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Dancing With Thieves by Cally Magalhães

ICN’s heart and purpose is to come alongside people that have been internationally displaced and help them in the practical, social, legal and more areas of life encountered as a result of their international migration. People from other nations have come to our nation and we seek to help.

In contrast, ‘Dancing With Thieves’ tells the story of people internally displaced in their own country (in this case Brazil) and how God led a British missionary to travel to that country to help them!

‘Dancing With Thieves’ is a riveting and compassionately written autobiography of a missionary called Cally Magalhães. Through professional and personal highs (getting into a top British ballet school) and lows (her dream of becoming a ballet dancer ended due to curvature of the spine, a marriage ending in divorce) she found Jesus, became a Christian and her life’s direction was changed.

God put the plight of street children on her heart and after several years of training and wonderful confirmations of God’s call, in 1999 she set off in faith to begin a new chapter of her life helping the street children of Brazil!

It was not easy! But God was with her protecting and helping her as she began working in the ‘favelas’ (groups of shacks or houses illegally built on unused land. They are often in dangerous conditions around rivers, sewage, exposed electricity wires, rubbish heaps & all sorts of flies, rats, and rodents. Just like a hotel they are rated on a star system 1 to 5!)

Cally’s heart breaks for the children and families that she meets. The deprivation that they live in and the trauma of their lives. She lovingly comes alongside, befriends, and helps them practically with food and where possible new accommodation. She sees the miraculous provision of finance by God in all of these initiatives.

Cally goes on to work in youth prisons, devise a pioneering program called ‘psychodrama’ (utilising all of the singing, dancing and ballet training from her youth!) that enabled offenders to feel and grasp the emotions of those affected by their crimes in role playing various different characters impacted by their crimes. Eyes are opened, lives are transformed and reoffending rates plummet!

‘Dancing With Thieves’ is a book that stirred my heart and eyes of faith! It reminds, challenges and confirms the truth to those of us involved in ICN that regardless of the cause of a person’s displacement God is a lover of people & sends His people to help restore lives. As we participate in that call we find, like Cally, that it feels, ‘ like [we] were born to do what [we] do. It isn’t a job. It’s a privilege’.

Daniel Wilkinson; SCSA Support Worker

04 March 2021

If you were tempted to say 9.30 in the morning until 12pm, you’d be so wrong! Any teacher knows that a lesson begins long before any learners arrive; it begins with planning and preparation. How do we plan? What do we prepare? Why not just turn to a page in a course book and use that? More good questions.  

At ICN, our teachers know that their lessons need to be relevant and useful if we are to achieve our aim of helping learners to find jobs, access higher education and manage their daily lives here in the UK. We need to give our learners a solid foundation of the English language that can be built on and used to enable them to access all aspects of life here. To this end, teachers look for and create resources that are interesting and engaging. Our learners come with different learning styles – some enjoy hands on activities and games, others learn by reading, others by listening, so resources must reflect these needs.

Spikey profiles also need to be considered- “Spikey who?” I hear you ask. “What’s he got to do with it?” Well, it’s not a person and it has everything to do with making a successful lesson! Learners have different educational experiences, from no formal schooling at all to university degrees, and different levels in the four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. I have met learners who are able to hold coherent conversations but can’t read, others who can read but don’t understand what they’ve read, others who can understand what is said but can’t reply or join in a conversation. They have spikey profiles, strong in one skill and lacking in another. Our teachers are very skilled in adapting their lessons to meet the needs and abilities of each member of their class – and that requires planning and preparation.

OK, so the lesson begins with planning, but surely it ends at 12pm? Wrong again! Now begins the reflective process. Our teachers look back on the lesson to see what went well and what didn’t. They ask themselves some searching questions: did everyone take away something useful from that lesson? Who was struggling and with what? How can they be supported in the next lesson? Who was flying? How can they be more challenged in the next lesson? How can learning that took place today be built on in the next lesson? How much reinforcement of language presented in this lesson will be needed in the next lesson? When can I have a coffee? You get the idea! It’s a circular process where one lesson leads into the next, and the next lesson looks back at the previous one.

At ICN, we have teachers who are able to incorporate all this into their teaching and who are totally committed to bringing out the best in each and every one of their learners. That is why I can say with very confidence that we have an amazing, professional, dedicated, talented and caring ESOL team. Simply the Best! 

Fiona Marlow – ESOL Department Manager 

21 May 2020