Day 1 of CELTA in Buenos Aires
Deeeeeeeep siiiiiiigh.
Day 1 of the CELTA in Buenos Aires is over. And what a day it was!
We had a brief, 20-minute introductory session when we arrived at 9 a.m., then we observed our tutors teaching for the next 2 hours, until 11:30. We debriefed quickly and did a bunch of paperwork, then broke for lunch (empanadas!). The afternoon was information overload, and we were sent home with quite a bit to read (no fewer than 30 handouts and papers, front and back), an open-book “quiz” to complete, and a 40-minute lesson to prepare for.
Our day was supposedly over at 5 p.m., but I stayed at International House until about 6:30 preparing handouts and making copies for my lesson tomorrow morning. Talk about being thrown in the deep end! I think things will get slightly easier as we all fall into our routines, but it’s a lot of work no matter which way you slice it.
Tomorrow I am teaching a listening lesson about optical illusions. It’s pretty cool, actually. I hope it goes well! I am always nervous, at least at first, but it’s a small class (6 female students), so hopefully I will learn to feel comfortable.
I’ll spend the first two weeks teaching upper intermediate students, and the last two weeks teaching lower intermediate students (we switch). I teach on these days:
Week 1: Tue., Thur., Fri.
Week 2: Mon., Tue., Wed., Thur.
Week 3: Mon., Tue., Wed., Thur.
Week 4: Wed., Fri.
Only 8 of those days are “assessed.”
And actually, Mon. and Tue. of Week 4 are holidays! Woo! I have a feeling they will come just as we are all feeling quite burnt out. The question, though, is should I try to take a short trip…?
In other news, I ordered my lunch today in Spanish — successfully! And I bought a 2-ring binder using Spanish — successfully! I also found that the “supermarket” (a little weird; I call it the grocery) right across the street from my building has almost everything I will need on a regular basis, which is good, good, good news since I have much less time on my hands now!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish up my work for tomorrow!
:::disappears under a stack of papers:::
Good luck tomorrow on your TP! I can still remember how freaked out I was! I’m sure you’ll be great! The students are really nice and they know about your situation, most of them are really helpful. So don’t worry about them! I know some of them have been taking these classes for quite some time.
What about your classmates? Who are your tutors? So many memories! My tutors were Neil and Fran. I really learned a lot and enjoyed the course. As I told you before, it’s super stressful, but really worth it!
Sounds like you’ll be doing much more teaching than I had to do… We were a big class, that’s why! We were 12 in total (6 of us in each TP group)
How long are you planning to stay in BA? If you’re planning to stay for a while after the CELTA, I wouldn’t go on a short trip. We had a three day weekend on week 4 and we had to submit 2 written assignments that week. I’d wait till the end of week 2, beginning of week 3 to decide. Week 3 was the toughest for me.
Keep blogging and please, let me know if I can be of any help! =)
Thank you so much!! Yes — I have Fran and Neil, too. Neil these first two weeks, then Fran, it seems. My classmates are great, and part of me likes that there are only 6 of us, but it does make for MUCH more teaching than I was prepared for (than they had advertised!!!)! Ah well, more practice will just make me better, right? Still. SO much work. So much. So much.
We’ll see!!