CELTA Bootcamp: Day 3--First Day Teaching

I survived my first day of teaching English vocabulary to foreign students. I will teach again on Friday and I'll start working on the material tonight so that I'm not totally slammed again tomorrow.

I had a lot more students than I expected. Because Bridge Linguatec has these free English classes, and because some students have work on certain days or come sporadically, the class size can fluctuate. Yesterday there were seven students but today there were eleven, which is a substantial increase in the number of eyes looking at me!

Of the three of us who taught this afternoon, I went first. The "introduction" is pretty important in terms of establishing energy in the class. I did a lot of prep work for it last night, and it really paid off today, but I still have a long way to go! It will just take time and practice to feel more natural leading the class, to need less explicit prompts, and to know how to make sure that students are herded along at a decent pace. At least I didn’t make any awkward, culturally insensitive references like George who went yesterday: Repeatedly mentioning Christmas is not a good choice in a class where five of seven students come from Muslim countries... Watching each others' lessons is interesting. We're all there to witness as we falter and try to recover.

Forty minutes flew by surprisingly fast once I got up there with my material. I ended up running out of time and consequently overwhelming the students because I had an extra worksheet (crossword puzzle for the vocab) that I sort of threw at them without sufficient explanation.

When I finished my lesson and sat down to watch my peers teach two lessons, I was exhausted. I didn't feel particularly nervous throughout my lesson, but I realized that I had been burning a ton of energy when I finally relaxed. Also, sitting in the classroom watching everyone keep learning I had this overwhelming sense of gratitude and love for these students, most of whom come every day to learn English from us, no matter how horrible we are (it IS free, but to know they are so desperate to communicate makes me love them even more...).

A lot of the students are very eager and approachable, and are happy for any extra opportunity to practice speaking before or after class time. The students vary widely in age. The youngest one there now is a twelve-year-old from Taiwan, and the oldest is maybe in his forties or fifties. There are a couple folks from Mexico and Colombia, but mostly they are Libyan or Moroccan. They have come with their husbands or wives, some of whom are studying in the States on scholarship.

I cannot believe that only Wednesday is over. It feels like it's been ages since this class began. Two more days to the weekend!!! Now that I’m doing this, I cannot IMAGINE having gone abroad to take a CELTA course. Jet lag + language barriers + all this work and stress would be unbearable.