Ghosts to Carry, Stories to Keep

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 were 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 brief look at the timetable, hoping to 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.

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 any more. I was part of the fabric, even if only loosely stitched in.

I rolled through 2012, again, pulling rabbits out of hats. Not only that, but I spent far too much money on games — family card games, conversation games, 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.