Now Let's See What We Can Do with This . . .

The last day of class was Saturday. We heard about other approaches to language acquisition. We learned that CELTA was not a method but rather a collection of methods. We learned that arrogance is not the domain of any one profession and that some folks look to their one approach as THE approach and therefore are none too thrilled with CELTA's offering this and that to complete the package.

That's when CELTA won me over. I like the idea of drawing from the best, no limits, few boundaries. I like the idea of doing what works rather than adhering to one rule and only one.

And . . . as previously noted in the post below . . . I love teaching.

So I'm checking out my options. Thus far in this journey (taking a year off to find out what I next want to be as I grow up) I've determined that
-- I like to write but not enough to be a novelist or pursue the kind of freelance work that will pay the bills.
-- Houston is home and I don't want to live elsewhere at this time.
-- I love to teach.

So, class, can we guess want I want to do next?

That's right! Teach ESL. Of course, that means I have to find enough jobs to make a living at it given that fulltime positions are not that available.

But I've got a trip to Tanzania to make in January and February and a couple of months to do the research so we will see.

For those of you who want to keep up with me fairly regulary you can now go back to www.starsdancing.blogspot.com. For you folks who were reading for CELTA, stay tuned. I'll be back.

Remembering . . .

I accomplished all my TPs (that's teaching points for you who are not nearly CELTA certified) in my last hour of teaching. That means I covered present continuous to the point that several showed understanding of the idea that it's not just for talking about now (as in "I am typing") but also around now (as in "I'm driving to my sick friend's in a few minutes). We also practiced I, we, you and, believe it or not, "y'all." Plus we squeezed in a bit of reading comprehension.

But the greatest goal achieved from 1:15 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. on Friday, November 30, was that I remembered that I love teaching.

Somehow I'd let that fact escape me. Somehow illustrating meaning, concept checking, oral highlighting, drilling, written highlighting and the knowledge that someone was watching my every move to ensure that I did those things and in order while simultaneously covering the material was obscuring what had always been obvious.

I smiled. I calmed down. I listened to the students. I laughed. We got up from our chairs. We practiced and practiced and most, if not all, got something they didn't come into that room with.

When it was all said and done, I told them to ask me the question I'd had them asking each other throughout the hour, "What are you doing tonight?"

"I'm going dancing!" I replied.

Adriana said, "You dance?"

I said I did and she moved toward me and we twirled each other around the room. The dance, like my teaching, was amusing -- I wasn't really sure who was leading whom.

In the Moment

We are in the college's language lab. We're learning about C.A.L.L. -- computer assisted language learning. Someone just pointed out that this blog is part of that. She also observed that the material we're getting in this two hours -- history, introduction, resources, links -- would cost us a pretty penny if we were at a workshop independent of this course.

And, yes, I'm multi-tasking. We who are techno know that's not really rude.

I had every intention . . .

I planned on supporting my cohort. I planned on listening attentively as they concluded their teaching experiences with one last hour-long exploration of vocabulary presentation, grammar structure, and/or listening comprehension. But my head and my heart were not on speaking terms it seems.

Or maybe my head was just so full of fluid it didn't get the message.

At any rate, I barely survived the morning even if it was about jobs (info I need) and developing a syllabus (something that actually fascinates me).

By noon, I knew I was going to take our instructors up on the offer to use one afternoon this week for whatever we wanted. I wanted sleep. I needed to finish up my teaching plan.

I did both.

I feel better . . . allergy medicines are wonderful things and knowing that tomorrow is the last full day of class is good for me as well!

I woke up at 4 a.m.

As soon as consciousness was mine this morning (actually even before!), I was mentally rewriting the paper I had to resubmit, inserting and deleting whole portions of my lesson plan for Friday, and wishing that my mere thinking of such productivity would somehow find its way to the computer without my having to get out from under the covers.

My nose is running as well. And if that's the sign it usually is, I'm going to be coughing by next week.

One of my cohorts told me this morning that today was the first day I had looked tired. "You have so much energy," she said. "I'm surprised to see you looking like this."

I sniffed and said I agreed with her. I wasn't my best self.

Yet the minute I sat in front of the students, I knew I was where I wanted to be. Until, of course, I saw not one but two evaluators in the back of the room. They weren't both there officially. One was checking papers or something. But they were there and suddenly, i wasn't me anymore. I was slow and not connecting the dots and wondering if they were checking me off for this or that.

After I completed my teaching and as I was driving away from campus, I realized something -- I love learning; I just hated being graded.

They weren't kidding . . .

I'm getting weary. A re-submit on one of the written assignments made my day go a little darker. The evaluation was fair. I should have done a complete footnote on my reference. But that's a logical statement. And, after this many hours of homework and the pressure of wanting to do well for both the students and the evaluations, I'm raw.

A couple in our class is dealing with the unexpected death of a loved one. I can't imagine what they're going through. Yet they are enduring. So I guess I can too.

Still . . . Saturday at 12:01 p.m. is my carrot on the end of the stick.

In the meantime, I'm finding authentic texts, trying to understand what gist questions to ask, frustrated that the students book has really lame dialogues for us to work with, and worried that I'm going to do something really stupid and blow my standard rating on Friday . . . IF we have enough students show up.

Did I mention I'm getting weary?

Thanksgiving Weekend

I'm thankful that it was ONLY 12.5 hours of homework, that my time with friends and a turkey (please note that my friends AREN'T turkeys) exceeded that hour count, and that televised football now includes computer generated helps for folks like me who could never keep up with first downs.

5:20 p.m. and I'm on holiday!

The Thanksgiving holiday is a favorite of mine because the only real expectation is to be full. I do, however, try and keep in mind that I have much for which to be grateful.

Today, I'm grateful that I have four days off.

I'm not thrilled that it will be somewhat consumed by two papers and the creation of a lesson plan I'll have to teach on Monday. But hey, that's what I've paid for.

Happy Turkey Day!

Kudos to My Cohorts

Today I watched as my fellow trainers in training showed exactly what listening to your instructors can do. One adapted a lesson plan with seeming ease and showed no sign of strain as she stretched what she thought was to be a 20 minute plan into 40. Another worked with patience until our faithful but sometimes weaker student made her way through a difficult Q&A we she proclaimed "dificil" but good. And finally, another applied every piece of feedback she was given yesterday as though she were a practiced pro.

Ok, maybe I'm being a bit effusive but even so, they were good!

Finding our ways . . .

I asked why they wanted to learn English.

The enthusiastic Colombian who likes to dance and jog on the weekends didn't hesitate, "To teach. To talk and be understood."

The shy, more reserved mother of two, offered up almost as dramatically, "To help my children with school. To get a job."

They won't leave this class knowing English. They will leave knowing they can. And I can help make this happen . . . one verb, one vocabulary presentation, one text at a time.

I think I could really like this job.

Halfway There

Friday we had our midpoint evaluations with one of our instructors. The one-to-one attention is valuable as they have a chance to dig into what we're doing well, what we need to work on, and even give us a sense of how it's going to play out in the next couple of weeks.

As I looked at previous evaluations of my teaching and listened to what my tutor was saying, I had an "aha" that shouldn't have been this long in the making.

This experience is strangely similar to my Spanish immersion experience in Ecuador a couple of years ago. We had a small class that was equally as diverse as this one in experience, interests, and plans on what we'd do with our newfound language skills. Most of us were living with a family in homestay situations. We had very long days. I don't remember this much homework in that experience but we were practicing every time we tried to hail a cab or get some food!

But the biggest similarity for me is that when I went to Ecuador I had a limited knowledge of Spanish. Along with a friend, we butchered the language without hesitation as we tried to make our way to the school, make some additional plans, etc. We walked the streets with a sense that we had a clue what was going on around us.

Then we took the class. Then reality set in. We were busted. Oh, how ignorant we found ourselves to be.

And what happened? We stopped practicing on the streets quite as much. Embarrassed by how little we really knew, shamed by how badly we had been expressing ourselves, we slowed it down. We almost quit, but didn't. Ultimately, the experience was definitely a learning one, but we came in with a bang and out with a whimper.

Fast forward a few years and I walk into the classroom as a trainer in training with the same sense of knowing a bit about what I'm doing. And once again, as I grow in my knowledge of what is supposed to be happening as opposed to what I'm doing, and I hit a wall. I get mentally fried just trying to download a simple procedure and apply it. I'm convinced that I'm butchering these folks' language experience and I slowed down.

But once again, I haven't quit. And I have no plans to.

I do, however, plan on getting this blasted 1) illustrate meaning, 2) elicit the item, 3) concept check, 4) oral highlighting, 5) oral ICP, 6) written highlighting, 7) written ICP down if it kills me.

Halfway there and contemplating embarassment, shame and terms such as "kill." Yep, I MUST be learning something!

Listening Comprehension -- I'll Take the Blue Packet

Artifical sweetners have come a long way but they still leave an aftertaste.

So, it seems, do artificial listening exercises.

Male voice (with a cheerleader's forced enthusiasm): I have a job as a summer intern.

Female voice: Really? (her voice rising at the end of the sentence as though she's just been told the guys with the sweepstake winnings are standing at her door) That sounds exciting! (at this point you're wondering if a lot more is going on than just a simple conversation on the street)

Male voice: But I'm sad I won't be working on my tan. (And now, you're convinced he's suicidal)

Ok, maybe it's not that bad but believe me these dialogues run dangerously close to putting someone in a diabetic coma. They gush with hyperbole. Some might guess they are being performed by soap opera rejects.

Still, it's a tool. And an interesting one at that. For instance, we would-be trainers were told yesterday that sometimes new language learners don't realize there are two male voices in dialogue as opposed to one long monologue. They can't hear the differences we native speakers can.

So . . . play, pause, play again. Just be prepared to get the sweet taste out of your mouth.

Technical Difficulties

"We've got a barn. Let's put on a show."

A young man in an old movie said this line with such enthusiasm that's it become a part of our vernacular. Unfortunately, his shows didn't always go as planned.

Such was the case with my use of technology in the last 24 hours.

Our classrooms are equipped with wifi and powerpoint projectors. There's not a lot of hoopla in getting them to work. Press two buttons and you're good to go.

Lights on the other hand are another matter. No matter what we did, the lighting in the room didn't work. Too dark to write. Too light to see the projection. I had a backup plan and used it but technology made for some painful digging out of the hole.

Last night . . . after a 9 to 5 day of classes, driving across town for a meeting, participating in yet two more hours of training, I started what I thought would be a couple of hours on homework. I'd already worked on my handout. I was just a few downloads and printed pages away from bedtime.

HA!!

The downloads were either on my Mac using a "borrowed" wifi connection and moved via jump drive to the PC where I could print. Or incredibly slow (as in how long it takes for the dentist to drill your tooth) on the dial-up tied to the PC. The printer made the carefully sought out color photos look like the line drawings of a 7-year-old. And four hours into the process I had a less than satisfactory lesson plan and original documents to take to class.

The show would go on but it was destined for bad reviews.

And then I remembered my resources. Another printer. A color copier. Admitting you're not sure of some things and actually asking for help . . . a lot of help. And in the end, I may not have a prizewinner but someone learned something.

Namely me! 1. Just because you have it, doesn't mean you have to use it. (2) Paper, pen and our voices have been quite useful tools for some time.

Perspective Is a Beautiful Thing

I have a great hairstylist. When I leave her chair, I feel beautiful. She always gives me a great cut. Then she uses products that makes my hair do things I couldn't have dreamed of. However . . . when I get home . . . with that same great cut . . . and use those same great products, the results are not the same!

Beautiful? No! I feel like a junior high girl standing alone at the dance.

Yesterday I had those feelings all over again but my hair had nothing to do with it.

When I am in the morning classes and watching our instructors engage in their expertise, I'm amazed. They elicit the words they want us to practice with simple stories or pictures. They drill us on pronunciation or concept check on the grammar structure or the methodology and we show definite signs of understanding. It's a beautiful thing. Truly.

Then with those very products in my hands, I make a mess -- the kind of mess that's painful to watch. I don't quite get the pronunciation correct myself. Then I let corrupted pronunciation get by and even say, "Good" when it wasn't. I forget to check if the students even have the meaning before I start them practicing the word. I talk too much. They talk too little. And grammar? Oh, please! Don't get me started!

Forty minutes of teaching doesn't sound like a long time. But ask the junior high girl at that dance who has a zit and whose hair is frizzed and going in directions even God didn't intend. Forty minutes can be an eternity!

At the end of teaching the class yesterday the best thing I could say was that I had gotten through it.

Fortunately, my instructor had another perspective. "If you had been teaching this since 1968 [at he has] rather than an hour an a half, and done what you did, you might have a reason to beat yourself up. Give yourselves a break!"

Ahh . . . hairdressers and instructors, they know all the right things to do and say.

Free Speaking

I'm in a class while I'm also helping teach a class.

Let me concept check that with you. Am I student? (yes) Am I a teacher? (yes) Are both these things happening on the same day? (yes) Good!

I've actually been the beneficiary of this kind of set up before. Houston Community College offers half price massages by students on a regular basis. And I've had several $20 four and five course meals via the college's culinary school. The idea both works and makes a great deal of sense. Who is more eager to share what they are learning than the student fresh from the classroom and untainted by demands of paying customers!?

These students don't pay for our teaching. And for that they get several hours of English practice, a bit of help on vocabulary, listening and reading comprehension, grammar and the gratitude of those of us who are benefitting from their willingness to participate.

Last week and this, I'm with the team focusing on the intermediate level. We have had more than 20 and as few as about 12 to 15. For the most part they are from Spanish-speaking countries, but we have Jordan, Vietnam, Korea, China and a few other locales represented. I'm enjoying what I'm learning about their countries and cultures.

Tonight I shared a bit of my learning at a dinner party my hosts gave. After a few minutes I had a couple of folks speaking the Arabic we were taught on our first day of class.

When I finished and noted that they had learned a few words of Arabic, I thought, "I just used the CELTA method to teach a language I would have told you was way too beyond me."

Maybe mine wasn't free but it's definitely worth the investment thus far!

Grammar -- Ouch!

I was nervous. The weekend was long and full and fun. The homework that I completed on Saturday took seven hours. That was Saturday. Monday was many hours and many thoughts away from learning what I might need to know about interrupted past continuous.

And here I stood before 16 people who assumed by my position in the class and the mere fact that I had the marker in my hand that I might be knowledgeable on this subject (well, actually predicate but we'll get to that in a moment).

I was rewriting notes so I could remember to hold on to the handout until after I had provided instructions as well as noting that I should talk to the class and not the board when I wrote the Marker Sentence. I was somewhat concerned that I hadn't committed every morsel of information out of my grammar book to memory. So I was checking the text . . . again. I was dry lipped, dry mouthed and dry of any sense that this would be smooth sailing.

And then it happened.

One student, after seeing the Marker Sentence (or as I've come to think of it -- That Upon Which All ESL Training Rests), how I highlighted its parts on the board, and had led the class to identify those parts, asked, "Is that part (motioning to the remainder of the sentence after the verb+ing) of the predicate?"

"Predicate!" I'm thinking. "What the heck is the predicate? Oh wait, I remember from ... let's see ... HIGH SCHOOL English class that's the uh . . . the uh . . . well, it has something to do with the verb . . . "

But what I say is, "The predicate is the verb and you're pointing to the adverbial clause. But I'll check and we'll move on for now."

Or at least I meant to say that. What I probably said was unintelligible. But I did check and I did discover that whatever was related to the verb was the predicate and I did admit it and class did go on and two students did seem to move from no comprehension of the fact that they can take was/were+verb+ing+the simple past and say, "While I was teaching ESL, I sucked at grammar."

The good news is that I wasn't being graded on my knowledge of predicates. The best news is that students got what they were supposed to. The somewhere in between news is that I have high hopes that that sucking sound I heard is not part of my future tense!

Weekend Reflections

Every instructor (and remember we have three) keeps telling us (a)the course is intense and (b)don't overdo it. Yesterday, when Jeff was giving the homework assignments for the weekend, he noted that one specific task should take a maximum of 3-4 hours and then explained that one student had invested something like 17 hours in completing it. Jeff's reaction (since he's a Brit often reminding us that he relishes sarcasm, I think I can by with this) was a textbook illustration of compassion.

"That's just crazy!"

Since I am planning two of my best friends' birthday party (they happen to both be November girls) and trying to celebrate with more friends that Texas has a Renaissance festival each year, I liked it when he concluded his assignments with the reminder to do something other than homework this weekend. That part of the assignment I can handle.

What's the other part? Well . . . we get to invest those maximum 3-4 hours in a formal, evaluated written assignment that is supposed to give them an indication we are getting language related tasks. We also get to do an unevaluated written assignment, write our personal reflections on Part 1, plan another 40 minute lesson for Monday and re-read the manual and organize our notes.

If I give up sleeping and bathing for the next couple of days, I should be able to both have a life AND keep up.

Red eyed and smelly probably describes most women of the Renaissance so I am halfway there on my costume for Sunday.

Week One -- DONE!

I had to teach . . . WAIT! Let's start over . . .

I got the opportunity to teach for 40 minutes on Thursday. Since our previous teaching experiences were only 20 minutes that was a fairly big jump requiring more preparation. And, because this is a learning experience the idea is that we might be applying what we are learning. Now there's a thought, right?!

Sooooo . . . I sat down to teach part of the lesson. My previous training would have frowned on that one because a standing teacher is a teacher in control of her classroom and visible to all. But in CELTA you're encouraged to at least try sitting in order to make you more comfortable (and possibly projecting less stress to your class) and allow for you to be eye to eye with the students.

I learned and applied and now have a better understanding of that classroom management technique. Yea!

Another lesson I tried to apply was actually correcting pronunciation. Now that's a hard one for me. I know that the students want to speak the way other Americans speak. I know that's why they are there. But the Southerner in me only wants to correct their first attempt. If they don't get it right after that, I feel embarrassed for them and don't want to keep pushing. Not exactly a great line of thinking when it's an English class!

So I corrected! And corrected! And, if needed, I did it again. We shaped our mouths into the right shape. We highlighted the hard part. We tried. One or two made it to much better pronunciation. Some didn't get there. And . . . this is big so pay attention . . . I didn't say "Good" if they didn't! My previous training as a trainer said to affirm any response from a student. But that doesn't mean saying they are right when they aren't. I sometimes get that mixed up and say "Great!" when the effort really isn't great. After a few, "Not quite there yet but we'll work on it" lines from me, I began to think this learning stuff might be working on me.

When our instructor gave us our evaluations, I discovered yet another thing I was going to have to unlearn. "Echoing." Again, my early training said if a student responded we should repeat the response so the class could hear. Not a bad idea, right? Especially in a classroom like ours with an air conditioner fan blowing fairly loudly every few minutes. Wrong! We aren't supposed to echo their response. We're just adding to what they call the Teacher Talk Time. In a class where the students are supposed to be learning English, it seems the CELTA folks think it's a good idea for them to actually get to speak English . . . and maybe even more than the teacher! Who would have thought!

So I'm learning that I have to unlearn.

I once threatened to get a line of T-shirts printed that simply read:
"Wow Bow!" -- Old Dog

If I had the shirt, I would have to wear it now because it pretty much conveys my hopes for the next few weeks: I can learn a few new tricks. I know I can.

Intense, Intense, INTENSE

We were warned.

During the interview process for the class, Jeff mentioned several times that the class involved a great deal of work. The pre-course materials we were required to complete spoke of the homework after the demands of the day. On the first day of class we heard it again.

They weren't kidding.

Day one we learned that each morning we'd hear new information about being trainers and the how-to of teaching adults. What's neat is that they model how to teach English as they train us. So we are treated to experiential learning, repetition, a variety of methodologies and a fast pace.

That afternoon we saw our trainers train a group of ESL students who will be receiving English lessons for the same amount of time we'll be studying. Coincidence? No! We're their teachers.

And we started teaching on Day 2!

Armed with the instructions and our manuals, five of us on each team taught either Beginning or Intermediate Level English from 1 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. The first try we were unobserved. I still had a sweat pouring out of me. Yesterday, Day 3, we were graded.

Did I mention INTENSE?

My team is great so we all heard great comments about our performance. But even with 20 years of training experience, I found that 20 minute assignment daunting. I questioned my ability to hear, my pronunciation of my own language, my ability to inform or inspire and pretty much everything including gravity and the existence of oxygen before it was over. But I did it.

And from my evaluation sheet, I can see that I must have done it in a satisfactory manner.

Today I teach for 40 minutes.

There's not enough deodorant in the city to keep the sweat in check. I'm going sleeveless!

Acronyming Our Way to Understanding

CELTA used to stand for something else but now we know it's a combination of several approaches to teaching English. CELTA just avoids too much concentration on culture.

ESL, I finally see, has to do with teaching folks who come to the US or Britain or an English-speaking country and want to make English his/her second language. English as a Second Language now makes sense as a perfectly acceptable acronym.

EFL, we're told, is for the English speakers who simply need to use English with non-English speakers who don't speak the same language as they do. For instance, an Ethiopian in Egypt wants to buy products from an Italian company. They might take EFL classes for those for whom English is simply a foreign language but won't become their second adopted language, get it?

Cool, huh?

As for the TP, the PPP, the ICP and all the other alphabet soup particles flying through the classroom's verbal airspace, well, one day at a time seems to be a great adage.

What did he say?

We entered the class. The trainer held up a color picture of an orange and a glass of orange juice. Then he made sounds come out of his mouth.

I had no clue what he wanted but he looked sincere in his desire for me and the others in the room to reply. Someone said something. He became animated in his enthusiasm and encouraged us all to repeat the same sound. We did. And we made his day!

At least that's what it felt like.

What was happening was a language lesson in a language none of us knew -- Arabic. We repeated sounds and realized soon enough they were phrases and then finally put together they were meaningful sentences and by the end of a 30 minute period we were "speaking Arabic."

Nicely done, Jeff!!!

So, you really can teach a group of students a new language with some pictures, sounds, body language and a bit of writing on the board.

Perhaps I can do this CELTA stuff after all!

To ESL or Not To ESL . . .

I know several things:
-I have to make money somehow
-I like to travel and love engaging with folks from a variety of backgrounds
-I'm a trainer
-I speak English.

I don't know much, much more. But here's a sampling:
-How CELTA differs from conversational English which I've done informally before as a volunteer
-How to walk into a room of non-English speakers and offer them anything that resembles learning
-How I'm going to do as a student since the last time I was one was half my lifetime ago

The "arrangements" part of this experience was the focal point for me for weeks. Where to stay since the college offering the class is almost an hour drive from my home? How to afford both the cost and the time of four weeks of intensive training? Where I'd get the textbook they recommend? And "stuff" (one of the ESSENTIAL English words to know according to my instructor Jeff!) like that!

Problems were solved easily enough. I am with friends who only live a half hour away and (woohoo!) they have thus provided hot coffee in the morning, breakfast and a home cooked meal last night! I dipped into savings to finance my year of study and adventures. The book wasn't such a hard find after all.

So I'm on the third day of my CELTA experience and I finally had time to launch the "daily" blog I said I'd do. We'll see what happens next . . .