CELTA Bootcamp: Day 10

Oh today was horrible! The CELTA life is like a rollercoaster. Up, down, up down.

Can't Make the Cut
We found out today that the husband/wife duo quit the CELTA course today. They self-selected out and a bunch of people thought they really didn't need to leave because they weren't doing badly, just feeling pressured. That puts us at 14. There are only 2 people still in the course who are over 50 at this point--and one of them is concerned that she might fail (I think she's overreacting). The older guy who is sticking with it already has a job lined up in Moscow, and is really motivated because his wife is already over there. I can't imagine that any more of us will leave at this point, but I guess you can never know for sure...

Musical Chairs
This afternoon I left my regular teaching practice class to observe the High Intermediate students that I'm going to be with for the remainder of the course (starting Monday). At first blush I am less than thrilled. I was just starting to become comfortable with my Intermediate students, with the level that I was teaching, and with Seamus' style--now it's all going to change!

The students have a higher facility for English, so that shouldn't be too difficult. However, switching to Sarah for instruction, feedback and lesson planning is going to be different. I observed her give feedback to her CELTA trainees this afternoon and it's a frustrating and foreign approach compared to Seamus' straight shooting. I had the feeling that she was being way too nice to her trainees. The two ladies who taught the High Intermediate students didn't do a bad job, but they don't seem to be applying the things that we've been learning recently in our input sessions, and Sarah didn't explicitly mention any of them during feedback.

I asked the second girl (as politely as I could) what format of lesson she'd followed for her listening activity since it looked like she'd put three approaches in a blender and pressed the button a few times, and she said, "I don't really know..." Maybe Sarah is just more private than Seamus and doesn't like hurting feelings with new trainees. That's not a bad thing. However, we spent 50 minutes discussing the first trainee's 60 minute lesson. Fifty minutes. It did NOT need to be that long. You can be nice while still being concise. Listening to the wishy-washy back and forth of everyone made me want to rip my left arm off to distract myself from the tedium--it really was that bad.

I'm trying to be positive but I could already feel the withdrawal setting in this afternoon. All I have to alleviate depression is half of a stale cheese struesel from Starbucks. *sigh*