The CELTA- what you’re letting yourself in for
The second in a new set of guest pieces (more writers wanted!), this time from recently CELTA certified blogger Jon Bellwood
“Thinking of doing a CELTA? Then before you take the plunge and lay down a substantial sum of money you might want to know what you’re letting yourself in for. Allow me:
To have set the alarm bells ringing is my intention; the CELTA is far from all good. This is without reference to its worth (the qualification is world recognized) or the experience (you will meet wonderful people and have wonderful times).
So if it’s a wonderful experience why set the alarm bells ringing? The workload. During the application for a full-time CELTA the word intensive is around like confetti at a wedding and it’s not only accurate but should be preceded by a qualifying statement such as very or massively.
Having just completed the course on the 19th of December I feel it may be a good idea to extend some words of caution, but also encouragement, about the various areas of the CELTA which combine to make the course what it is; a wonderful, stressful, crazy rollercoaster that will have you grinning like a bear and tearing your hair out within seconds of each other.
Firstly I have to say DON’T have a job while doing the CELTA, this is an absolute recipe for disaster; you will be in class or teaching for at least eight hours everyday. Add on top of that the need for an average of 2 to 3 hours (or a lot more at times) work at home every night and you won’t have time to work unless you are a robot or don’t require sleep.
The course will drag you down, stress you out and fatigue you both mentally and physically. I found myself talking to my tutor one day and my brain just disconnected on me. I knew what I was trying to say, it made perfect sense – except when it came out of my mouth it did not and proceeded to annoy my tutor immensely.
I also arrived home one day to my flatmates telling me that it was my turn to do the washing up (it was) and that I should do it post-haste; a fairly reasonable request by all accounts. This was responded to with a string of foul mouthed words, the slamming of the door and some more cursing. Apologies were extended the next day of course, but the stress will get to you.
Many people on my course, both male and female recounted tales of “hitting a wall”- finding themselves crying, confused and every other emotion in between. Nobody will get through the course without having their moments; the course is a rollercoaster, the dips are guaranteed.
You will lie awake at night, you will be more tired than you can imagine yet sleep will not be forthcoming; you will find yourself worrying about monitoring, teacher talk-time, the latest assignment or a million other things which you had never worried about until three weeks earlier.
So what I’m saying is that you should stuff your tail between your legs, spin around 180 degrees and run away as fast as your legs will take you?
No.
As long as you consider the demands on your time and understand that you will take a beating like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky (metaphorically, this is a teaching course after all) then you will gain a tremendous amount from the course. The CELTA isn’t like any other qualification I’ve ever come across; you will be thrown from the frying pan straight into the fire, which is a terrifying prospect.
A terrifying prospect but with merit; you learn what you need to do in practice as well as in theory.
You will think you are going too fast. You’re not- you are just considering the multitude of things that have been introduced to you in the previous weeks that you would never have thought about before. You will think you aren’t doing good enough. You are. The harsh criticisms you receive will make you feel like you’re the biggest CELTA klutz the world has ever seen. Don’t take them to heart; take them as constructive criticism and learn from your mistakes.
You will find yourself doing things you would never have done otherwise. My example would be completing the 10km Manly Scenic Walk in Sydney with a 58 year old Swiss lizard expert; for a 22 year old Brit who has just graduated uni in July thats unlikely by pretty much every standard.
You will meet wonderful people from all over the world- fellow teachers, students and your trainers. You will find yourself making friends with people whom you would otherwise never likely meet. With these friends you will laugh, cry, bitch, complain, drink and all the rest.
Come the end of it all you will end up with a qualification that actually means something; it won’t just be another piece of paper that gets a line in your CV. At the end of the course you will be able to teach the following Monday. You won’t be perfect and you’ll have strengths and weaknesses aplenty but you will be competent and confident enough to go out and do it.
Best of all at the end of it all the world will be your oyster, your only problem will be choosing where to go next; Australia? Japan? Canada? China? Vietnam? Cambodia? Ghana? Poland? Italy?
The decision is yours…..
For more from Jon as he tours his way round Australia and starts his post-CELTA Adventure check out www.jonbellwood.wordpress.com”
Thanks to Jon for his fresh war story. Same experience anyone? Agree with Bruce V of TEFL International that the pressure put on you by Trinity and Cambridge in 4 week courses is actually unnecessary? Have your say in the comments below, or even in your own guest piece (please leave a comment below volunteering and I’ll email you, or click on the Contact Me link on the main blog page)
Tags: guest writers
December 30th, 2008 at 12:01 am
I don’t understand why the celta course is made “very intensive”. People in my course described it as “boot camp”. Someone told me of an army boot camp for SAS, where they had to eat half a plate of dog vomit. I think this is a good metaphor for the tutors’ comments. But why would you think this is good for you? As far as I could tell, the course could be best summarised as something you would scrape off the bottom of your shoe. We were told that it is not an “academic” course. Perhaps what they really meant is that it has “no academic value”. Why would Cambridge allow their name to be used for this heap of canine excrement?
December 30th, 2008 at 2:53 am
I guess you had the option of taking one of those pre-experience American MAs in TESOL instead, so why did you choose the CELTA? Perhaps because you couldn’t spare the time or money to do an MA?? The CELTA isn’t perfect, but a PGCE is spread over a year and is far more stressful. If you can think of a better way of training people to be practising classroom teachers with a similar budget and/ or time frame, I’d love to have your comments and/ or a guest post explaining your ideas.
December 30th, 2008 at 2:57 am
btw, I see that you have a slight agenda here that maybe you should have stated:
http://www.esl-tutor.com/2007/10/celta-or-tesol-for-private-tutoring.html
December 30th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Not all CELTAs are done in one month! I did mine in Australia last year in 3 months (two weeknights plus Saturday morning TPs). My tutors also thought that one month was too intensive, although they did offer one month CELTAs. My tutors were experienced and great. However, there was only so much I could learn during that 120 hours or so. I had so many questions after that and it’s only now that I’m doing a part time M Ed (TESOL) and have the time to reflect that I’m starting to get those questions answered as I read more.
The theory learned in CELTA is there to read in many books and I think the most important parts of the CELTA are the most practical parts – observation of lessons, creating lesson plans, actual teaching practice and the evaluation from your tutors.
December 30th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Good points. Do you think doing it part time over a longer period cuts down on the stress? Having done the DELTA that way (while doing a full time job), I’m not sure if it wasn’t at least as stressful as I imagine the full time 9 week DELTA to be
December 30th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I took the CELTA after I had done some teaching in Japan. I think it was great because it taught me a different way of doing things. Often times you can get a teaching job without a certificate or training – all you need is a pulse, a Bachelor’s and a passport from a native English speaking country. But, the company usually doesn’t give anywhere near the training you need to do your job. You can’t really blame them, they are out to make money not to make you the best teacher in the world. As a consequence of this less than stellar training you only end up being so-so and everyone around you is so-so. I took CELTA and got a good insights on how to teach a better class and to learn from the tutors (that have experience) and the other students (that have new ideas).
I would recommend this approach because it gives you an idea of what you are getting into and you get a lot more out of the course. Yes it’s hard work, yes it’s stressful. But that isn’t really all that different from your first 6 months to a year at an English teaching job if you haven’t taught before. And after the first week, at least from my prospective, it was fairly smooth sailing.
I took it Sevilla, Spain though. It’s a little more relaxed. :)
December 31st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
The CELTA is not designed to make anybody a good teacher. Its purpose is to make the average Joe into an efficient deliverer of EFL course book materials, nothing more. It was originally set up by EFL industry moguls with that aim in mind, and has changed little over the years.
If you want to become a real teacher, and have a greater understanding of the psychology behind your learners and the full range of teaching methodologies, you’ll need to do a Delta or something similar – at least.
All of which is not to belittle the humble Celta. After all, (by way of example and analogy here) if you just want to be a dog-trainer, then learn to say ‘woof’ in the right way and you’ll get results. But is you feel the urge to design your own dog-training course and have an insight into Rover’s moods and motivation, you’ll need to take further steps. Or just jump through more hoops.
January 4th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
I was quite interested in the assessment criteria for CELTA. Who wrote these? How do we validate them? (i.e. are they the right criteria to use?). How do we verify whether a given student is meeting a given criterion? At the school I was at (in Australia) we were told officially that “the ephemeral nature of the practical assessment does not provide the necessary conditions for a re-mark or appeal against a result”.
But it is possible to tape record lessons. I think that it should be possible to decide whether or not a lesson is acceptable, given only a typescript of what happened in class. However to obtain a good record, one would presumably need several tape records torecord what happens in small group work.
No one else in the class seemed to want to ask, why is the assessment the way it is?
I feel that the current system is a great scandal which damages the credibility of Cambridge University. I have to confess that I had always thought, for some reason, that Cambridge was second rate compared to Oxford. After doing this course, I rate CELTA as a steaming heap of I won’t say what.
In my first post, I said that in an ASA course people had to eat half a plate of dog vomit. I meant SAS (special air services) which is a specialist army term for the swat squad.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:56 am
Here’s a nice summary for people thinking about the CELTA etc:
http://www.relocatemagazine.com/index.php/language-training/113-portable-tefl-a-new-option-for-trailers-
January 7th, 2009 at 7:37 am
And some more thoughts about the CELTA here:
What former CELTA trainees say:
http://www.ih.hu/index.php?al1=31&lang=eng
CELTA Summary
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/study-courses/certificate-in-english-language-teaching-to-adults-celta/1167365/
February 7th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
When I began reading your blog I thought it might put me off doing a CELTA course, which I plan to do this year. After finishing it I am excited, although I undertand that it is hard work, it sounds like you feel a great sense of acheivement after finishing it and surely it opens doors for you. I hadn’t thought about completing it abroad either, something to look in to…
February 27th, 2009 at 10:24 am
I finished my CELTA about 3 months ago so the memory is fairly fresh. I suppose it was intensive and the teaching practise was always a scary prospect, but maybe I’m not gauging my terror and stress levels properly cause I remember it as being mostly being taught methodology and language awareness with games and discussion. The hard part was lesson planning but apart from that it was quite fun- you got to know each other pretty well with all that time together. Jumping through hoops is fine- it’s how our education system works and I don’t mind it so long as I get my ticket out in the end.
Feedback from the tutors could be kind of a buzzkill though when you really enjoyed a teaching a class and then hear you had too much TTT, etc. The confidence of one poor trainee quickly eroded as he seemed to take in only the negative criticism and block out any praise as stemming from pity.
So long as you have a supportive group at the course, it’s really not as painful as people say. I’m still job-hunting (just moved to Rome) but so far it seems like I’m getting interviews for the better kind of school because of the CELTA.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Hi all
I finished a CELTA course on Friday so the experience is fresh in my mind. The people on my course who had most difficulty with the content were two experienced teachers who had taught English in other countries and had a PGCE. They found it difficult to handle the assessment of their teaching practice (if it was bad) and brought the whole class down with their constant griping and feeling victimised.
The biggest scandal is that the BC will allow you to take the CELTA without a degree but not to teach in a BC accredited school if you have the CELTA but no degree. There were two candidates (without degrees) on my course who were far better teachers than some others (with degrees) and it seems very unfair that they won’t be able to teach in the UK at a decent school.
I would understand if the BC rules meant you had to have a linguistics related degree+CELTA to teach, but a degree in anything from political science to anthrapology is apparently acceptable. Very unfair in my opinion.
To anyone thinking of doing the CELTA….do it, you’ll make some great friends, on the intensity, if I had worked as hard doing my degree as I did doing the CELTA I would have graduated in 8/9 months. I’m not sure if that reflects well on the CELTA or badly on my degree course, you make your own minds up!