Celta: Complete!

And just like that, CELTA is finished and I am back at home, in the cold, dirty white north. My darling Kimmer drove me home from Chilliwack yesterday. Today, I unpacked and tried to get back into having what is loosely called “a life” but mostly I rested today. I have work for tomorrow and maybe Wednesday, and have called UNBC to see what they want to do for me.

Celta week 4. Where do I start! It was quite the week. Even though I thought my assignment was perfect, my tutor said it wasn’t. I was very frustrated because most of the things that I had to do a resubmit on where mechanical things like I missed a heading in my paper. There were things I had included that others also included that had to come out on my paper only. However, I resubmitted it and passed the assignment. I have passed all 4 of the assignments, but I had to resubmit 3 of them! That’s lame! I am a little annoyed at myself for that, but I thought that everything was there every time. Two of the assignments were in one assignment, so although it is two resubmits, it was only one assignment. We only had three assignments – one per weekend.

I taught a grammar lesson on Tuesday that I failed completely. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I graded myself as a fail as well. I know that first of all, I made the wrong assumptions on my lesson plan. I decided that the students would know the present perfect verb tense and went in to teach it as a review and quickly realized they did not know the present perfect at all. This was my first and probably biggest issue. My next huge issue was that I couldn’t remember my lesson plan, and I jumped all over the place. I would start something and be like oh I skipped this part, and would go back to the skipped part. In my world it was better to pick up the part in the lesson to skip it completely, but my tutor disagreed. The lesson was not in the proper order and therefore, it was not appropriate. I went home from school, cried my eyes out and vowed to make myself a better teacher for my next lesson.

My next lesson I thought went well, but again my tutor disagreed, although it was not a failed lesson at all. I felt that the students needed more time to do the reading, but Brad says that if I had done my instructions correctly, the students wouldn’t have needed any more time than I gave them. He also said that the tasks went on for too long (which I knew but they weren’t done reading it yet!) Brad also gave me feedback which I just plain disagree with. (I don’t expect you to understand this but…) I had done my lead in task (which is to gain interest and motivation) and did a pre-teaching of a vocabulary word immediately after. I was proud of my lesson in this aspect because it flowed so nicely you didn’t notice the different stages of the lesson, which is something I have loved in experienced teacher’s classrooms. However, Brad decided that this stage of my lesson needed to be longer (they are never longer!). I was teaching “architecture” and we were looking at different pictures of architecture. He says that I should have talked about each of these pictures before moving on. This would have taken at least an extra 10 minutes which you just don’t have in a 50 minute lesson! I can see the value of his comment if I had my own class without a time limit like we had on our lessons, but for our lessons, I do not see his comment as realistic at all. I guess that’s what makes me a CELTA graduate – the ability to see the value and non-value in comments that we receive about our teaching.

On Friday we handed in our portfolios (all of our lessons, all of our feedback, all of our assignments and the feedback, and a blue book signed off by both us and our tutors). These get sent to Cambridge and get evaluated. Cambridge can change our provisional marks which our tutors have given us, but most of the time doesn’t. Once Cambridge has marked our portfolios, they will prepare our certificates and mail them out to us. This will be in about six weeks or so. At the end of this week, we should be able to get our provisional marks from Global Village Vancouver. Obviously, because I am not in Vancouver anymore, I will probably get mine in about a week or so, in the mail. We all know that we passed the course, because Aly and Brad would have been freaking at us long ago if we hadn’t. I talked to Aly at the pub on Friday night and he said it was actually pretty hard to fail the course, you only have to make some improvement, and the world knows that you got good training.

We had a party with our learners on Friday afternoon. The party was supposed to start at 3:15 (when class starts) but we only had two learners until 4 pm. We ended up with about eight learners at the party. Of course, Japan was in crisis and we have at least six Japanese students who were desperately trying to contact their families. We didn’t expect them to show up when we heard that news! Some of our Mexican students brought some music and tried to get us to dance. I joined in when they played the Macarena. It is a family who joins us, and the mother was laughing so hard at my dancing! They are so cute! The girl (she is in high school and only joins us sometimes, and I cannot pronounce her name so, she is just the girl) and Marcos (21 and one of our beginner students) danced the Macarena with me while their mother Maria Elena (who I also cannot say) laughed. It was a really good time. We kicked our learners out at about 5:15 – 5:30 and the Celta program headed to the pub. The pub was crazy busy, so we sat on a table at the back, all nine of us – the seven learners and our two tutors. There was a lot of drinking going on, and Aly was finally telling us all the horror stories about CELTA’s in the past that he had alluded to for the last month. What a blast we all had. We were certainly lucky to have found such a great, supportive group. I left at about 8:30 to head back to Coquitlam, as I had someone else going back to the sky train station and I wanted someone to walk with.

Now that it is all over, and I am back home, I am unsure of what direction my life is heading. With two not so amazing lessons to end the course, I feel a little unsteady in my teacher shoes. I want to take a grammar course, but am struggling to find one (having only started last night). I feel like if I am actually taught the rules of why we say what we say when we say it, I might feel more confident teaching it. I downloaded on the best grammar books today (I love torrent downloads!) so I will try reading it and see if it explains the rules better than the last set of grammar books I purchased. From the only lesson I rocked, I know that enough research does make the grammar clear to me. So, it is possible that if I have enough good grammar books in my possession (ideally on my computer not in paper books!) that I can figure it all out and do what I need to do. However, this fear of grammar is making me anxious. I don’t really want to try to teach it in a place where I am well known. It makes me even more nervous that I think the standards are higher for me than for others because I am well known. Do I want to find a paying job in Prince George? Do I want to volunteer in Prince George? Do I want to tutor? Do I want to do this elsewhere? Do I still go overseas in September, or do I wait until January and have more time to build my Celta skills? Many places overseas will take you without any experience knowing that you have a Celta. Do I want to do that, or do I want to go overseas feeling 100% confident in my ability? Being overseas adds some additional stress to the new teacher – does anyone speak English? Can I learn enough of the local language quick enough to fit in? What if I end with a different age group than what we learned in Celta? All of a sudden, the decisions are overwhelming. In an ideal world, I would like to volunteer for a while to gain more experience, but since my bank account says I need a job ASAP, this might not be an option. I think my current plan is to wait for my letter from Global Village, with my provisional grade, and a letter stating my strengths and weaknesses in my Celta teaching practice. I think I will then take this letter to Barb at CNC and have an unofficial conversation with her, expressing my concerns about trying to get on at CNC. I am hoping she will have some guidance for me. If I like what she says, I will submit my resume to CNC. If she says I need more before I can work at the college, I will head down to the multicultural centre and see if I can organize some language classes there. Right now, this is what I am leaning towards, because there is no pressure for a volunteer teacher. However, if I can get on at CNC, I will probably be the only of my class able to get onto a public institution. Vancouver language schools (the non-private ones) normally require a Master’s degree, but I am pretty sure CNC doesn’t. Either way, the experience I gain will be incredible and 100% worthwhile. Now is the time to make this happen, and now is the time to get hired for September as well.

Most language schools overseas, even if they cannot pay you, will pay for a lot of your fees, unlike the volunteering which I have been doing. I am far more willing to volunteer to teach if my bank account doesn’t just go down as a result. And, I will get paid to do … something… this summer which will help my bank account, at least a little! Japan was at the top of my list, but I might bump it for a while. Georgia in Europe seems to have a great government funded program running. Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, China and many others also hold such a great appeal for me. I want to see the world. Celta is my ticket, and it was worth all the tears I cried. So, for the next week, I am going to do research, read grammar books, and work the couple of days I know are out there. Next week, decisions must be made, and I am ready.