Four months ago I had no idea what or where Reggio Calabria was. I’d never heard of it before and also until four months ago, I’d never taught anything to anyone.
Fast forward to now and I’ve been living at Reggio for just over two months. I haven’t seen much yet and what I think of it so far it’s not an accurate representation (more on that another time). I’ve been mainly working, teaching a wide range of ages and levels, from large classes of 9, 11, 13 and 16 year old school children to one-to-one with a 50 something old doctor and a 14 year old teenager.
But I haven’t just been teaching. I marked and invigilated tests, I had the chance to organise and be part of different events, I filmed and edited a couple of promos for the school, I am now presenting at a conference next month and organising an event as well for February.
It’s been a crazy two months as you can probably guess. Rewarding, challenging, stimulating.
But…
oh my God.
It’s exhausting. I feel mentally and physically drained. And I honestly wouldn’t have survived these two months without my fellow teachers.
Teasing Nour on a daily basis, having a laugh with Katie (my favourite face) and Hannah (creative genious), exceptional A-class sarky humour with Vince and Bry, chats outside with my Italian spirit twin, Antonella, giggles and random convos with Shannon, talking TV series and films with Matt, reminding Alexei his Greek, reminiscing life before teaching with Kate on our way to Telesio, travelling chats with Maria, singing along with Mariah and Nuno, giggles with Fanni, making a serious effort to tease Lisa with Beatles and Christmas songs, talking Christmas filims with Jen, stealing precious little moments to chat to Lucie when I see her, all sorts of random convos with Suzanne, Italian lessons with Anna, brainstorming ideas with Helena and comforting each other, making James laugh (I love making James laugh), chats with Cesca on our way back from externals, having a laugh with my favourite reception team, Carlo, Elena, Domi, Franci and little catch ups with the bosses Marco and Patrizia when they pop in every now and then.
So thank you EVERY ONE!
Thank you Patrizia, James and Lucie for offering me the position and making me feel welcome from day one and most of all a huge thank you to this beautifully weird, fun, unique bunch of people. I would have genuinely quit by now if it weren’t for you.
I had just finished my last assessed teaching practice. The feeling of relief was indescribable. I did it, I couldn’t believe I actually managed to finish my CELTA. And I couldn’t believe that two my sweetest friends, Syed and Priya, took the day off to visit Cambridge and see me before I was to fly back to Cyprus.
As soon as I left college I headed into the town centre to meet them and I was so happy I nearly cried.
You may not realised it but that was exactly what I needed that day. After a month long, sleep and fun deprivation, away from all my friends, worrying they may forget me now that I’m leaving the country, it meant the world to me that two of them were there with me, celebrating my success.
So thank you Priya and Syed. Thank you for being such sweet, caring friends and for making the trip to Cambridge. It meant the world to me. I miss you!
I remember just after my interview when Barnaby handed me a bunch of Cambridge English exam books.
I didn’t have a single clue about any of it and I found everything overwhelming.
For about a month I spent hours and hours on planning just four lessons a week. Who knew a month later I’d teach four lessons a day and have an hour or two to plan everything!
If it weren’t for Barnaby and Maro, who offered me my first teaching position only a few weeks after my CELTA, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
So thank you both and sorry I left so soon. I had to follow my heart. I’m not sure whether it was the right decision yet, only time will tell, but I’ll forever be grateful to you.
Today’s Thankmas is dedicated to my cousin Sophie (though technically she is my aunt, but she is way too young to call her aunt!) not only because she is fun, awesome and one of the few people in Cyprus I can talk in English with, but I wouldn’t have coped that well (or at all) on my CELTA and more importantly, I wouldn’t have been where I am today, as in teaching full time in another country, without her advice, help and encouragement.
A day after my grandpa died I had to teach my second assessed lesson, on Mongolian horse racing (of all things!). I woke up that morning with bright red eyes, I’d cried my eyes out the night before trying to come in terms with the cruel reality that I wasn’t going to see my beloved pappou Costa alive again (I’m tearing up now just thinking about it). Every time I thought of him I couldn’t stop sobbing (more on that here).
How was I going to actually stand in front of people and manage not to cry, let alone teach them?? Sophie’s advice was what got me through not only that lesson but the rest of the month.
‘Remember, teachers are really actors’.
To be able to control my emotions and not burst into tears every time I thought of my grandpa or someone asked me if I was OK I convinced myself I was a great actress. That’s exactly what I did each and every single time until the very end. I still do this today when I’m about to walk into a classroom and I’m exhausted or sad but I don’t want my students to be affected by my mood.
When I moved back to Cyprus (for what it was going to be for a few months but I got itchy feet so I only stayed a month) Sophie recommended me to a great local language school, who offered me a part-time job almost straight away. Working there was what made me realise I wanted to give it a proper go and try my luck somewhere I could get a varied experience, away from ‘home’, whatever that is. I’m so confused now that I moved away from the UK, I don’t know where home’s anymore but that’s another story!
So thank you dear, thank you for everything. Without realising, you probably played the most pivotal role in what is turning to be one of my life’s greatest adventures!
“Doing and actually getting an A on my CELTA (relevant post here) was undoubtedly one of my most memorable and probably the biggest highlight of the year and I wouldn’t have managed to finish it, let alone achieve the highest grade without my classmates”, I wrote yesterday.
But there are two so very important people I would certainly not have done the CELTA (let alone get an A) without, my CELTA tutors, Jonny and Fiona.
I posted about it before and from conversations I had with fellow teachers, I feel I was lucky to have such great tutors.
They were not just incredible teachers themselves (I observed them both delivering interesting, interactive, informative lessons so naturally they made it look easy, but trust me, it is not!) but amazing teacher trainers too. Our input sessions with them were always fun and varied, they managed to grab our attention every single time and we learned a lot from them (with some exceptions towards the end of the course when we were all exhausted and our attention span shrank significantly). Two superb professionals, who though quite different in their teaching methods and personalities, they are a match made in heaven.
What made a huge difference for me was their understanding, kindness and above all, empathy, a rare trait nowadays.
I cried in front of both of them on week one after I informed them my grandpa had died and they not only offered me a break if I had felt I needed it, but they checked up on me making sure I was OK.
They also helped me manage my anxiety which reached ridiculous levels during my CELTA- I haven’t felt that stressed teaching as a professional and I’ve been working with a large number of students, nothing beats CELTA-induced stress I guess-, especially Fiona. She had a way of bringing me back to the moment and somehow making me forget about stress even for a while.
I shared a special moment with each I won’t share, they are both quite personal , but I’ll never forget.
I’ll never forget as well that they believed in me enough to push me for that A grade. They didn’t have to do it, they took a risk and I’m over the moon I didn’t disappoint them.
So thank you Jonny and Fiona. Thank you for your advice and nurturing, your empathy and kindness, your love for that you do, your honesty (God I miss a no bull***t Fiona chat!), for believing in me and for all your hard work.
I wish I’d have spent more time with you, there’s so much more I could have learned!
Doing and actually getting an A on my CELTA (you can check out relevant post here) was undoubtedly one of my most memorable and probably the biggest highlight of the year and I wouldn’t have managed to finish it, let alone achieve the highest grade without my classmates.
The (full time) CELTA experience is so unique and intense, it brings people very close very fast, at least that’s what happened with us. It’s hard not to when you spend most of the day, every day for a month together and you see each other at their worst, stressed, tired and emotional.
We looked after another, comforted each other, read each other’s assignments, lesson plans, helped with cutting, glueing, offered food, got coffee, had a laugh, a cry, long chats, we did it all.
I still remember the hug Carolina gave me when I told her my grandpa had died, the sandwich Darren offered me just before my last TP, since I was so stressed I hadn’t eaten all day, the coffee I desperately needed and Elliot got me when I was running late for my lesson planning session and I had barely slept the night before, laughs to the point I almost peed myself with Sonia, deep conversations on life with Monalisa, Shalala’s look, she could always read my emotions, (I’ll never forget on our last day when we just looked at each other and we both started crying) Fatima’s spicy dates I snacked on for days, Ralph’s bright red face the first time he made a sarcastic joke and Anoushka’s brilliantly still unspoilt enthusiasm (ah to be 21 again!).
So thank you everyone, I would have quit on week one if it weren’t for you.
I hope you are all doing well in your new and not new jobs and lives. Maybe one day we’ll meet again but even if we don’t, we will always have that strong, special bond of August 2019 in Cambridge.
Saturday evening. I’m wrapped in my fluffy blanket, not because it’s that cold, it’s still 20 degrees in Reggio but because I’m just getting overa cold for the second time in 5 weeks.
I just finished working on my portfolio tasks for my Young Learners IH online course, since I had zero free time on any weekdays this week. Not a single day. At least today I had time to catch up with some of my friends and family. (Apologies to all my friends who I haven’t messaged for a while, or didn’t reply to your messages, I honestly, genuinely didn’t have the time. Keep reading and hopefully you’ll understand).
I was going to go out after this, have a drink with my lovely fellow teachers but I’m exhausted, I’m finding it impossible to leave my sofa.
Surely that’s not how a typical ELT teacher abroad lives you might think.
I’m not sure what I expected teaching English would be like. Most of the stories I’ve read or heard are of partying, travelling, exploring, tasting the local cuisine, living like a local. The actual teaching was rarely mentioned in detail, I always assumed it won’t be that time consuming, though when I made the decision to join my current school I was well aware that was not going to be the case.
‘We work hard here, but we love it’ Lucie had said at the interview. That was one of the reasons I accepted this job. I needed a challenge after years in a mundane job and I could feel just from talking to Lucie how much they all cared about teaching.
”Since it’s my first year, I’d rather work hard, learn as much as possible as fast as possible, so the following years are easier.” I told myself.
I didn’t quit expect it to be as crazy busy though.
So let me give you a taste of how a week of a newly qualified teacher at a busy IH school in Reggio Calabria is like.
First of all there’s no ‘typical’ week. Every day or week something would come up that will change your schedule. ‘Typical’ doesn’t exist in this job, I’ll therefore describe you last week as an example.
(Also, this is NOT my full-time schedule as not all my courses have started yet, this is about two-thirds of the way (God help me when it all kicks off)).
Monday
11 am. I made it to school early (considering I don’t finish until 7pm today). My first lesson starts at 1:30pm and I have to leave the school at 1pm to get to the public school I’m teaching at. I thankfully prepared a draft lesson and I only had to print copies of everything and gather all the material I needed.
But first, coffee! I can’t survive without it. OK let’s do everything quickly (everything takes longer than you’d expect). Oh shhhugar (not a good idea to swear at school), I need to have some lunch before I go. Do I have time?? Nop. OK it will have to wait.
3pm. I’m back at the school. I’m starving, a quick bite (thankfully I brought lunch with me today) whilst I show a colleague how to use my camera for some filming for a promotional video and then off to finish planning my lesson for my one to one later today, re-design my poster for the conference on Friday (ah, why did I do it in Word?) and if time allows plan my new one to one with a doctor starting tomorrow. Lisa already gave me a few ideas for that (I love Lisa’s ideas) so that will save me some time.
About 4pm. A message comes in. Tomorrow’s external lessons are cancelled, public schools will remain closed due to the weather warnings. Southern Italy is not built for rain.
5:50pm. I lost track of time. I have 10 minutes to print off an activity to do for my one to one, the rest of the lesson is ready. The weather is getting worse, we can hear the gusting winds hitting the windows. Apparently the port closed. I wouldn’t like to be in a ferry in this weather!
6pm. One of the receptionists comes in. ‘We are closing the school’. Hooray you might think, you now have some free time. No. I make it home around 7pm, feeling a bit shivery and with a sore throat. Just what I needed!
I filled in my register (we need to submit a form after each lesson we do), had a shower, dinner, I helped my bestie with a presentation she was working on and then I re-designed my poster, from scratch. I finished about 11pm. Absolutely knackered. And it’s only Monday.At least my poster looks cool, I can’t wait to see it in A3 on Friday! (Thank you Suzanne for reminding me how awesome Canva is).
Tuesday
12pm. I don’t need to be in until 3pm now that my external lesson was cancelled but there’s a lot to do and no time to do it in.
OK, let’s start by planning today’s lessons, pop in to lesson planning with James (life and time saving!) and then make time to start preparing for my first formal observation on Friday.
3pm. Time to film one of the lessons. I’m glad I managed to do that. I love filming. The little ones are adorable and Mariah, their teacher is awesome, it gave me a couple of ideas for my lessons!
4:20pm. I just finished filming and I need to hand over the camera to Suzanne and rush to my next assignment, help out an Italian couple with their presentation for a pitch event.
4:30pm. The lady arrives but she is not happy, her first session was with someone else, she didn’t know she would get me today. It was hard not to take it personally though she kept repeating it wasn’t my fault (the conversation was in Italian but I could pick up a few words). Anyway by the end of the session both herself and her husband left smiling and thanking me profusely. Job done.
5:30pm. I have 45 minutes to finish preparing for my adults lesson later tonight and start working on my lesson plan for the new classes starting tomorrow. OK, I need another coffee!
6:15pm. Time for my one to one with the doctor. Not sure what to expect, I can’t even concentrate.
7:15pm. It all went well. You never know with one to ones, they are so personal and intimate, if your student doesn’t like you, it can make your life and theirs impossible. But all good.
7:45pm. OK, thank God I last minute printed all my material for this lesson. And thank God I teach adults too, keeps me sane!
9:30pm. I made it home. My throat hurts even more, I’m tired and I need to finish some work but I can’t. I do the register, have dinner and straight to bed.
Wednesday
11am. I drag myself to school. My throat definitely got worse overnight and I didn’t sleep much because of my now blocked nose. I have my Italian lesson in half an hour and I still need to print all the material for my classes today. I just hope and pray to make it through today.
12:30pm. Italian lesson done. I have about an hour to prepare everything and then have some lunch. It’s gonna be very close.
2:30pm. I’m here with the rest of the crew, two classes back to back at this new school. The language assistant is lovely, but she doesn’t speak much English, I hope it all works out OK.
5:50pm. Alessia picked me up to take me back to the school but we are stuck in traffic. I have to be at the school for my 6pm appointment.
5:55pm. Oh my lord. OK. Pheew. I drop everything on my desk and run upstairs (My desk is in such a mess I can’t even look at it).
6:20pm. The lady who I had the one to one with (another person to help with their pitch) didn’t show up. I might get some time to work on my observation lesson after all.
6:30pm. The lady showed up, half an hour late. Running back upstairs!
7pm. She was so lovely, I wanted to give her a hug and her business idea was great. I hope she wins!
7:30pm. I need to get my hair dyed and I need to buy food but all I want to do is lie down and wake up when this cold goes away.
8:30pm. After a quick stop at the supermarket, I made it back home, had dinner and put the hair dye on (finally I’ll get rid of white hair, it’s been giving me nightmares)! My cold got worse, I can’t breathe properly.
9:30pm. OK, I need to comment on the forum, a requirement for my online course, otherwise workload will pile up. What day is it again??
11pm. I’m heading to bed early. Oh please universe help me sleep.
3am. This is the fifth time I woke up. Stupid cold!
Thursday
11am. I don’t need to be in until 1:20pm but I have a crucial, time-constraining to-do list. I head to the pharmacy to get some Nurofen Cold and Flu (14 EUROS!!!) and straight to school.
1pm. I finished preparing for my poster presentation, I finished reading the scientific article the doctor sent me for tonight’s lesson and I can have lunch very quickly.
1:20pm. INSETT time. Vince is presenting today. I love Vince, his British humour in his Italian accent. Brilliant. And what a great time to sit down and have a little break from all the things I have to do and learn something new.
2:50pm. I’m running to get to a local school I’m invigilating an exam for. Thank God Anna showed up to give me a lift. I wouldn’t have made it on time.
3:10pm. I’m at the school. Not sure where to go, I vaguely remember the way from last time. I asked the caretaker, she doesn’t speak English bless her.
3:14pm. I found the room. It was locked. Back to the caretaker. We somehow managed to communicate using gestures and Google translate. She came back, let me in and the person with her turned the lights on for me (no it wasn’t a simple switch on the wall, in case you are wondering, it was a panel with labels in Italian!).
3:22pm. I quickly arranged the chairs and let the students in. We start the exam.
4:45pm. I’m finally back at the school. I need to finish a vocab exercise I prepared for the doctor, finish my lesson plan for the adult class straight afterwards and finish preparing the material for my observation lesson tomorrow. PANIC!!!
6:15pm. OK, only thing left to do is finish cutting the material for tomorrow. But time for my one to one.
7:15pm. What an amazing lesson. I taught him English and he taught me medicine. We talked about different cancer treatments, types of cancer, haematological diseases. Fascinating. I should have paid him for teaching me.
7:45pm. OK I just need to get through this lesson then I can finish all the cutting and head home to finish off my documents for the observation.
9:45pm. All the material ready for tomorrow, I can head home now.
11pm. After a quick dinner and shower, I spent the last two hours preparing my paperwork for tomorrow. All done now. OK I need to go to bed. I have to get up at 7:30am.
Friday
7:45am. Thank God for Nurofen I feel a bit better. I only have 45 minutes to get ready. OK, remember it’s Friday, this week is almost over!
8:40pm. After a very tiny, small breakfast I got ready as quickly as I physically could and ran outside. The School’s annual ELT conference starts in 20 minutes!
8:50pm. I thankfully made it at a reasonable time, only 10 minutes late and it hasn’t started yet. Pheew.
11am. The first two sessions were great, especially Simon Ward’s talk on using positive psychology in the classroom. I forgot how awesome and engaging psychology practitioners can be. I guess that’s what experience with helping other humans make sense of the world does for you. Now for my poster presentation and then I can leave early (thank you Lucie!) and go back to school to print off the paperwork for my observation and have some lunch.
11:30am. The poster presentation went better than I thought. I was worried no one would be interested in my poster but I actually got to talk to 6-7 different people who genuinely seemed to enjoy it!
12:20pm. All ready for my observation lesson. I have no food with me so off to the nearest shop.
1:20pm. We made it to the school early. That means I can check whether the smartboard works! Of course it doesn’t. Let’s hope the mini-projector I brought with me does the trick.
2:30pm. I feel defeated. I don’t have any strength even to cry. Whatever it could have gone wrong in that lesson, it did. Technology failed me several times, my regular language assistant was not there and the children wouldn’t listen to me but I refused to shout at them. I tried my best. On the positive side that’s why I asked to be observed and be given feedback on this class, is my most challenging by far and I desperately need help.
3pm. I have some admin to do and then I need to tidy up my desk. I can bear this mess any longer.
6pm. OK admin done and handed in, I deserve a coffee and a snack. Lucie just came in and gave me a chocolate bear for presenting a poster at the conference. She is the sweetest!
7:30pm. Desk all clean, everything packed. I can go home and not do any more work for today!!
10pm. I’m so tired I’m actually heading to bed early on a Friday. Thank you universe. I can’t believe I made it through this week.
That’s it, that’s how not just my week but everyone else’s I work with has been.
The first year of teaching is NOT easy. If you work full-time, if you care about your students and what you teach them, if you care about your teaching and your performance, if you work for a school that cares, prepare to work hard. It’s exhausting but at the same time incredibly rewarding.
I miss having time for myself, I miss doing other things I enjoy, I miss not having free time to just chill.
You know what though? I love every minute. And also that means it will only get easier.For now, I’m ready for another crazy week.
“Now in terms of possible outcomes, most students get a Pass, some get Grade B and very few (usually experienced teachers) get an A. I think you’ll do very well”, I remember Jonny telling me at my CELTA interview.
I had zero previous experience, I didn’t have much time to do any pre-reading and I hadn’t studied for anything for years, so I definitely did not expect or aimed for an A, but I somehow managed to do it.
Does it matter? You may ask.
Not really, I don’t think. It looks good on your CV and it seems to impress recruiters (at least the ones I’ve had interviews with so far), so it might give you a slight advantage, especially if you are newly qualified as I am, but as long as you have the CELTA, the grade doesn’t really matter. It’s tough enough getting the qualification and everyone who has done it knows that!
How did you do it? One might wonder.
Surprise, surprise, there is no recipe. Even if I were to describe you in every single detail what I did, I bet you it wouldn’t work for everyone. So unfortunately I can’t do that. What I can give you is some guidelines and advice to help you achieve an A (no guarantees) based on my experience.
Avoid distractions. Do the full-time variant and away from home if you can. It helps if all you concentrate on is the CELTA. It’s exhausting, physically and mentally but I functioned significantly better focusing only on my course. For me the course actually helped as a distraction from dealing with the sudden death of my grandpa and other life situations.
Listen to your tutors. It’s a no-brainer really. But listen carefully, take in as much as physically possible and actively take part during input sessions. I was craving for a challenge after years in a repetitive, dull job and my brain worked like a sponge and I followed their instructions and guidance religiously.
Work on the feedback your tutors and classmates give you on your teaching. Probably the most important one. Every single time I took their suggestions and feedback on board and I improved after every Teaching Practice (TP).
Help each other. OK, this you can’t control. Your classmates might not be that friendly or helpful but our group was pretty amazing. We helped each other with everything, checking each other’s handouts, reading each other’s assignments, even little things like getting coffee for each other. I wouldn’t have done it without them. Honestly.
Trust yourself. This is a tough one, but in order to get Grade A you need to demonstrate you can work independently, plan and deliver a lesson with minimal guidance (for the last two TPs the only ‘guidance’ I got was nodding). When Fiona, during our second tutoring session, asked me why I was being ‘modest’ when scoring myself as ‘to standard’ for most and a couple of ‘below standard’ of a long list of competences (the ones you are being assessed on your CELTA), I wasn’t really being modest. I thought I was doing OK but I didn’t really believe I was ‘above standard’. I didn’t know what the standard was so I had no idea how I was doing. After that session I did my best, not because I was desperate to get Grade A, but not to let Fiona and Jonny down, who believed in me and gave me the chance to go for a higher grade. I didn’t care about the grade, I cared about them, so I had to believe in and trust myself, particularly for those last two TPs.
Pay attention to detail. Don’t rush into doing your assignments or planning a lesson. Do it carefully and take everything you learn into account. Otherwise you won’t produce quality work and I promise you, you will have to resubmit at least one or two assignments. The reason I didn’t have to resubmit any was due to my overthinking and excruciatingly painful need to keep working and working on something (and probably all the years of studying at uni). Thank God for deadlines.
Be creative. With your lesson plans, your handouts, your PPTs. If you just follow the book to every single detail and not improvise, use other resources, design your own exercises, not only you won’t get an A, you won’t make a great teacher either.
Get to know your students, keep them engaged and interested. You can design the best, most fun, amazing lessons in the world but it means nothing unless you deliver them well. How? Learn your students’ names and personalities, use their first names, ‘read’ the situation, if they look bored or disinterested or baffled, change your lesson plan. For me it was easy, I love chatting to people, getting to know them and I’m good at observing and noticing others reactions. If you don’t care about your students you won’t last long in this job!
So these are my top 8 tips, based on my experience. Some of it may not be easy to follow, not everyone finds it easy to be creative, perceptive (that’s down to personality) or write an assignment (that’s down to experience and I had plenty in academia) and you may not get Grade A even if you follow my advice, but I promise you, you will at least get the most out of this uniquely painful, rewarding and at points surreal experience.
Where to start from? How do I know which job to go for? How do I choose? Should I go with the best paid position or the one with more benefits when it comes to professional development or the best location? LOCATION! Should I go for Asia, Latin America, Europe? What if it’s not a good school? What if I end up overworked and underpaid? Who should I trust? WHAT SHOULD I DO?
A minefield. Overwhelming. Stressful. At least not as stressful as the CELTA (nothing is as stressful as a CELTA).
If you are a newly qualified English Language teacher you certainly had all of these thoughts whilst trying to do the impossible, decide what teaching job to go for, especially for your first one.
I managed to secure my first EFL teaching job pretty much straight away, through word of mouth. My cousin recommended me to a language school and also Cambridge exam centre director in Cyprus who offered me a part-time position.
Getting my first full time EFL job was easy (the process was) but deciding where to apply for and which position to go for was incredibly difficult.
One of my CELTA tutors recommended a language school in Southern Italy as well, which offered great professional development and it’s an IH school, which guarantees at least a good level of organisation and support, though the money and the location (a small, quiet town) were not ideal. I also applied for a position at another IH school in Hanoi in Vietnam and I had an interview with a private school owner in Genoa. I had also applied for a few other positions that were filled but were still advertised.
In the end I went for IH British School Reggio Calabria, where I’ve been working at for the last month. I remember my tutors pointing out emphatically how our first year of teaching will be the toughest and we won’t have much free time to do anything else other than lesson plans and preparation and teaching, so I decided it was better to go somewhere with not many distractions and get as much experience as possible. And that’s what I did. I don’t know if I made the right decision, only time will tell, but all my fellow teachers, senior teachers and Directors have been tremendously supportive so far, not only with lesson planning and teaching so far but also with settling in, and important life adjustments and situations one needs to deal with when moving to another country, especially Italy (I’ll tell you all about in another post!).
So what did I learn from job hunting so far?
Word of mouth is highly ranked. Schools recommended to you from people you trust e.g. your tutors or fellow classmates/teachers or people recommending you for a job, that most of the time means you’ll get it!
Don’t trust random people/recruiters on social media. If you are a member of the big TEFL job seeking groups on Facebook, you will have already noticed how many profiles with fake pictures and fake promises are out there. I was offered a job in China, though I was aware that it’s illegal to teach in China if you are not an English native speaker. The recruiter insisted that wouldn’t be a problem. Emm, no thanks, I don’t want to end up in a Chinese prison.
Research the city you are applying for. Cost of living, bills, transportation etc so you can avoid nasty surprises when you get there. Make sure your salary covers all your expenses!
Don’t be shy to ask all the important questions in interviews e.g. working hours, whether there’s a syllabus, age groups you’ll be teaching, professional development opportunities, which days you’ll get off (some schools are open on weekends and/or you may not get two consecutive days off), whether you’ll have split shifts, what textbooks does the school use, holiday leave, sick leave, salary, national insurance, ask to speak to a current teacher etc. Thankfully our lovely CELTA tutors gave us a list of questions to ask which I religiously used in every single interview. Happy to share. If anyone would like that, let me know.
Update your CV. As you can imagine recruiters get a large amount for applications from all over the planet, so you need to make your CV stand out. Have relevant teaching/CELTA qualifications and experience on the top as well as any other relevant, impressive achievements. That’s the first thing employers will see.
Prepare for interviews. It’s difficult to come up with answers on the spot if you are newly qualified and you haven’t taught before the CELTA, so prepare a few examples from your CELTA on important topics e.g. classroom management, your most/least successful lesson so far, lesson planning, time management, dealing with challenging students/situations etc.
Be confident. Interviews are nerve wrecking, especially if you are a newly qualified teacher but remember at this point they are looking for confident, energetic, enthusiastic teachers, they are aware you have no experience. Also you are interviewing them as much as they do. You can tell a lot from an hour long interview, particularly when it comes to organisation, knowledge and professional support.
Trust your instinct. If a job seems too good to be true or if your interview didn’t leave you with the best impressions, then you know. Trust yourself and listen to your gut feeling.
If you are a non-native speaker that doesn’t mean you can’t find a decent job. Unless it’s a legal requirement e.g. in China (which I think it’s obscene and unethical and unnecessary but anyway) then there’s no reason you can’t apply for any teaching job. Yes, in some countries recruiters favourite English native speakers and there’s no market for NNES but there are hundreds and hundreds of positions out there elsewhere.
Don’t sign anything until you read the contract and terms of employment carefully. No need to explain this in detail but I’ve heard plenty of horror stories.
Finally as with jobhunting in any profession, be patient and don’t take rejection personally. You need to remind yourself, particularly in this occupation, recruiters get lots of applications from candidates across the world. A lot of it is down to luck.
Wherever you end up, good luck and take care of yourself. The first year of teaching is hard work (if you are at a decent language school and teach a variet of different groups full-time) but there’s only one you and you need to be strong mentally and physically to be able to cope. More on that on another post.
Jonny did warn me at the interview, as I assume all CELTA tutors do with their potential students (full details of the interview process here), but no amount of explaining and warning can prepare you for doing a full-time, intensive, month long CELTA course. A level 5 qualification (equivalent to HNC/HND) which normally takes between 6 months/ 1 year full time and 2 years part time squeezed in one month!
Lead in, TPs, Gist Task, Detailed task, Guided Discovery, Monitoring, you pick up the CELTA language from week 1, that’s how intensive it is.
I’ll talk about my experience at Cambridge Regional College but I’m certain the format and the content are similar across the world, as they all follow the Cambridge English syllabus, though not everyone might have been lucky enough to have had such great tutors, classmates and students.
A. format
We started the course on a Friday, to give us time to get to know each other and our surroundings and on the following Monday we taught for the first time, just an introductory, non-assessed class. The following day we had to teach our first assessed Teaching Practice (TP), extremely stressful for someone who struggles with anxiety like me, but it helped we got to know the students the day before first. With most education providers you are required to teach your first assessed lesson on day two. Yes, it’s pretty intense from the start.
-Input sessions
Every morning we had input sessions, where Jonny and Fiona in turns covered the main topics of EFL teaching: learners and teachers, and the teaching and learning context, language analysis and awareness, language skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing, planning and resources for different teaching contexts and developing teaching skills and professionalism. For more details you can check the Cambridge English CELTA syllabus here.
Input sessions with those two were never dull, they were always fun, engaging and creative, even with typically boring, dreadful subjects like teaching grammar. Jonny’s colour- coordinated flashcards and phonetics jokes were superb and Fiona’s energy, honesty and saying things as they were were refreshing. I won’t go into much detail, I wouldn’t like others to steal Jonny and Fiona’s hard work but I’m not sure many CELTA students got to mime, dance and laugh as much as we did whilst learning.
-Teaching
In the afternoons we were split into two groups. Half of us taught the pre-intermediate group and the other half the upper intermediate (and we switched half way, every teacher has to teach two levels). When we were not teaching we observed and gave feedback to each other. Jonny or Fiona (in turns) were always there assessing and providing us with feedback after each session. We taught six 40 min and two 1hr long sessions (8 sessions and 6 hours in total).
Don’t worry if you’ve never taught before, I hadn’t before this. We were provided with lesson frameworks to use from day one and every morning the day before we were to teach we met with our tutor to help us with the lesson planning, except for the last two sessions where assistance with planning was also assessed and varied depending on what grade you were aiming for (more on that on a separate post).
-Observing
You are also required 6 hours of observing experienced teachers. We observed summer school teachers in the classroom, a video-taped session and our tutors who both were AMAZING at their teaching and way better than the rest we observed. Engaging, building rapport almost instantly, monitoring effectively and making the class fun and interesting. That’s how I aspire to teach.
-Assignments
As if lesson planning, input sessions, teaching and observing are not enough you also have to prepare and hand in 4 assignments, around 1000 words each covering the main topics mentioned above. It’s hard work this course!
-Grades
Possible outcomes are:
-Pass A (about 5% of successful candidates).
-Pass B (about 25% of successful candidates)
-Pass (about 70% of successful candidates)
-Fail
Fiona told us from day one she won’t let anyone fail and nobody did.
B. Day to day work
You may assume you go home around 5pm and you only need an hour or two preparing for the next day but that’s not the case. Lesson planning takes, especially to begin with, at least 4-5 hours- ‘Double the time you think it will take’ Fiona used to say and she was right- and the more you progress through the course the more exhausted, sleep deprived and stressed you become, which slows everything down significantly.
C. How to make it
Classmates
All ten of us used to go in as early as possible so we can finish our lesson plans, print our handouts and/or help each other with assignments. Honestly we wouldn’t have made it without each other. I certainly wouldn’t.
We all reached our limit and were about to quit, particularly towards the end of week two. We were warned that would happen, though nobody told us it would happen more than once. If you really want this qualification, persevere. You will feel like quitting at least once, but the sense of achievement will more than make up for it in the end.
Most of us were not from Cambridge, we had no family or friends around, we lived and breathed CELTA for a month and that takes its toll. We kept each other going, read and corrected each other’s assignments, lesson plans, hand outs. We cried together, we laughed together. We bonded a lot, very fast. It’s inevitable when you spend every day with the same people, trying your best for the same thing.
Having a WhatsApp group helped a lot not just with homework but also mentally. Sharing our frustrations and worries was therapeutic.
This may not be the case with everyone who does the CELTA. I think I was lucky I had such sweet, caring, brilliant, funny, all round awesome classmates I now call friends. I miss you all!
Tutors
I’ve touched a bit on this already but I feel we were lucky we had such great tutors. It’s obvious they love what they do and they are incredibly amazing at it. They passed on their enthusiasm, skills and knowledge to us, so when we get out there and teach we care and we do it right.
They were there before us in the morning and left after us most days. Whilst they had to train us, they also had to deal with the rest of their day to day job in between as well as read and mark our assignments.
Both Fiona and Jonny supported us as much as they possibly could, me personally, when I was going through my grief having lost my grandpa on week one. I cried in front of them on my first week and they were both understanding, they offered me a break and checked up on me.
Also I wouldn’t have been able to manage my stress and teach so effectively if it wasn’t for Fiona. She helped me more than she realised. She is awesome.
Students
I got to teach two lovely groups of students. Before my first teaching session I was terrified of what I was about to face but by the end of the course I loved everyone in both classes. People from all over the world, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Lithuania, you name it, who happened to now live in Cambridge and just wanted to improve their English all came together and I was blessed with teaching them. I got to know and chat to every single one of them outside the class, have a laugh with them and hopefully taught them a thing or two.
Accommodation
Most of my classmates were not from Cambridge or the UK, so we all lived in a brand new environment dealing with all sorts of situations whilst studying hard every day.
I lived with a host ‘family’, it was only the landlady, Mary in my case, who also provided breakfast and dinner every day and did my laundry every week. It was challenging at times, especially when all the rooms were occupied, noise, queue for the bathroom (though they were three!) but all in all it was brilliant. Mary looked after me and I made great friends, not just Mary but also my Russian flatmates! If you have the option I definitely recommend it, you won’t have time to cook or do anything else for a month, it helps to have dinner prepared for you and a clean room to your disposal.
Overall thoughts
The 4 week CELTA course was one of the most mentally and physically challenging things I ever had to do, it tested my sanity, my health, my limits in more than one way and my anxiety flared up bad, I didn’t sleep more than three/four hours a day, I didn’t get to see much of Cambridge but it was also incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, at least for me. I learnt a lot, I fell in love with teaching and I made friends in Cambridge and all over the world, from Peru to Italy and Azerbaijan. Once in a lifetime experience I’ll never forget.
If I had to do it again I’d may opt for the part-time option, though that has its challenges too if you work full-time, and it may take longer to learn as you don’t apply what you learn immediately, but I don’t regret a single moment.
If you decide to do it full time, I’d with no second thought recommend Cambridge Regional College.
If you do it in Cambridge, go a few days early or stay a few days after to enjoy what this gorgeous city has to offer. I’d love to go back some time and go punting, visit the Wren Library, have afternoon tea at Grantchester and do yoga in the park by the river. Who knows, maybe I will one day.
After thoughts
Despite no previous teaching experience I managed to get the highest grade (Grade A), so it is possible, but I will write about that on a separate post.
I just started a part-time job teaching A1 Movers and A2 Key young learners, the CELTA can’t prepare you for that I’m afraid. I’ll write about that soon too but any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Lessons I learned after I turned 30 