The Twenty-First Blog Of Trig - The Barcelona Diaries (Part 8 - CELTA Week Three)

CELTA, week three. We had all been nervous about teaching the upper intermediate students, having heard stories from the other group about how they were difficult to manage, since as soon as you gave them a task they flew off into discussion, in English, immersing themselves in their own little world. The group was much older, with an average age probably lying in the mid-forties. I preferred this second group, as I could talk more naturally to them, although like the elementary students they had trouble understanding my London accent. In fact, both the elementary students and the upper intermediate students told me that my accent was the most difficult to understand, among a group of teachers from Wales, Ireland, Russia, Holland, America, and others. I told them all that if they had trouble with mine, they should try Scottish, or a proper London Cockney. Even I have trouble understanding some Scots.

Teaching the upper intermediate students was more difficult grammatically, as they were of course on a higher level of understanding than elementary. I got the distinct impression that some had a better grasp of many English grammatical concepts than I did, and I was asked the odd question that I could only answer with a shrug. You didn’t shrug of course, or tell the students that you didn’t know the answer. The best way to deal with grammatical questions you cannot answer is to say, “we’ll take a look at that next lesson”, and move on with the material you have prepared. You can then address the question in the next lesson if you feel inclined to, or simply hope that they forget it if you are lazy.

The lessons went well, but the atmosphere was increasingly tense among me and my peers. We were all tired from the first two weeks of studying and teaching. We were half-way through the course and we were now under our new tutor Nigel. Nigel was lovely, a quiet reserved man who chose his words carefully. We had heard that he could be a bit harsh in feedback, which I did not see at all. He was honest in his criticism, but his calm delivery made me feel at ease. His advice was always valid, and his shy, almost sheepish delivery made everyone feel comfortable.

We handed in our assignments and waited for feedback. That week I completed my first assignment without a resubmission, which I was very happy for. I helped one of the other student-teachers with her assignment briefly one evening, meeting her in the park and proof-reading it for her, but it started to get dark and I was tired, and I did not go through it properly. I could have made an awful lot of correction in all honesty, but it was due in the following morning and I did not want to cause her to stay up through the night re-writing it, by hand, on account of what I felt were trivial errors. Maybe I should have. She had to resubmit due to these grammatical errors, and was very upset. Not that it really mattered, she resubmitted and it was fine, but she was not happy with me after that, and our relationship was not the same.

We continued our lessons in the afternoons and taught in the evenings, still enjoying the course, but everyone was feeling the strain. Towards the end of the week I buckled on my ankle going down a flight of stairs in the school, while hurriedly preparing for a lesson. My foot went completely numb in an instant and I couldn’t walk on it. Four months later that ankle doesn’t feel like it will ever heal properly.

One day that week I left the school after giving a great lesson and ran into a massive procession of people protesting the ‘crisis’, the financial bail-out of the organisations who ‘lost’ all the money in the world. I marched through the city with the people, watching, writing, and smiling, taking pictures of the happy, peaceful protesters and the aggressive-looking armed riot police. I got some wonderful photographs, which I was very sad to lose when my camera was stolen in my bag the following week.

At the end of the week we began discussing our final lesson, an hour-long lesson which would take place in the final few days. Mine turned out to be the last lesson of the course, taking place 6.30-7.30 on the final Friday. I didn’t mind this, as it gave me plenty of time to prepare. My final lesson was to be based around a news article about a chimpanzee who has been taught to communicate in sign language and to use a special computer designed for her. I had picked this myself, loving chimpanzees and liking the idea of ending the lesson with a debate on the pros and cons of keeping animals in captivity. The article was very interesting as well, and I believed the students would enjoy reading and studying it.

There was a strange mix of emotions as we approached the end of that third week. We were all now eager to finish the course, drained of our energy through the intensity of the work, but we were also sad that it was coming to an end. We had formed close friendships with each other and developed what I hesitate to call a ‘group dynamic’, but that’s what it was. Working so closely together, helping each other, worrying about each other, watching everyone progress, we had become a team, and it was sad to envisage the break-up of that team when the course finished and everyone went their separate ways…CELTA – one week left.

This is ‘The Twenty Second Blog Of Trig’, signing off.

The Twentieth Blog Of Trig - The Barcelona Diaries (Part 7 - CELTA Week Two)

Week two of the CELTA course, we had our first assignment due in on the Tuesday. I thought I had done it okay, but was not too surprised when it was returned to me for a resubmission. If our assignment did not make the grade it was handed back to us and we had to resubmit it a few days later, after addressing the points our tutors had made. I was glad for this, as my knowledge of English grammar was not the best. In fact it was probably the worst among my peers, which I was not particularly proud of, especially since I was the only English lad. Of course, I KNEW English, having spoken, read and written it my entire life, and could tell you what is grammatically correct and what is not, but I did not know the grammar rules that had been constructed around it.

We were given our second assignment, which involved talking to our students and learning about their motives for learning English, the aspects of English they had difficulty with and why, their strengths, weaknesses, errors they made, and their attitude and behaviour in class. The student-teachers worked together to gather as much information as we could about our students and shared this information with each other for use in writing our assignments, which required us to analyse and assess this information in order to say how we would help students overcome the difficulties they have and eliminate the common errors.

The pressure was on that week, as we were expected to show improvement against our first week's teaching, which we all did of course. It was almost impossible not to, certainly for those of us who were teaching for the first time, which was the category I fell into. It was interesting and fulfilling to see the improvement in the students, which you could see even after one week of lessons. Some had not studied English since they were at school, so much of their improvement was probably a result of refreshed memories, but it was fulfilling nonetheless. Looking back I have never seen a person's personality revealed so cleanly as I did when I observed my students as I taught them. You have a front row seat to human psychological development. You feel their happiness as they speak their new language correctly, no matter how little they show it. You watch them slip up, correct themselves, and you feel their happiness as they improve day-by-day.

As the week drew to an end there was a little bit of apprehension, as we were unsure how much harder it would be teaching the upper intermediate students, and for the last two weeks we were to be working under a new teaching-tutor; Nigel. Nigel was a lovely guy, quite meek in his personality, but confident in his profession and a good teacher. Some of the people in the other group had told us that he was quite strict and unyielding in his tutoring and feedback, but I was not too worried. I could tell that he was a nice guy and I would have been surprised if he had been anything other than encouraging and supportive, which he was completely.

After our last lesson with the elementary students we had a bit of an emotional goodbye to them all. A few hugs were exchanged as they thanked us for teaching them and told us how well we had all done. A couple of people gave us all their contact details and promised to stay in touch. It was a wonderful experience, a strange  experience, being students ourselves, being congratulated by our own students for how well we had done. It was a very unique experience, and looking back I feel a warm feeling inside as I reminisce. I made many wonderful friends that first two weeks.

This is 'The Twentieth Blog Of Trig', signing off.

The Nineteenth Blog Of Trig - The Barcelona Diaries (Part 6 - CELTA Week One)

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.