The start of a new chapter

Tomorrow I start the next stage of my teaching life as I begin training as a CELTA tutor.

For those of you who don’t know, CELTA stands for Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults. It’s an entry-level qualification accredited by Cambridge, designed to provide the basics of the communicative approach. In theory, those with a CELTA know the basics of what they need to be let loose in a classroom, although there is controversy about that which I won’t go into here. It can be run part-time or full-time, with the latter being the most common. I did my course part-time from October 2007 to February 2008, which seems like a very long time ago now!

My CELTA group, way back when!

If it’s full-time, the whole course lasts four weeks, which is what we run at IH Sevastopol. This will be my first experience of the four-week course, so it will be interesting to see how the trainees (and I!) deal with it.The group will have nine trainees, and there are two tutors besides me. I’ll be a ‘Trainer in Training’ or ‘TinT’ (thankfully this abbreviation has changed!) I’m looking forward to meeting the trainees tomorrow and getting to know them over the next four weeks.

I’m excited about the prospect of helping a group of people develop into teachers, and learning about how a CELTA course works from the inside. As part of my training I have to keep a reflective journal, which I’ll be doing in notebook form, but I will, of course, blog about the process too!