Cactus Language Blog

CELTA in Ljubljana, Slovenia - a trainer’s first-hand account

Posted by Sarah under Cactus TEFL, English

Hi readers. I’m Bill Harris, a freelance CELTA trainer, and this is my first report on my training experiences around the world.

I’m writing on my day off in the living room of my spacious apartment in Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, with occasional forays onto the terrace for some sun.

Slovenia…not to be confused with Slovakia or Slavonia, is a beautiful country the size of Wales around the top of Italy and also bordering Austria, Hungary and Croatia. Part of Tito’s old Jugoslavia, the country was always more liberal and western-looking and gained independence in the so called Ten–Day war in 1991, joining the EU in 2004 and adopting the euro in 2007.

So…what’s it like to be a temporary resident and running what can be a very stressful and demanding training course? My reply would be ‘extremely pleasant!’. Ljubljana ( I still struggle with the spelling!!!) is a lovely old town surrounded by green hills with views of mountains beyond and it is very liveable, all the more so because it is the most bike friendly city I’ve met (outside of Eugene, Oregon perhaps.) The school has lent me a wonderfully comfortable machine (it’s called a lady bike and is a fetching pink but I don’t mind!) and I use it to get to school and potter around the Old Town in search of an evening beer and dinner.

My co-tutor Mike is another freelance who is based in Oxford and he got the short straw and an older bike. There are bike lanes either on the pavement or in the road, and the traffic lights have a bike path across them as well as the green bike for go. Unlike the UK, car owners defer to bikes, though I still get a little nervous when I pedal across a bike priority junction. And unlike my adopted home town of Hastings on the South Coast, Ljubljana is wonderfully flat!

A key ingredient of a country is obviously the people and Slovenes are great - easygoing , hospitable, helpful and with good English! Mike and I were caught on our bikes in a thunderstorm on Sunday and ended up being rescued by a genial biker who took us into his girlfriend’s (closed down) bar and plied us with coffee and motorcycling tales in amazingly good English till the rain stopped. Can’t imagine any of that happening back in England!

The school building is perfectly situated in that it’s a little out of town in a quiet zone and is only being used by the eight candidates on the CELTA and four Slovenes doing a similar 4-week course to become teachers of German. Part of the stress of the CELTA can be competing for resources and space in a busy school and, because it’s summer and this is an annexe to the main school, we are lucky and have the lot to ourselves. It’s hot, but not so hot you can’t work, and there are tables outside in the garden for preparation times and feedback after teaching practice.

Our trainees are a great bunch - seven Slovenians and Jon from England – and have been happy to invite us to their end of week parties with good wine, food and music. I’ll try to get some of them to add their thoughts later.

Another key ingredient of the CELTA are the TP (teaching practice) students who here actually pay a nominal fee to come along and act as guinea pigs for the two hour afternoon slot. There are two levels, pre-intermediate and upper intermediate, and trainees get to teach both classes but the students have all been great. Mature, motivated and enthusiastic! They get demonstration lessons from Mike and myself but probably enjoy the energy and vitality of the trainees more than the old hand trainers. There are some brilliant teachers on the course…admittedly they have mostly had some teaching experience but are building on this and incorporating a lot of procedures and techniques from the morning input sessions into their teaching practice lessons. Over the course each candidate teaches six hours of assessed TP - here we have nine slots of 30, 40 and 60 minutes – but because there are only four in a TP group rather than five or six then they have unobserved slots where they can teach without the pressure of the tutor at the back of the room.

Slovenia is a great place to be for a month as it is small enough to explore by bus, train and bike and has a wealth of options: mountains, lakes, forested hills, caves and medieval towns. They tell me the small coastline is not very exciting so I may pop into Croatia this weekend to find some good swimming in the clear waters of the Adriatic. It’s all very green in both senses and there are recycling bins for organic waste as well as the usual bottles and paper. Eating out in the myriad of eating places down by the river is very pleasant and a little cheaper than other euro zones and Mike and I have been living very cheaply, buying food from the supermarket across the road or the little fresh food man round the corner. That reminds me, I must get some more of his lovely nectarines. Better than Safeways!

And then it’s on the good old pink bike and off to watch TP. Bye!

Tags:CELTA, Slovenia, teaching practice, tefl