Well, I'm back again. And as with last time, I apologise for this being reflections on a course I finished over a month ago and therefore with lots of interesting bits of information and (hopefully) insights into life as a trainer lost in my quickly aging memory (yes, I'm only 31, but after a month as a TiT I think I put on about 50 years - grey hairs here to show it!)

So... what was my first course as a CELTA tutor like?

General feelings:

• Beforehand - Input Sessions: Confidence. I'd spent a whole week getting materials ready and familiarising myself with session lesson plans well in advance, and besides, I've got a big enough ego to feel good about my skill in this area (only the trainees and God can tell you if that's really true - but I think it is, so I wasn't worried).
• Beforehand - Assessing TP and Giving Feedback: Not too worried. I know that I'm not yet quick enough with the handwriting to fully complete the feedback cover sheets we use, but I'd done plenty of practice as a TiT a month earlier and I'd familiarised myself Chinese-exam-technique-rote-learning-style with the CELTA Syllabus on top of that. So other than expecting a bit of extra post-TP time to complete the forms, not too bad. Feedback's not a speciality of mine, but it's far from a weakness either, so looking forward to this part as a learning experience.
• Beforehand - Being observed as an example of good teaching practice: Almost fraught with nerves. In fact, I would've been fraught with nerves if that'd been something that ever happened to me (I've been nervous once in my entire teaching career - it was during the 3rd assessed teaching practice session on the Dip course... I'll have to tell you about it some time... but even my first day teaching, my first TP on my CELTA, and the first 2 TP sessions on the Dip course - worried - a little, nervous - no). So as nervous as I could be - despite being fairly deeply involved in teacher training and professional development up unti the day I started as a TiT, my teaching experiences had been very varied and had meant that I hadn't made full use of CELTA-like techniques, so I was worried I wouldn't be able to provide a great example, and that that would result in the trainees having less faith in me as a trainer.
• Beforehand - all the other stuff: Not too bad. There were a few areas like marking written work and doing some of the admin stuff where I'd always known that I'd need to work closely with the other tutor(s) over the first 3-4 courses until I became more familiar with it. So any weaknesses in these areas were to be expected.
• During: Exhilaration! I don't think there was a single day that I didn't end up doing several hours overtime, and it's not like the usual office work where your mind can shut off for several hours while you do the daily routine typing of reports and stuff - it's non-stop psychologically hard work... but when I went home each evening I had 4x the usual energy. It was fantastic! Every aspect of the course was so enjoyable. And the bits I was nervous about went nice and smoothly overall.
• Afterwards: An odd feeling of success and achievement (I'm very non-ambitious and usually feel awkward or embarrassed in situations where most people would feel success - so it was odd for me). And looking forward to the next course!

Basically, it started with me preparing teaching practice points for the Elementary group... and getting a fairly light first week when it comes to Input Sessions because the tutor was the same guy who helped me through my month as a TiT and he was happy to take on a bit extra to ease me into the course.

That was followed by me catching up a bit on Input Sessions around the end of week 2 - which was lucky, because it meant I ended up doing some of my favourite Input Sessions (I especially enjoy the sessions on phonology - connected speech being my absolute favourite).

There's not much I can really say about the course itself - it went nice and smoothly for me. Our days were basically:

• 9.30am Input Session 1
• 11.15am Input Session 2
• 2pm Teaching Practice
• 4.30pm Feedback Session
• 5pm Prep for next day's Teaching Practice

With the odd change here and there for a study session and the various Observations that T's needed to do as part of their Portfolios.

The really interesting thing (and this is a combination of both this course and my course as a TiT because they were both pretty exceptional in this area) is all the random unusual events and unfortunate problems that cropped up for the trainees...

1. Day 1 as a TiT: Earthquake.
   It was that devasting earthquake in southern China - what we felt, at 2.30pm on a Monday afternoon in Beijing, in the middle of a teacher's practice session was dizziness. For me it was the first real morning start in about 5 years and I hadn't had time for lunch, so for about a minute I sat there thinking I was going to pass out from it all and was thinking to myself "Are you kidding? You're stronger than this, mate. An early start and skipping lunch shouldn't be enough to be this dizzy." I finally started to stand up to leave the room when I noticed a sick look on one of the trainee's faces as she suddenly said, "I feel...", and we also suddenly heard a whole bunch of panic out in the corridor. As we all realised at once what was happening we noticed that all the holland blinds were gently swaying back and forth. We sat through it calmly, and eventually continued the class... but later that afternoon one of the trainees withdrew because he had family in the region near where the earthquake hit and the poor guy had to rush off to see if they were okay.
2. Mid-Week-2 as a TiT: Withdrawal 2.
   One trainee discovered that the stress was just too much, and after severalmeetings with each of the trainers, discontinued the course.
3. End of Week 1 as a Trainer: Passed out.
   One of the trainees, in the late afternoon, in the middle of a teaching practice session passed out, and had to be rushed to hospital. Not sure what it all was - partially due to an allergy, partially due to not eating properly, partially due to the mid-summer heat? Luckily she was fine, and ifinished the course quite successfully in the end.
4. Mid-Week 2 as a Trainer: Disappearance.
   One of the trainees didn't turn up on Wednesday. We were a bit worried as we received no call from her, and after lunch our attempts to contact her were unsuccessful too... But it wasn't until repeated attempts to contact her on Thursday were unsuccessful that we called the police. The police said they couldn't do anything within 48 hours and it was only on Friday that they police investigated, got her hotel phone records, and ended up calling a number she'd contacted regularly to discover she was staying at a friend's house. For various reasons she'd been unable to reach us, and by the time we were back in contact with her she'd missed too much of the course and withdrew.
5. End of Week 3: The flu.
   Around this time, a couple of trainees had their immune systems affected by stress, and they ended up with the flu - resulting in some awkward rescheduling of teaching practice... luckily everyone got through it, and despite the other trainer also ending up with a bit of a crook stomach for a couple of days, the course got through it all very successfully.

And somewhere amongst all that, our computer systems got hit by some frustrating virus that was tricky to get rid of. No problems since, thank God!

Well... that's all I'll say about my first course as a CELTA Tutor. There's so much more I wish I could talk about, but I've already borderlined too much on giving away other people's personal stories - so I won't mention any of the really interesting stuff - the personalities that I've worked with, the fun, the shock, the drive, the laziness, and the ups and downs of 14 people working intensively and closely together for a non-stop month that I'm now making sound like some kind of psychological thriller but which is actually much more like the drama of normal human life. I'll save all those stories for if I ever meet you in person!

NEXT UP: my 2nd course as a full-time CELTA Tutor, which I'll be putting together a bit more real-time and blogging up right after it finishes to make sure not so much is lost to memory that next time.