I’m finished the CELTA. I passed. Now, exhausted, I will look for work. Tomorrow I’m heading for Queretaro, then Guadalajara and Morelia. I am very excited about seeing new places in Mexico.
The CELTA is certainly a great idea for anyone interested in teaching. It is interesting, practical, and made me feel pretty prepared to start teaching in a real classroom. However, it is pretty tough. Some advice I wish someone had told me:
1. Believe what they say: it is stressful. With class all day, and lesson planning/writing assignments all night, doing the CELTA is a lot of work. I have done a Bachelor’s degree and a Masters. The CELTA was more stressful.
2. You do, however, have a little time for fun. Not a lot, mind you, but take a break once in awhile. Go out for a beer with your classmates. Take a nice long walk. If you give your mind a break from teaching once in awhile, you’ll feel far more sane.
3.Creativity is good, but don’t let it get out of control. The CELTA is all about teaching teachers how to design their lessons. For each type of lesson, there’s a framework with very clear stages. Whatever you do, don’t change these! And if they tell you to do things a certain way, for Christ’s sake, listen to them! If you don’t follow the “CELTA way,” you won’t do well. You can always mix things up later as a teacher when you don’t have 2 grand riding on the line. The person that dropped out of our course did so because he couldn’t learn to just do things the way he was told.
4.Eat well! I wish I had taken this advice. For the four weeks of the course, my diet consisted mainly of pastries, tacos and instant vanilla cappuccinos from the vending machine at school. But when I did take the time to eat “real food” – salads, fruit, yoghurt, my body thanked me and I concentrated better. Why didn’t I do this more often, I don’t know. Try not to repeat my mistake.
5.Sleep. Luckily this I did. But there were several people in my course who stressed out TOO much, slept only a few hours each night, and didn’t do well as a result. Make sure to get at least 7 hours of sleep a night, no exceptions.
6.Trying really hard won’t necessarily make you a better teacher. Teaching is a whole new kind of skill that gets better with practice, not over-preparing every lesson. If you try way too hard (like planning 5 hours for a 40 minute lesson) you will just put too much pressure on yourself and do poorly as a result. Limit yourself to 2 hours of planning for each lesson, hopefully a bit less. Then concentrate on how you teach and how this can be improved in the future.
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