Teaching in Challenging Circumstances: Free Course

About this course

Teach more resourcefully when learners and teachers face difficult conditions. This free Cambridge training series, hosted by Chris Sowton with expert contributors, explores practical concerns around teaching with limited materials, supporting disrupted learning and building a workable classroom environment. The five recorded sessions form a focused professional-development pathway, with time for reflection and adaptation between videos.

Course at a glance

What you’ll learn

• Identify practical constraints in a teaching setting and distinguish changes you can make from issues that require wider support.
• Consider how predictable routines, clear activities and relationships can support learning when circumstances are disrupted.
• Adapt a lesson to the materials and communication channels actually available, rather than assuming a fully equipped classroom.
• Reflect on the teacher’s own workload and the limits of the role while planning manageable support for learners.

Skills you’ll gain

• Resourceful teaching
• Lesson adaptation
• Learner relationships
• Inclusive classroom planning
• Teacher reflection
• Teaching with limited resources

Course Overview

Cambridge published the series to support educators working in challenging formal and informal settings, including teachers and learners affected by displacement. The training considers issues such as working without textbooks, teacher self-care, relationships with learners, planning and adapting lessons, remote teaching and the use of storytelling or role-playing. The sessions include expert discussion in service of these teaching aims; they are not a general interview archive. Follow Sessions 1–5 and consider which ideas fit the resources, learners and responsibilities of your own context. The associated book is separate from the free video recordings.

How the course develops

• Work through the five numbered sessions and keep a record of the teaching challenges addressed. Separate an idea’s purpose from the particular setting used to explain it.
• Choose changes that are feasible with your learners and resources. A small, dependable routine may be more useful than a complex plan that cannot be sustained.
• Review the effects of a change with a colleague when possible. The goal is responsive teaching and a workable learning environment, not applying every suggestion at once.

Use the searchable lesson list to revisit an explanation while planning or practising. Keep a short note of the idea you want to apply and return to it after trying it in your own context.

Who is this for?

This course suits English teachers, educators in low-resource or disrupted settings, teacher educators and coordinators supporting continuity of learning. It can also help teachers reflect on how ordinary lessons change when learners have different circumstances or access needs. The recordings provide professional-development ideas, not specialist clinical training.

Before you start

Some teaching experience is useful. You do not need the associated book to view the recordings. Bring a lesson or classroom routine you would like to adapt and a realistic list of the resources available in your setting. Use fictional or anonymised examples when reflecting on learners.

Put the lessons into practice

Choose a lesson that normally depends on several materials or a reliable internet connection. Identify its main learning aim, then redesign it using the resources you can depend on. Prepare a clear opening routine, one accessible activity and a simple way for learners to show what they understood. Consider what you would change if attendance or access were uneven. Finally, write one boundary that keeps the plan manageable for you and one issue that would need support from a colleague or organisation. Try a small part of the plan and review whether it made participation clearer or more achievable.

This optional activity is provided by WikiFree for independent study. It is not a graded assignment from the instructor. Keep your working notes and separate evidence from assumptions so that you can review your reasoning as you progress.

Certificate / Assessment

The public video training is free to watch. Completing this WikiFree course does not include a Cambridge English exam, a qualification, academic credit or instructor assessment.

Use your notes and the optional practice to reflect on how you would apply the ideas. Completion tracking records study progress; it is not a marked assessment.

Frequently asked questions

Provider: Cambridge English. Videos play from the English with Cambridge channel on YouTube.