CELTA Smelter - Tatty Scott gives the second installment of her Italian TEFL diary
Tuesday, 8th June 2010
If someone tells you their CELTA isn’t hurting, they’re not doing it right.
It’s mid-point in this incredible CELTA journey and my head is fit to explode. I knew it was going to be hard work with moments of yikes! And oops! And frustration! And sure as eggs is eggs, these predictions have come true.
But wait! This is all good!
In two weeks I’ve delivered six classes to real life adult learners, the first time I’ve simultaneously taught and managed a class in my life. (And even though my hands have been shaking with nerves at times, I’ve actually enjoyed it.) I’ve learned about lesson planning and slogged for hours planning my six lessons but have also recognised the importance of that slog. I’ve begun learning some of the differences between grammar lessons and vocabulary lessons and started putting that new knowledge into practice. I’ve also been learning the essentials of classroom management, sometimes by getting it wrong before getting it right…
But that’s why we’re here in Milan, to work hard, to learn how to do it, and to learn from our own and each others mistakes. There are nine of us on this five week CELTA, and as a group we’ve become an instant family. This has meant when we all reach our energy lows, or feel frustrated after a lesson doesn’t go as we’d planned, there are eight other people who know exactly how we feel. Even after the long days we’ve still been there to help each other and we still mooch up to a bar for a quick social aperitivo after school before heading home to our books. What’s been a huge relief is that the CELTA course runs for only four days a week. This means we get a three-day weekend - an extra day each week for cramming, sleeping, and a cheeky spot of socialising. Cheers!
For me, getting my head around the grammar teaching has been particularly hard. I’ve made a living out of the English language for nearly 20 years as a journalist and editor, but never before had to consider, “How can I convey a wish + that clause to an upper-intermediate student?” When lesson planning stretches into the night or takes up most of my weekend it’s because I’m learning about aspects of grammar that I’ve never unpicked before - and then devising a lesson plan which will present the Meaning, Pronunciation, and Form of this Target Language to my class of students.
Another aspect of teaching that we’re all trying hard to incorporate into our lessons is the TEFL philosophy of student-centred learning. Unlike our memories of school, this style of teaching is not one where The Teacher stands at the front of the room spewing fact and conjugations and students, silently, jot it down.
When our students ask a question our role is to direct them to the answer rather than spoon-feeding it to them. This may be by giving them clues so they come to the answer themselves, or by encouraging peer teaching, switching students from one group to another to share the things they know. The noise that ensues from all this discussion is fantastic for two reasons; firstly the students are practising their English (the English-speaking teacher doesn’t need this practice). Secondly, this student discourse allows the teacher to listen out for grammar and pronunciation potholes so they can offer error correction to the whole class either after an exercise or towards the end of the class. In sticking to the student-centred ethos, often this error correction is elicited from the students too, “Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this sentence, ‘She sing very good.’?” A general rule of thumb is, if you pass a CELTA classroom and it’s silent for more than five minutes, you’re probably in the wrong building.
The time has flown by and our merry band of nine is now nearly three weeks into the course and has just two more weeks at the Milan Centre before we’re off out into the real world to look for jobs.
As part of a CELTA we teach adults for six hours and observe qualified teachers for a minimum of six hours. Earlier this week it was the turn of course leader Morgan Cox to teach our Italian adults for a two-hour class. He’s been a CELTA teacher for 20 years and at the end of the lesson there was a stunned silence from the trainees’ observation panel at the back.
We had just witnessed The Master – natural, humorous, relaxed yet purposeful, ordered, and unhampered by self-consciousness or doubt. The lesson had breezed by as if it were a 40-minute lesson not one that had lasted two-hours. At the end I felt it was strangely similar to watching Torville and Dean stride to a perfect run of 6s with their Bolero at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics; he had made something complex and honed seem perfectly effortless (but without the flouncy purple blouses).
Our panel of judges here in Milan agreed, we had a lot of work ahead of us… Onwards!
Tags: diary, sff2009, suzanne furstner scholarship, milan, celta, italy, tefl
Posted by Tatty Scott 2010-06 under Cactus TEFL, Cactus News,
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