After five incredibly busy weeks, I successfully completed my CELTA course yesterday. I can't really believe that I am now a certified English teacher - it seems so surreal, doesn't it?
Anyway, now that I have some spare time again, I'll write about my experience on the course. The five weeks went by in a blink, and I found them absolutely exhilarating and very rewarding, much like a five-week high.
The course was held at Playa Kamala, a small collection of bamboo-and-thatch huts right on the beach. This is the view from my hut:
And this is the hammock on my porch:
The bar and dining area had a sand floor - quite appropriate, as the beach was only about ten meters away.
A twenty minute walk to the right led to the party town Montañita.
About halfway to the town, there was a fascinating collection of ruins that are slowly being taken over by the sea. Local artists have sized the opportunity and created some nice artwork on the walls:
Five minutes to the left of Kamala was the fishing village Manglaralto. At the weekends (or maybe during the week too, but we were never around to see it then) several of the fisherman joined efforts to haul in huge fishing nets.
The beach was beautiful and seemingly endless - but we didn't get to enjoy it very often: too much work!
On the few occasions a got to take a walk, there were excellently camouflaged crabs to be seen...
...along with beautiful bubbles left behind by the waves.
And, of course, the sunsets! During the week, sunsets always happened when we were in class, so all a could do was look longingly out the windows. But luckily there were quite a few stunning sunsets on weekends as well:
Before the course, we had been prepared to expect the worst in terms of mosquitoes and weather. Luckily, the reality was quite different: most of the time it was sunny and warm, hardly any bugs around, and only two days with a slight drizzle. Perfect conditions!
Due to the location in a very humid climate in the middle of nowhere, we had problems with electricity quite a few times. In most cases, they were just short power outages, but in two cases the on-site grounding didn't ground properly and some people got nasty shocks when they touched equipment. I was on the receiving end two times and after that refused to touch any electronic devices. Since I didn't have my own laptop with me, the school's owner was kind enough to lend me his laptop to use during the rest of the course so I didn't have to be scared of being shocked again.
The schedule on the course was pretty tight and there was a LOT of work to do, mainly in planning lessons, but also in working on the four assignments we had to write. I got up around seven on most days and got some work done before and after breakfast. The days started officially with an input session from 9:30 to about noon. This was the part where we learned about all the aspects of teaching, and some things about the English language as well. After that came a two-hour slot for guided lesson planning where our trainers were available to answer our questions about upcoming lessons and provide help as needed.
Lunch was served at two, and then we had the afternoon "off" - I usually spent the time working on my lesson plans and assignments. This is the staff room, nicknamed the Octagon for its shape, where I did most of my work:
Classes started at five and went on for two hours. There were four of us teaching every night, two at intermediate and two at elementary level. After classes, we spent another hour on feedback for the lessons just taught. And this is one of the two classrooms:
Dinner was at eight, and then I usually did some more lesson planning until my head refused to do any more.
Weekends were nominally off, but I found that they gave me just enough time to keep on top of the workload (and do a good job with everything :-) ).
We had to teach nine lessons during the course, spread out so that on average we did two per week. On the days we were not teaching, we observed the others in our group teaching their lessons. It is amazing what you can learn from observing others alone!
I had always wondered if there was a better way to teach languages than how we were taught in school - and this was one of the reasons why I took the course in the first place. As it turns out, there is, and it is completely fascinating. You don't have to do much "teaching" at all! Most of the time, it is sufficient to draw on what the class knows already and guide them to discover the language for themselves by asking the right questions. In all lessons there is a strong focus on communication - because communication is ultimately what languages are used for. Both of these aspects - guiding learners rather than teaching them, and communication - were pretty much missing in my school experience, and I believe this is what made language learning in school ineffective and not very rewarding.
I also finally learned more about phonology: the sounds of English, how they are produced, how they can be taught, and how they can be written down using phonemic script. I remember that my school coursebooks all had phonemic script in them, but nobody ever bothered to explain what all this gobbledegook meant, nor how we could actually produce the sounds correctly. I found it especially fascinating to discover in the classroom how much it helped the learners when the teacher wrote phonemic script on the board. What an incredibly helpful tool!
Not everybody on the course was driven by the same love of learning as myself, however. Some found it overwhelming and felt they were drowning in work and new information - but I loved every minute. Finally, I was learning and experiencing how teaching works, and to top it off, I had the opportunity of working with absolutely brilliant and inspiring trainers. How could I not love this?
As the course came to an end, it turned out that everybody thought I was an excellent teacher - who would've thought? Not me, certainly. I just did the course to learn as much about teaching as I could. But maybe I could consider teaching as a possible future career option... We'll see!
Anyway, now that I have some spare time again, I'll write about my experience on the course. The five weeks went by in a blink, and I found them absolutely exhilarating and very rewarding, much like a five-week high.
The course was held at Playa Kamala, a small collection of bamboo-and-thatch huts right on the beach. This is the view from my hut:
And this is the hammock on my porch:
The bar and dining area had a sand floor - quite appropriate, as the beach was only about ten meters away.
A twenty minute walk to the right led to the party town Montañita.
About halfway to the town, there was a fascinating collection of ruins that are slowly being taken over by the sea. Local artists have sized the opportunity and created some nice artwork on the walls:
Five minutes to the left of Kamala was the fishing village Manglaralto. At the weekends (or maybe during the week too, but we were never around to see it then) several of the fisherman joined efforts to haul in huge fishing nets.
The beach was beautiful and seemingly endless - but we didn't get to enjoy it very often: too much work!
On the few occasions a got to take a walk, there were excellently camouflaged crabs to be seen...
...along with beautiful bubbles left behind by the waves.
And, of course, the sunsets! During the week, sunsets always happened when we were in class, so all a could do was look longingly out the windows. But luckily there were quite a few stunning sunsets on weekends as well:
Before the course, we had been prepared to expect the worst in terms of mosquitoes and weather. Luckily, the reality was quite different: most of the time it was sunny and warm, hardly any bugs around, and only two days with a slight drizzle. Perfect conditions!
Due to the location in a very humid climate in the middle of nowhere, we had problems with electricity quite a few times. In most cases, they were just short power outages, but in two cases the on-site grounding didn't ground properly and some people got nasty shocks when they touched equipment. I was on the receiving end two times and after that refused to touch any electronic devices. Since I didn't have my own laptop with me, the school's owner was kind enough to lend me his laptop to use during the rest of the course so I didn't have to be scared of being shocked again.
The schedule on the course was pretty tight and there was a LOT of work to do, mainly in planning lessons, but also in working on the four assignments we had to write. I got up around seven on most days and got some work done before and after breakfast. The days started officially with an input session from 9:30 to about noon. This was the part where we learned about all the aspects of teaching, and some things about the English language as well. After that came a two-hour slot for guided lesson planning where our trainers were available to answer our questions about upcoming lessons and provide help as needed.
Lunch was served at two, and then we had the afternoon "off" - I usually spent the time working on my lesson plans and assignments. This is the staff room, nicknamed the Octagon for its shape, where I did most of my work:
Classes started at five and went on for two hours. There were four of us teaching every night, two at intermediate and two at elementary level. After classes, we spent another hour on feedback for the lessons just taught. And this is one of the two classrooms:
Dinner was at eight, and then I usually did some more lesson planning until my head refused to do any more.
Weekends were nominally off, but I found that they gave me just enough time to keep on top of the workload (and do a good job with everything :-) ).
We had to teach nine lessons during the course, spread out so that on average we did two per week. On the days we were not teaching, we observed the others in our group teaching their lessons. It is amazing what you can learn from observing others alone!
I had always wondered if there was a better way to teach languages than how we were taught in school - and this was one of the reasons why I took the course in the first place. As it turns out, there is, and it is completely fascinating. You don't have to do much "teaching" at all! Most of the time, it is sufficient to draw on what the class knows already and guide them to discover the language for themselves by asking the right questions. In all lessons there is a strong focus on communication - because communication is ultimately what languages are used for. Both of these aspects - guiding learners rather than teaching them, and communication - were pretty much missing in my school experience, and I believe this is what made language learning in school ineffective and not very rewarding.
I also finally learned more about phonology: the sounds of English, how they are produced, how they can be taught, and how they can be written down using phonemic script. I remember that my school coursebooks all had phonemic script in them, but nobody ever bothered to explain what all this gobbledegook meant, nor how we could actually produce the sounds correctly. I found it especially fascinating to discover in the classroom how much it helped the learners when the teacher wrote phonemic script on the board. What an incredibly helpful tool!
Not everybody on the course was driven by the same love of learning as myself, however. Some found it overwhelming and felt they were drowning in work and new information - but I loved every minute. Finally, I was learning and experiencing how teaching works, and to top it off, I had the opportunity of working with absolutely brilliant and inspiring trainers. How could I not love this?
As the course came to an end, it turned out that everybody thought I was an excellent teacher - who would've thought? Not me, certainly. I just did the course to learn as much about teaching as I could. But maybe I could consider teaching as a possible future career option... We'll see!
