I started writing this on 2nd August, wrote some more on 8th August, and the date now is 11th of the 11th 2011...I really should get this finished. In the previous 'Barcelona diary' I covered Sunday 3rd July. I guess that puts me at Monday 4th July, my first day on the CELTA course.
I left myself plenty of time to get to the school, but after losing myself in what I expected to be a shortcut, I arrived just on time, hot and sweaty and a little annoyed with myself. In the reception I was greeted by Gloria, the lady in charge of administration. She had a lovely smile which even the most sombre of people could not help but reciprocate. She was warm and welcoming, and gave me a sticker to write my name on and put on my chest. She then advised me to go upstairs to the terrace bar where I would meet the other trainee teachers.
I arrived upstairs to find the bar very busy and the terrace even busier. I looked around and saw a few tables of students with similar stickers to mine, and picked one at random. There sat a pretty blonde girl and a guy with a heroic knight's face and suitably long blonde hair parted at the middle. They both greeted me, the guy introducing himself as Garreth. His voice was that of a valiant knight of old, adding to the image of bloody battles in my mind, built like a rugby player, and turned out to be, in fact, a rugby player. The girl introduced herself as Janneke (with the 'j' pronounced as a 'y'), and immediately asked me if I too had a Catalan girlfriend. I told her that I didn't, but that I assumed Garreth did. I was right.
We made small talk for a short while, during which I learnt that neither of them had done all of the recommended reading or finished the pre-course task, which I had also not managed to finish. I was relieved that we were all floating in the same life-boat. Then we were called to our classroom for our first input session.
The classroom was fairly small for the twelve students that had to squeeze in, with chairs spread out in a semi-circle around the whiteboard. We had two course tutors, the first being a lovely lady called Andrea. She looked about mid-to-late thirties, with pretty Mediterranean looks which I assumed to be of Greek origin. I was thrown off by her slight Irish accent, and it turned out she was brought up in Ireland, but was in fact born to Greek parents. She was warm and encouraging to us all, and first had us all play various 'get-to-know-you' games. I got to know my fellow students briefly in the first class, but I knew the real 'getting-to-know-you' would take place in a bar somewhere, which made me slightly uncomfortable since money was very tight for me.
In our first lesson Andrea stressed to us that we had to help each other out through the course, that is was going to be a lot of hard work and that our peers would be our best friends by the end. She was right, but I wasn't too sure about one or two people to start with. Those I was unsure of changed immeasurably through the course, and I count them all as good friends. First impressions can always be misleading.
As well as the games we played, we were taken through the structure of the course, told about our assignments, teaching schedules, and were hit with the bombshell that we would all teach a 20 minute lesson on our first day! We were to give a lesson incorporating the games we ourselves had played that day. I felt a little nervous, but afterwards my peers told me that I seemed very confident when my turn came. I think we all did, successfully concealing our nerves on that first day. Of course nothing extraordinary was expected of us, it being our first day and all.
The structure of the course over the next four weeks included teaching a lesson every other day. Three teachers would teach forty minutes one day, giving the English students a total two-hour lesson a day. Our last lesson on the course would be one hour. We received all kinds of handouts, a CELTA folder to keep our course material in, and also, the most important file for our CELTA course, the CELTA course file. This was to hold all of our lesson plans (submitted the morning before every lesson for assessment), assignments, tutor feedback, records of our attendance, every piece of evidence to show that we have taken the course. They emphasised to us that we should never, under any circumstances take the file home with us. If it were to be lost we might have to do the course over again. If you know me you will know the special relevance this applies to me, being the absolute calamity that I am. As they say, 'there's always one', and it's always me.
My 20 minute lesson incorporated a game where everyone wrote two things about themselves on two strips of paper (in English), put them in a pile and then picked two out at random. They then had to find the person who it belonged to. I remember the students standing around me in a semi-circle as I gave them instructions, feeling my heart beating in my chest, and cool bead-lets of sweat penetrating through my forehead. I stayed very calm, reminded myself that nothing could really go wrong, explained in the most basic of English what they had to do, and told them to 'mingle'. Of course, none of them knew what the hell the word 'mingle' meant, and there was a moment of nerves as they all stared silently around the room. Then one asked the room in broken English, "who has a sister called 'Maria'?" Someone claimed it. One down. Then silence. I broke the silence and said two words; 'walk', 'talk'; and after a moment of hesitation they broke their circle and began 'mingling'. I looked up and caught the eyes of my fellow student-teachers at the back of the room, who smiled and winked at me. Relief. I smiled.
I connected with a couple of people the first day, getting on particularly well with Garreth the Welsh rugby player. He was a very friendly, laid back and funny guy. It's always hard though, feeling nervous and with so many names to remember, but it was a good day. I was pretty tired and I went back home soon after my lessons finished, chatted to my host Alan briefly, waffled online a bit and then hit the sack, sleeping a little badly due to the heat.
CELTA day one, done.
This is 'The Seventeenth Blog Of Trig', signing off.
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