure of the system. Still, it added a faint tension to the staffroom, a sense that my presence — my native-speaker status, my timetable, my role — shifted the balance in ways I hadn’t intended.
But despite all that, I felt something new that autumn. A sense of belonging, perhaps. Or simply the feeling that I finally understood the place I was working in — its rhythms, its quirks, its unspoken rules. I wasn’t the lost newcomer anymore. I was part of the fabric, even if only loosely stitched in.
I rolled through 2012 pulling rabbits out of hats. I spent far too much money on games — family card games, conversation games, games with icons and logos, anything that could get a room talking. Some were ridiculous, but they worked. They really did. I’d walk into a classroom with a bag full of cards and props, and by the end of the lesson the whiteboard looked like a cross between a Picasso sketch and a crime-scene diagram. It was never-ending work, but it was joyful too.
More and more of my spare time was swallowed by preparation. I studied grammar late into the night, created conversation plans for every level, every age group. I’d hoped to travel around Poland, but instead I found myself hunched over notebooks and textbooks, trying to make sure each lesson was suitable, balanced, and fair. Then there were the business clients — some wanted pure conversation, others insisted on working through grammar books page by page. I adapted. I kept going. I did what I thought was the best I could do.
Looking back now, I can see that those early years weren’t just about learning how to teach — they were about learning how to be someone new. Every lesson plan, every late-night grammar session, every awkward silence and unexpected breakthrough was part of a slow rebuilding. I hadn’t arrived in Poland as a teacher, not really, but somewhere between the familok stairwells of Zabrze, the warm chaos of Górnych Wałów, and that tall, time-worn kamienica on Dworcowa in Bytom — with its echoing corridors and windows looking out onto a street that never quite slept — I began to grow into one.
Not perfectly, not effortlessly, but honestly — one conversation at a time.
I didn’t realise then how much that honesty would cost me.
Ghosts to Carry, Stories to Keep 