Learning & teaching together: participating at Xenia
Xenia workshops are open to everyone. Participants include fluent English speakers, speakers who speak English confidently as a second language, and women who are learning and practicing. One of the principles at the heart of Xenia is that English-speakers join alongside English-learners as participants, and not as volunteers. In light of our recently published anti-racism commitments, organising team member Rani reflects on what this difference means to Xenia.
Firstly, it’s worth emphasising that volunteers are an incredibly important part of Xenia . When Xenia first began, it was run exclusively by volunteers and they can still be found in nearly every part of the organisation today. From writing funding applications, to facilitating workshops, from acting as trustees, to leading our comms work, volunteers ensure that Xenia goes from strength to strength and keeps running every Saturday. In fact, I first joined Xenia as a volunteer in September 2019; as a childcare volunteer I looked after the children of participants who came along to in-person sessions.
It’s also worth noting that Xenia really appreciates every confident English speaker that joins us on a Saturday morning. Having enough ‘speakers’ ensures that we can work in small groups, meaning that women who are practicing and learning English are able to have support if they want it. English speakers help explain different discussion questions and phrases within their groups and can encourage English learners to practice speaking and share their ideas. English speakers can also provide invaluable cultural insight, varying accents and conversational styles, as well as their own relationship to language and migration, often not found in regular ESOL classrooms.
That being said, at the heart of Xenia’s approach, and what makes Xenia unique, is that everyone who joins in a session, whether English learner or speaker, is there as a participant. Here are three reasons why this matters...
We want to dismantle the idea that English-speakers are simply there to “help” those who are learning. As many of our English speakers are English women, this approach is critical to ensuring that Xenia is not unintentionally replicating practices connected with white saviorism. We want to avoid creating a space for English people to jump in for a couple of sessions and give themselves a pat on the back for helping out. Instead, we all play an equal part in fostering an environment that builds community and friendships. Avoiding labelling certain participants as volunteers is crucial to challenging assumptions, that we often pick up without realising, about who needs support and who’s best-placed to give it.
Connected to this, there’s no hard and fast distinction between who’s an English learner or confident speaker. Whilst some participants often see themselves as one or the other, for others this may be fluid and depend on their general confidence in a given week or perhaps the topic of discussion. This means each week everyone can come along and join in as little or as much as they want to, and focus on learning together rather than any set role.
Finally, this approach enacts one of Xenia’s core principles - we all have something to learn and we all have something to teach. Engaging in a workshop as a participant, not as a volunteer, nor as a beneficiary, encourages everyone to share and learn together. I know I’ve personally learnt a lot as part of Xenia. Just one example is (as someone who only moved to London from the North West a couple of years ago) understanding how Hackney has changed in the eyes of participants who’ve lived here for many years. I’ve also valued Xenia as a place to connect with many women who are different to myself, becoming part of a community I might have struggled to find otherwise. Xenia sessions allow us all to share and learn together, and this stretches well beyond practicing to speak English.
Hopefully this blog has helped to shed a little light on why everyone’s a participant at Xenia. But, as we always say, the best way to understand Xenia is to come along to a session. If you identify as a woman and are interested in being a Xenia participant, please get in touch with Meg, our Outreach Organiser, at hackney@xenia.org.uk.