The first two weeks of the CELTA course we were teaching elementary students. Most spoke Spanish as their first language. Some were Spanish, some proudly declared that they were not Spanish but Catalan. The others were mostly from South America; Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador; there was a French guy, and one Algerian, some looking as nervous as we were, others sitting down to the lesson and chilling like they were at home, with an air of confident nonchalance about them.
The first week went well (other than beginning my first lesson with my flies undone, brought to my attention by one of my pupils), and I taught my lessons with confidence arising partly from the initial lack of pressure. I watched my peers teach every day with fascination. Certain aspects of personality really show when teaching, such as patience (or impatience), confidence or lack of, sense of humour. Your grasp of the subject you are teaching also felt like it was under close scrutiny, that subject happening to be the language I have spoken my entire life; no pressure. Those who had taught young children were very animated in their teaching, which was brilliant for the elementary students. You have to use a lot of gestures with elementary students, and I remember our tutor Andrea conducting a few classes (with both the English students and the student English-teachers), hardly speaking at all, prompting us to verbally engage in the lesson with amazing grace. She was not jumping about playing charades either. It was the subtlety that made her such a good teacher. She would sit on a chair with us sitting in a wide semicircle around her, say half a sentence, make a slight gesture; a pinch of her ear or a point of her finger; and like some kind of Jedi mind trick we would be saying what she wanted us to say, filling in the details of a story she told without words.
'Try not to talk too much'. 'Grade your language'. 'Ask concept-checking questions'. 'Slowly and clearly'. The teaching points after lessons helped us to improve our teaching skills and identify our weak points. Our students left at around half past seven and then the student-teachers and our tutor sat and gave each other constructive criticism, which always began with a mutual congratulations on a good lesson. In turns we told the class how we thought we'd done and what we could have done better, and then the rest of the class were asked to give input. I was in a wonderful group who were not afraid to give constructive criticism, but who were wholly supportive, considerate, and not judgemental in any way.
The group of twelve was split into two teaching groups of six. We taught the elementary class for the first two weeks. The other group taught the upper intermediary. In my group of six was Garreth from Wales, Janneke from Holland, Emily from Ireland, Elmira from Russia, Derrick from the US, and of course me, from England.
Garreth, from Cardiff, looked like an English knight of old, as described in an earlier diary. When he taught, his voice took on that of a valiant knight from a fairy tale, even more so than usual. He laughed frequently, in friendly bellows like a big friendly giant, making jokes and having fun with the class, who beamed back at him with smiles that cannot be faked. We very quickly formed the kind of friendship that transcends distance and time, the kind of bond that I felt I had formed with all my fellow student-teachers by the end of the course.
Janneke was from Amsterdam, tall, blonde, with a stern but pretty face. She was a very good teacher, but she was occasionally a little bossy with the students to begin with, which we gently told her in one of the feedback sessions, and joked about later with the intermediate students. She spoke better English than I did, and embarrassed me; the only Englishman; with her amazing grasp of English grammar.
Emily was from Dublin, only 23 years old, the youngest among us, and had taught children for many years already. She was fun, very pretty, always up for a drink, and generally a laugh to be around. She had a job lined up back home as headteacher of a new school. I think she took the course just for the experience as much as anything else. She was very patient and encouraging in her teaching, her experience shining through with every lesson she taught.
Elmira was from Moscow, strikingly pretty, with dark hair and long legs. The first thing I noticed about her was her sense of empathy and compassion. When she sensed that someone was unhappy, she unwittingly took that negative emotion upon herself, turned it around, and comforted that person with the compassion of a mother with her child. When she was excited, her exuberance induced excitement in others. She worried a lot, on behalf of others at least as much as she did for herself. Like Janneke, she embarrassed me with her grasp of English grammar, and we spent some time working together, her sharing the grammar skills that she had worked hard to learn, me sharing the practical English 'skills' that come with simply 'being English'.
Derrick was from Ohio. African American, built like a gymnast, insanely talented and intelligent, with pearly white teeth that lit up his face when he spoke, and he was an absolute pleasure to be around. From our first meeting we began talking about science and mathematics, ascending into the philosophical and metaphysical, and I very quickly felt a close bond with him. He was enthusiastically encouraging to everyone in the feedback sessions, but was still possibly the most confident, perceptive peer when it came to providing constructive criticism. Everything he said was built on respect and consideration.
We began classes at 12pm each day, giving nice time for a lie-in, but we were in the school until eight, so I would often not get home until nine, have dinner, and be starting my lesson plans and assignments by ten. I was very frequently up until the early hours working, 6am was the record. Some students managed to go out drinking and partying quite a bit and still get all their work done. I don't know how they did it, and they did better than me in the end. I was working almost every waking moment and it was not easy, but I enjoyed every minute.
I had trouble with my back the first week or so, a combination of my injury in France a few weeks before and the amount of walking I did on the first couple of days in Barcelona. Every time I winced with pain in class I felt Elmira wince for me, worrying about me in her motherly way. She tried to convince me to go to the hospital and check it out once she found out that I had not been x-rayed back in England, but I knew that if I did find out that something was wrong, there was nothing that I could do about it out there and would have to wait until I got back to England anyway, so there was no point in risking a load of worry that I didn't need if it did turn out something was wrong. Every morning I got up and went to the roof terrace in the house I was staying and stretched for ten to fifteen minutes in the sunshine. This seemed to help, and was a lovely way to start the day.
From twelve until three each day we had input sessions, where the full group of twelve student-teachers would receive tutoring on teaching methods and skills. Then we would have lunch for an hour, before an hour of feedback sessions in our teaching groups of six until five o'clock. In the feedback sessions the three of us teaching would run through our lesson plans one last time with our tutor, and the other three would run through their lesson plans for the following day.
At five o'clock our students arrived for their English lesson, and three of us taught our forty minute lessons one after the other. The other three watched and made notes for feedback later. After the second forty minute block there was a break, and we all, English students and student English-teachers, went to the terrace and chatted, drank coffee and smoked before the last forty minute leg began. I quickly made friends with many of our students, and later ended up spending some time dating a lovely Ecuadorian woman I had taught for a while.
At the end of our first week we got together on the terrace for a few beers and everyone seemed happy. The pressure was not yet on and we knew next week would be different. Next week we would be expected to have taken on all of the feedback we had been given and applied it. As such we should not be making any of the mistakes we had made in the first week. Plus we had our first assignments due in...game on.
This is 'The Nineteenth Blog Of Trig', signing off.
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