My 'Round the World' travels!: TEFL teacher!

I am alive and well and realise it has been well over a month since I have updated, so i'll try and cram a month's worth into this blog. I have practically led the life of a monk(ess), except I wasn't trapped in some monk's home - I have been eating, sleeping and breathing TEFL whilst practically living in the school building for sometimes more than 12 hours a day. The last two weeks were ridiculous - my life was on complete standstill - as were the other students also.

But now, you are reading the words of a 'graduated' (that sounds so ridiculous after a month) fully qualified TEFL teacher and who has her life back again, thank God. I have absolutely loved it. Mind you, when I started on the first day, I nearly decided to walk out. A couple of reasons - the course/company are from the US - I was the only European/token Irish in the group, surrounded by the TEFL trainers, most people in the office/staff being from there also. I was nearly cracking up with some of the things that they would say in class...you know the way some Americans get on. "So, everybody, gimme something positive in your most encouraging voice" (the trainer would say). Of course, all of the other students in the class, being from the US and probably not finding anything wrong/hilarious with these statements would answer, "I thank God that I'm alive and it's such a beautiful day" (you get my drift). Then they'd come to me and I'd say, "It's Friday tomorrow, yay!" or "I've a hangover today".I seriously, couldn't come out with the same things about life that the rest of them were saying.

But, like everything, they all grew on me and my class/TEFL trainers were just great and I loved them all, even their 'Americanisms'.

The teaching and learning of TEFL has been completely different to anything that I had imagined. I thought it would be a walk in the park - yeah, like shut up...I am a qualified teacher, this will be easy and I speak English - so just give me my TEFL certificate right now. My God, how wrong was I.

It is completely different to what I'm used to (ok, the classroom management side of things, those stupid detailed lesson plans, that I haven't done since I was at Teacher Training College yonks ago and a couple of the other routine tasks that teachers do was the same). Buzz words such as CCQ's, drilling, elicit, increase STT (Student Talk Time), decrease TTT (Teacher Talk Time), no echoing and the biggie 'Give them nothing'. Well, that last one, near sent me to the fairies...how the hell are you meant to teach at all, if you give the students nothing? In my head, I was looking at these people training us, thinking...you people are completely crazy - that is the most ridiculous idea ever and goes completely against the grain of teaching.

Well, after 4 weeks of using all these buzz words and learning a completely different style of teaching - it actually does work. You give them nothing by eliciting everything (so much fun trying to act out things to the students) using CCQ type of questions. If these are done right, then the students do, and can give you everything. Instead of me listening to the sound of my own voice in a classroom, it is the students voices that I am meant to hear - afterall, they are trying to learn English. Different from my classroom at home - usually it's me talking/teaching, children listening and then getting on with their work. Here it is the students talking - most things are done in pairs/groups - very rare it is individually (because the student isn't talking, which is the whole point of teaching English here).

Each TEFL student had to take mini-lessons firstly for 20 minutes a couple of days a week. These classes were 'live' with real Peruvian adults sitting at the front of the room with differing levels of fluency in English - mainly high basic or beginning intermediate. Whilst this was happening each TEFL student was being monitored by the TEFL trainers - with a handout of an 'observation and evaluation' of your lesson with the boxes 'needs improvement, good or excellent' along with your pros and cons.

Other lessons were on vocabulary. Each week, the vocab lessons got harder - the last week was using 'slang' words. We had to think on our feet as we never knew what words we would get and then we had to elicit these to the adult learners. One slang word I chose was 'to check out'...to check someone out...of course, I had to make a tit out of myself by acting this out by picking on some poor guy named Jesus (his real name) in the class. Mary, the teacher, 'checking out' poor Jesus sitting in the corner haha.The ultimate thing we had to do after this was to check their understanding. The students then had to put it into a complete sentence that was grammatically correct whilst using the right tense. The students we were teaching didn't know these words to start with, so after doing all this, it was great to see that they understood.

The course was full on and most of us practically lived in the school for our last two weeks as we had so many observations to do, grammar papers, detailed lesson plans, evaluations, Personal Development Papers, TEFL training classes that went from 9-4pm everyday along with the big one - the last week of teaching your own class. Most days my alarm went off at 5.45 am, I'd go to school, come back at around 6pm at night and work for the next few hours after that.

I thought I knew what English grammar was all about - I could teach nouns, verbs, adverbs, connectives etc with the kids in school back home. Again, so easy...just gimme that certificate will ya? My God, wrong again. My head was fried with the stuff. I felt like a complete idiot. I never knew or even heard of things in English grammar called (to mention a few): modal auxiliaries, basic conditionals (there are four of them ya know), the formula and function for everthing in grammar must be taught, active and passive voice, using time lines to teach grammar, English verb forms from Simple Present to Perfect Progressive to 'what's the adverbial of time' and is it a main or auxilliary in the verb forms. Different colours of board markers are used for different things and ways to explain English grammar.

I was nearly in the mental over trying to get my head around all this stuff. Like, really, the Past, Present and Future was about as good as I got before. I've now learned so many different ways and fun ways to teach English. And, I used to think it was as boring when I was taught it in school; not any more.

I spent my last week teaching a class of adults from ages 24 years upwards to late 40's early 50's who were 'alto basico 2' (high basic 2) in English. I just loved teaching them and was being observed everyday by the TEFL trainers. The trainers called me the 'rapport monster' and said I was full of energy - loads of it and had a great rapport with my students in the class and that I was a 'Crazy Irish' too.

Teaching adults is different from teaching children and I had so much fun with them. In my last lesson with them, they all gave me a big hug and asked if I was teaching them next week. I told them I was only here for the full week teaching and that their normal teacher would return again on Monday. I found out later, that after my class with them, they all went to the main office and spoke to the owner/Director and asked if I could be their teacher and told him that they wanted me to work there....aww bless them...they were so sweet and I was chuffed.

I was also awarded an excellent for my full class teaching - the only one in the group and 100% for my grammar paper/lesson plans - go me. Yeah, I know what you're thinking - I'm a teacher and so I should be but this is sooo different to what I normally do, and there were two other fully qualified teachers in the TEFL course with me also. It wasn't a walk in the park for them either, as they kept getting 'needs improvement', which isn't easy to take if you're qualified as a fully fledged teacher and these people are ripping you apart.

So, is there life after TEFL then? Well, my course officially finishes on Tuesday. I have just loved being back in the classroom again after being away from it for well over a year. My teaching of TEFL is a different style from Primary School teaching.

I would like to base myself here in Cusco for the next wee while, so I'll just have to wait and see what the future holds for me here in terms of TEFL work and finding somewhere to live, as I can't go back to my normal teaching job til next August. Nothing is planned yet, so I'll just have to see if any opportunities arise. If not, then I'll keep on moving - exciting stuff.