Michel

Michel joined the participant group a little into the project. She refused to be filmed from day one. If she had been focussed on accidentally, she covered her face up. The whole filming process made her feel so nervous. She did not communicate with anybody in the group, let alone myself.
She attended many of the voluntary sessions, including woodland management, beach cleaning and local history visits. She feels reluctant to be a part of the group. The group and myself are friendly to her, but something else seems to be going on. Other students and staff members remark on her non-participation, although she is present. I develop more task based activities in the mandatory and voluntary sessions. This means she has to communicate with other students to solve problems. One of these problems is the choice of video imagery for the 4 Steps to Citizen film. She begins to help with the process. She sees herself in some of the clips and is adamant that she is not included. She does this through her language use. She is however happy to decide on some clips her classmates are in.
Before the public performance Michel has formed an amazing bond with most members of the class. Before she ostracised herself, but now she shows her ideas and opinions and communicates them through language. She is smiling as the film is shown publicly. She chats with her colleagues about the different captions and the actors. She is at home in the group.
She is currently attending a fulltime ESOL programme at Level 1.