well, i finished the CELTA course. it pretty much consumes you for four weeks. and as someone before me has already said, "it was the longest and shortest four weeks of my entire life." heh.
so the results, i finsihed in the top half of the pass band, which is pretty good. jay got a "Pass B", which only 15% of the people who take the course get (on average). i don't think anyone in our course failed, but i know two people in the other class failed, which is kind of sad. oh well...
so right now i am sitting in an internet cafe typing up my CV (that is a resume here in europe) - or, not typing it right now, because i am typing this. i am going to try to finish it tonight and send it out to as many schools as possible tonight so they will have it when they arrive in the morning.
i never know what to put on these things, though. like "activities and responsibilities" with my previous job. um.. i know what i did, but i dont know exactly how to say it, and it has nothing to do with teaching, so who cares? heh. oh, and the worst parts are the "social skills" and "orginizational skills" sections... i never know what to write.
other than that... i need a vacation. i have been going nonstop for six weeks now. weekends havent even been a rest, and the last two days especially, since it was the last weekend everyone from the course is in town and we have gone out three nights in a row staying up way too late.
but i realize now that i have never really written anything on here about the course or the people we have met in the course, so here we go...
the course
the course was four weeks long. each morning we had a seminar period from 9:30 to 1:30 (with a break, of course) in which we were taught anything from phonology (that is how you pronounce things) to teaching vocabulary and reading and grammar and blah blah blah.
then we had what is called "TP Preperation". "TP" stands for "teaching practice". so this was an hour and a half to prepare for your lesson and talk to your tutor about your lesson and ask any questions or get any advice you needed.
after that we had an hour and a half lunch (which on days you taught was basically just an extention of TP prep). then came Teaching Practice, which is two hours in the afternoon.
after that we had a feedback session where our tutors would tell us how we did and what we did well and what we need to work on and all that kind of stuff.
you teach every other day for 40 min, which means that three people teach in a normal day. the course was four weeks long, and in that four weeks you taught two two-week classes. the first class (for me) was at a higher level, and the last class was at an elementary level. so you teach three times for 40min during the two weeks, then one time for 60 min, then you do it again. so when you add it all up you teach 6 hours. basically how much we taught over two weeks (Which was fairly stressful and hard to prepare for) is how much you teach in half of a normal work week. however, in a normal work week you are not being observed by a tutor and you get to know a class a lot better, or work one on one and stuff like that, so it is a lot less stressful (i hope).
our tutors
the course has three tutors. our head tutor was a man from England (though he has lived in Prague since 91) named Jim. he was a great tutor and a great teacher. insightful and informative. encourage and all kinds of that stuff. the two assistant tutors were another man from England, Duncan, and a lady from the Czech Republic, Dana. Duncan was the lead singer for a punk band in England in his younger years, he is very animated and a great teacher. Dana is from Prague, she is a really good teacher and really insightful, though i didnt like her at first, my opinion was slowly swayed over the four weeks.
so, the tutors, you have a tutor for Teaching Practice, and the three tutors basically split time evenly witht he three TP groups, so you get to have all three tutors.
our fellow students
i'll first start with the four other people in my TP group, since i got to know them the best...
Doug is 47 from Kentuky, but he lives and teaches in the West Bank, and has for the last five years or so. He saved up for several years to take the CELTA course (because you just dont make that much money in the West Bank, $8000 a year is a really good salary). When he goes back (which, he is back now, hopefully) he will be taking over the small private school he has been teaching at.
Hannah is in her upper twenties and is from the Czech Republic, though she lives much of her childhood in South Africa, so she speaks fluent english. she lives in České Budějovice, which is the Czech name for what is called in German, "Budweiser", which is the town that the American beer is named after, though the beer brewed in České Budějovice, which is called Budvar (because somehow the american company sued them so they couldn't name the beer after the town it is made in as it has been called for several hundred years) is the best beer i have ever had (though, i am not a big fan of beer). anyways... she lives in the woods, basically, haha, and raises falcons.
Andrea turned 26 the first week of the course (we had four birthdays in our class alone during the four weeks of the course) and is originally from Slovakia (the other country that use to be part of Czechoslovakia). She has lived in Sydney for the last year, however, and in the US for three years before that.
Bethan is um... 28. she is from Wales and has lived the last several years in London. Bethan and Doug easily rank amoung the coolest people i met during the course. She is a horrible dancer, yet she is so funny dancing that you can't help but call it good dancing. what else? hmm.. it's always hard to describe people. She is heading to St. Petersburg tomorrow to head out on a four week trek across Sibera on the Transiberian Railway. all the way to mongolia and back. after that she is homeless and jobless, so she doesnt know what she is going to do. Bethan has a theory that everyone in our class was running from something, which really isnt that bad of a theory.
Add me, and that was my TP group. we were a loving and suportive bunch that encouraged each other with slander and sarcasm. heh. but it is pretty easy to say that we always had a good time together and got to know each other as well as you can in four weeks when you have no spare time. heh.
other noteworth people...
Roger is 41 and from Georgia originally, though he has lived in Seattle for the last few years. he is a chemist by trade, but he has left all that behind to teach english in Munich. Roger is the quite type, but he is a lot of fun and a very smart guy.
Laura is from north England originally, though she has been teaching in France for the last several years. she is 29, i believe (i feel bad saying all these ages, maybe i will stop). She is "cheeky" (see, i have been spending too much time aroud Brits) and funny, and great fun on our weekends out to blow off stress.
Lynn is, well... Lynn told us originally that she is 34 and we all believed that, so we will just leave that there. She is a teacher and is from and lives in England. one night at Nebe (a dance club, "nebe" is Czech for "heaven") she threw up. that was fun. but i don't think that defines her. heh. the first weekend we all went out Lynn and i spent the time between 4am and 5:30am discussing (in depth) the history of England, starting with Robin Hood (i dont remember how that happened), then going all the way back to original settlement and almost making it to the war of the roses. heh.
Paula was Lynn's roommate. she was not in our course (she was in the other CELTA class, which we originally assumed that the two courses were split by age, with me being the youngest person in the "old people" class, and everyone in theo ther class being younger than me, but Paula is the only person that throws that off, she is 29, though i have to say i was shocked when i found that out). Paula is from Kansas originally and studied Architecture there and practiced for several years before growing tired of it and packing up and moving to Japan where she has lived for the last three years teaching in a private school. When she gets back she will start work at a public school (it is almost unheard of for a foreigner to be hired at a public school in japan) where she will be heading up a new department on English Communications.... i guess she is back already too, this is all kind of sad. heh.
well... there are a lot of other people to mention, 15 in our class and 17 in the other class (though i only met a handful of them during the four weeks), but i don't really have the time or the energy to do so. almost no one is staying in Prague, everyone is going back to previous obligations or heading off to find new lives, but not here in Prague.
so, wow. all that and i never really even mentioned a specific thing about the class or the last four weeks. heh. i will get around to that soon enough, i am sure. i am going to email a couple of people from the class and try to get some pictures from them since i didn't take any.
that is all for now, i am going to try to finish this CV.
