Survivor Notes from the CELTA

My whole experience abroad started when I started to feel restless in my first year teaching job in the US. I wanted to travel and be around people different from myself. I wasn't exactly getting any satisfaction from teaching high schoolers in southern Illinois. It wasn't for me at the time.

I applied for a CELTA course in Budapest at the International House. Why Budapest? A. It was the cheapest B. The pictures on the website were enticing C. I have Hungarian relatives D. I wanted to go somewhere different E. Budapest sounded like a wonderful and undiscovered city.

The application took some time to finish, because there were a lot of grammar questions involved and being a native speaker, I had never really had to explain English grammar before. I came home from my teaching job exhausted, but filling out that application gave me a secret kind of energy. I didn't know if I'd actually go through with it, but I needed some kind of sanctuary from my job at the time and this was it. I mailed it in and got a response from someone saying that they'd like to set up an interview on Skype. I had no idea what Skype was until I downloaded it for the interview.

I "Skyped" for the first time to Budapest at 5am Central Standard Time from my little apartment in Belleville, Illinois and got a spotty connection with a Scottish teacher trainer whose speech was peppered with British vocabulary like "going on holiday" and "rubbish." This gave me a little rush. We talked for about 50 mins. and I was offered a place in the 2005 July course. I got ready for my teaching job at the time and drove to work screaming at the top of my lungs. I just organized for myself to go to Hungary for the summer!! It was a little rash and out of character, but in a great way. Little did I know, I'd decide to quit my first real teaching job for good and attempt to find a teaching job abroad immediately after my CELTA.

I flew to Budapest on July 2nd, with very little packed. I didn't know I'd be staying so long. My first adventure in Budapest was getting from the airport to my apartment. There, I met my CELTA roommate, from Scotland and with the same name. Cat, instead of Kat. She offered me some tomato slices and bread for dinner and we went to bed.

The next morning was our first CELTA day. I walked into the morning light and rushour of Budapest still jet lagged and completely helpless on how to get from my apartment to International House. Luckily, I had Cat to help. We took two trams and got lost looking for the building. All I remember is not being able to keep up with Cat who was taller than me. We finally managed to find the entrance to what would be our second home for the next four weeks. We walked into a room that had several chairs sitting in a semi-circle. The exact way that chairs would be set up for our students when we had to teach...starting the next day.

I scanned over the faces of the people I'd be working closely with and tried desperately to place where they were all from. To my surprise, I couldn't locate any fellow Americans. At this time, I had to remind myself that one of the reasons I wanted to come here was to meet different people.

Our first activity was to meet each other in a game that was called, "Find Someone Who..." The teacher trainers had taken a few bits of information from our applications and put them onto a worksheet. Our group's worksheet looked like this:

Find someone who...

could probably give you some advice about foreign trade

has an e-mail address connected to precipitation

had their own radio show

whose sister has insider knowledge concerning the CELTA at IH Budapest

has professional experience of recommending tasty Mexican food

has been a mayor

has been working as a teaching assistant in Luton, England.

can tell you something about stud farming, grape harvesting, and Harrods.

knows a lot about EAL.

worked as an interpreter.

taught in Bangladesh.

has a cat called Max.

works part time in the British Council Library.

has an MPhil in East European Studies.

can help you get a loan from a Budapest bank.

could give you tips on caving, canoeing, hiking, and horse riding.

was brought up within an international environment.

has taken part in improvisational comedy on stage.

has a degree in Italian and Arabic.

studied Physics in Edinburgh.

worked in the civil service for 10 years.

Guess which one is mine!!!

We a number of get-to-know-you activities that day, including speaking about interests, pet peeves, and a grammar auction or gambling game. At the end of the day, we were put into teaching groups of about 5-6 people and the three teacher trainers split up to lead our teaching groups. We were told that we'd teach the next day for twenty minutes and we were told which lesson to teach and in what order we'd go.

Essentially, we were to teach the same lessons that the teacher trainers used on us. So as daunting as it seemed to have to teach on the second day of the course, we had a good feeling on how to teach it. It seemed easy enough, but I was wrong...

Our days were organized into different parts:

In the morning, we taught our "guinea pig" students. These were Hungarians aged 16-65 who got a discount on summer English lessons because we were just learning. There were about 15 in a class. These students were angels. Hardworking, patient, and helpful. They were spending their summer paying for English lessons, after all. We watched each other teach and had to take notes about positives and negatives.

After we taught, we had a feedback session. First, we gave our thoughts and then next the teacher trainer gave his/her thoughts on the lessons. My first lesson was only twenty minutes long and was a simple act of rotating students to talk about different topics for a minute or two then discuss what everyone said to wrap it up. My first lesson teaching non-native speakers was a genuine wake-up call. My teacher trainer told me I had too much TTT. Part of the CELTA was learning all this new ESL/EFL jargon. Distinguishing between ESL, EFL, TESOL, TEFL, TEACH, FEET...okay the last two were made up, but you get the idea. TTT means Teacher Talk Time. In all my time teaching in the US, I babbled redundancies, directions, nonsense because my students, being American, could understand them. I realized that I had to choose my words more carefully. That took a lot of effort at first and still does. I learned how to check for understanding. And not just saying, "do you understand?"

After the feedback session, we were given the kind of lesson we should do for next time: reading, writing, grammar, or speaking. Then we had a lunch break in a courtyard holding tables with umbrellas where we got to know each other a little more. We could intermingle with our students and one even brought us her homemade chicken paprika one afternoon.

In the afternoon, we had a session with all three teacher trainers and re-united as a whole group. This is where we learned how to teach the present perfect on a timeline, practiced phonetic sounds, analyzed intonation, watched videos, and did small group activities. At about 5pm, we were all free to go home. By this time, we were mostly exhausted. It was an exhaustion that comes from the accumulation of a lot of knowledge.

Over the course of the CELTA, we were to write four papers about different topics. The weekends were our opportunity to play hard after working really hard during the week. A few of us took advantage of that, while others played it more safe. Most of the people I still talk to were those with whom I explored Budapest on the weekends.

The end of the course was overwhelmingly anti-climactic and a certificate of my course Pass was mailed home to my parents while I was still abroad.

I got my job with the Central European Teaching Program (CETP) from the suggestion of a CELTA compatriate who taught in a small Hungarian town the past year. He recommended it to me and as soon as I called the director, I had a job. It was lucky and perfect and smooth.

My experience with the CELTA was incredible in so many ways. It inspired me to build a career in ESL and I met so many great people from different countries.

It's one thing I'd recommend in a heartbeat.