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[TheFonz]

Good evening all! It is Wed night, and I can hear the overbearing sounds of the local carnival outside my window as I write this to any who may be interested. I moved to Playa Del Carmen in Mexico to take my CELTA course through International House here in Riviera Maya (IHRM). I wanted to transcribe some of my experiences for anyone looking to get into the field.

Everything you hear about the tremendous workload is 100% true. However, as you progress through the course, you should begin to start adapting to it, and the lesson plans that took hours to write when you began start to reduce to about an hour, give or take. I am a salesman by nature, selling IT to the government for the past 10 years. As such, I am not used to such rigid preparation practices - I'm best thinking on my feet. The detail that Cambridge wants instilled in their graduates is thorough to put it lightly.

Let me now comment on their grading scales. Unless you are currently a teacher, you have zero chance of receiving anything over a pass - don't expect, or even hope to receive a grade of CELTA B, let alone CELTA A. Hard work, and you will pass. Half assed work, and you might squeak by. Work your butt off, pouring hours into your work, and you will still merely pass (so the lesson here is don't kill yourself - work the system). Every assignment I have handed in, no matter how accurate, if it was less than perfect, which they surely were, I was required to resubmit. The minutiae that Cambridge picks through is at times is nothing less than utterly maddening.

We had a relatively small class. We started with 7 people - we were down to 6 after the start of week 2. The 6 remaining students are all in the same boat, happy that the end is nearing and to merely receive a pass. We have ALL had to resubmit nearly everything. At first I took offense, thinking I was far too intelligent to not pass a pass/fail paper on the first try, but it is all part of their methodology of breaking you down to build you back up. I've come to accept it as an inevitability, and now actually use it to pad my due dates. Most recently I handed in a nearly perfect paper, but since I had forgotten to cite the source of my audio clip, even though I took an hour typing out a transcript, I have to do a resubmit. This entails adding the source, and since I need to do that, they want me to add a few more quotes from the experts as well... Sigh.

My courseload is almost over, and I couldn't be more elated about it. I've been in this tropical paradise and have had ZERO time to tan other than on the weekends, which can be fairly demoralizing given the one day per week we get clouds has fallen on either a Sat or Sun the past two weeks. But now the light can be seen at the end of the tunnel, and it is approaching rapidly. I have one more paper to do, and two more lessons to give, one tomorrow, but they are both basically planned already so all I have to do is the teaching.

Its been a great experience coming from the perspective of someone who has never taught before. I did find my sales ability to translate well into the classroom in establishing a good rapport with my students. I have also found working with them to be by far the best and most rewarding aspect of this class. I will feel far more prepared to face the world of an English language teacher once I graduate...if I don't go into timeshare sales here in Playa first that is... Point being, I feel the course has done a great job in preparing me, even though I am going to abandon 80% of what they taught me come next Wed when my last assignment has been submitted. But for some less "wing-it" type of people, I feel they will retain far more (I've always asked my mother why she still bothers writing lesson plans after 30 yrs of teaching - don't you know it cold by now?) But that is me and my style, and I doubt I embody the typical teacher. My best lessons were the ones which I breezed through way too quickly and had to ad lib the rest of the way.

Anyhow, just wanted to throw my two cents about my experience out there. Best luck to any newbies out there; I am still green, but I'm not the FNG any longer!

Fonz

Ps Life here in Playa is nothing shy of magical, I highly recommend this locale, though the teaching jobs are extremely sparse once you graduate...