CELTA day 4 -- lunch break

So, after my mini-breakdown yesterday, I'm feeling much better. I'm still not completely comfortable with the stuff I'm supposed to be teaching, but it's only a half-hour and I'll get through it (somehow). I truly do not like the textbook we're using. The worst part is that the students don't actually have copies of the textbook, which are purely for the teachers' use. Le sigh.

Further frustration: I still can't get Open Office to work on my computer, which means I still can't open the lesson plan forms, which means I have to write all my lesson plans by hand. I hate writing by hand. I have become so used to writing out ideas on the computer, and having the ease to make corrections, shift things around, etc. until I'm comfortable with it, that I feel the loss profoundly when writing three pages out by hand. Stupid official forms... I will never, ever be doing lesson plans this detailed again once this course is over.

This morning we covered 1. how to present grammar lessons, and 2. how to present new vocabulary. Where, oh where, were these lessons yesterday when I was planning for today's lesson?!? Argh.

On the upside, my fellow teacher-trainees are really great, and we're getting a good cameraderie going. Also, the students in the class we're teaching are very enthusiastic, and quite willing to put up with our "we're learning this as we go along" mistakes.

I do feel like I'm learning, I just wish it were drawn out over a bit more time so I could absorb the material. From the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed, I'm thinking about tesl. Even if I'm thinking about something else, it's in the back of my head: "how do I plan tomorrow's lesson?" "how to I explain this to my students?" "how am I going to solve this problem?" It never ends.

Ah well. 3 1/2 days down, 16 1/2 to go (plus 6 absolutely useless weekend days, which will be taken up by celta assignments). Tomorrow I teach, but I'm not graded on it, so I can actually type my lesson plan. Yay!

CELTA day 4

For all my panic, the lesson actually went quite well. My definitions (the ones I'd laboured over for so long) were good, and the students seemed to understand what I was teaching them. On the downside, I completely forgot to do one of my exercises -- oops! (My eyes just slipped over it on my handwritten plan... stupid hand-writing!) On the upside, I wound up (mostly instinctively) doing something we'd covered in our own class this morning, namely asking "concept checking questions" to ensure the students understood instructions, definitions, etc. My trainer assumed I was incorporating the material from this morning's lesson into my own teaching, earning me not only a "pass" but a "strong pass." Yay!

I'm teaching again tomorrow, but it's not assessed. I still need to prepare a lesson plan and handouts, but I can do it MY way and not to their specifications. Case in point: I have all I need to keep the lesson running smoothly on a half-page of bullet points. If I were doing this lesson for them (insert ominous music here), I'd need to write at least twice that much.

In any event, my workload for tonight is neither particularly large nor stressful. I've already done my lesson plan and handouts, so I'm just doing little administrative stuff now. I may even have time to go to Maz tonight. Yay! Even if I'm not there, Ian and Marc will be -- go say hi to them!