CELTA Experience (Day 17)

The class today looked different. Instead of setting the chairs around the table as usual, the chairs were organized in a horse shoe shape today. Ang guess what? We had a Hungarian lesson today. Never had I though about learning Hungarian in my life. I was excited actually during the class by following every single thing that the teacher, Zsofi, said, explained, and instructed. No wonder I understood everything fast. Anyways, I actually just guessed. Haha. 

Having this Hungarian class for zero background or experience of students showed us how it felt like teaching English for beginner students. Trust me, it's tough. Oh, I still remember a few stuffs. 

Szia. Siti vagyok. Mi a neved? .... vagyok. Hodg vadg? Jol vagyok. koszi. Es te? Enis, koszi. Szia. Szia. 

I might've made a lot of spelling mistakes here and there. Well, that's what we learned today. I can't imagine how hard it is teaching English for beginner students. But wait, I think I've got experience. Maybe I can share in a different post later. 

In the afternoon, we had a chance to meet the CELTA Assessor Alastair Douglas (I wrote his name down and Googled him). Nothing much to talk about. We shared how our experience has been going so far and if we have any comments or concerns to share. Everything was great anyways!

I was not too busy in the afternoon because I had no TP today. Carys, George and Ethan had their TP today. Well, as usual, I observed their teaching and took some important notes. I don't want to tell every single thing that I wrote from each of their lesson, but I'd just like to share some important notes I got from the feedback session after the TP. 

- In teaching, it's important to think about the distribution of students in grouping.

- Natural language, especially the weak form or sound of some words, needs to be emphasized.

- Make students notice the grammar focus of the lesson.

- In showing the answers of vocabulary practice or any practice, show the whole sentence to tell the context of its use. 

- Overall, the steps would be Doing the task > Checking > Meaning > Drilling > Form > Practice.

- Always give a task every time we ask students to watch a video, or listen to an audio, or to look at a picture.

- In revealing the answers on the board, do it one by one so students are focused and don't get distracted by other numbers.

- In writing lesson, make all stages clear. Planning (take notes, with who, for how long). Writing (what to write, for how long).

- In the freer practice stage in every lesson, many things might happen (micro stages), and that's why it's important to write everything in nice and clear detail. 

CELTA Experience (Day 20)

 I had a mixed feeling today. I was excited CELTA is over, but I was sad for not seeing all of my CELTA fellows and tutors. 

We started the morning session today Teacher Wellbeing by looking back our journey in the last 4 weeks attending CELTA. I could see that most of us had ups and downs with more or less similar reasons like assignments, TP, changing level of the class to teach. Anyways, we're all relieved that we had been through this together. 

Teacher Wellbeing still sounds a bit new to me maybe because I don't read much about it or attend any seminars on this topic. Despite the fact that it's really important to take care of teacher wellbeing, unfortunately I can still see that in my surrounding in Indonesia it's forgotten and neglected. It's like teachers are super humans with super powers who can do anything without any help or support from their surroundings. 

It's interesting to have the Job Hunting session after that. We had a look at some job opportunities abroad one of which is in Vietnam, the one interested me the most. We though about what makes a CV good and even had a job interview role play with some possible questions asked by the interviewer when we apply for a job as a teacher of English. 

We had some group photos and I received an award as The World's Greatest Human. I was surprised. 

Sayonara, amazing people! I'll see you in another part of the world at another time!

 

CELTA Experience (Day 19)

 Nothing much to do today. I had an English class to observe. It's an Upper-Intermediate class with around 17 students and most of the them are Japanese. Only one student is Polish. The teacher was fun. She started the class by reviewing the previous lesson about British art. And, the topic of today was 'Taking a Break'. Students had a discussion in pairs about holidays in their country and what they usually do to spend their holidays. Oh, I joined one of the pairs. It's interesting to find that as far as I observed, Japanese students are quite shy in class to speak, but the teacher was great in encouraging them to share ideas. 

After the observation, I had an input session on 'Teaching in different context' and it was particularly teaching one-to-one and business class. Well, it's surprising to find that teaching one-to-one class has more challenges than its advantages. But anyways, I 've learned a few lessons from there, one of which is measuring progress, and I guess I can take those lessons  into my consideration in teaching more one-to-one classes in the future. 

Today is Ethan and Carys's TP8, their last TP. George and I observed them and took some notes during the whole lesson. Before students left the class, we invited students to take a group photo for our memory. Just like what we did yesterday, we share 1 thing that we liked today, 1 thing that we'd steal from them, and what has improved since the first TP. Personally, I find how each of us has been progressing from TP1 to TP8 really amazing. Well, we're all done now. Congratulations for all us! YEAY!

(Jin, Anna, Fatih, Ekin, Maria 1, Maria 2, Mauro)

CELTA Experience (Day 18)

I was super busy this morning because I needed to finish my lesson plan for my last Teaching Practice (TP) today, TP8. Yeay! I did start planning the lesson last night, but there were some parts of it which were not completed yet. 

Coincidently, I didn't have to reach the campus at English Language Teaching Center (ELTC) at 9:30 am as usual, so I could take a remote interpretation assignment for two hours for Asian Football Confederation. 

It wasn't too busy today since we had only one input session 'Teaching in different context', and it turned out to be about teaching English exams, one of which is IELTS (International English Language Testing System). I've had some experience in both taking and teaching the exam to share with my CELTA colleagues. It's interesting how the Tutor delivered the lesson by assigning to have a look at the real IELTS exam paper to be analyzed and discussed guided by some questions. 

For TP8, I did it today with George. He taught a lesson about going to space and it was very interesting. Students were all excited and engaged in the discussion. After him, I started my lesson by playing a guessing game briefly. Overall, my lesson today is about making speculations about what happened in the past (must/may/might/can't have + past participle). As always, I did my best at all stages of the lesson. In the Freer Practice stage, I had Students practice the Target Language by using dice to be rolled and some pictures to be described. 

Unlike the previous TPs where we also talked about what to work on in the next TP, this time we talked about how George and I have improved from TP1 to TP8. I received a lot of positive feedback from the Tutor and Colleagues. Also, I was thrilled for passing my 4th Assignment Language Skill Related Assignment. It wasn't an easy one. 

Congratulations for me!

Struggling With Night Shift Work? Try These Tips and Tricks

Anyone of you might have ever worked or even now be working night shift. Did you find troubles to manage your routines? YES! I can feel you. I worked in shift for 4 years and experienced working night shift for some periods of time. Each period normally lasted for about 3 moths. 

Well, at work, my company provided some wellness programs one of which is a group session where a coach or counsellor, that was how we called him or her, to provide some ways in handling night shift work. This topic was repeated all over again and again, but guess what? Still many colleagues complained about their problems with their sleep during night shift. Some of them were lack of sleep. Some others had some sleep, but with low quality, while the others could not even sleep at all for 2 days which ended up with he or she took one or two days of sick leave to have some sleep at night time. Trust me, even though we had 2 day off every week, it was a kind of dilemma. Well, it felt good to spend the night by sleeping, but if we did, we would ruin the routine we had built before for staying up at night during work.

Anyways, if we talk about problems, it is never going to end, but here are what I did to make myself stay positive, healthy and happy during night shift work. 

Eat and drink properly and healthily

Trust me, working night shift makes us lazy to prepare our own meal. And, we can get hungry at anytime unexpectedly, for example in the middle of the night during work. As a result, only fast food store is available for 24/7 to be an option such as McDonald. That is what I see on the pantry table every day.

But then, we can do something about it. We can cook something in the evening for let's say an early dinner and spare half of it in a meal box, carry it to the office and eat it later. By cooking or preparing our own meal, we can manage what we eat. We can have some vegetables with any dish you like, maybe chicken, beef, fish. We don't have to cook something complicated which takes a long time as long as it suits our taste and healthy. We can also have some little snacks with us such as some biscuits or fruits to bring to the office. In the morning after we finish work, we can have something light before sleep such as one or two slices of bread with some spread before sleep. Oh, stay hydrated. Drink, drink, drink. Sometimes we might be lazy even to drink some water, but our body needs it. DRINK!

Decide when, I mean what time, we have our meal and have it regularly everyday. For example, I normally had an early dinner at around 7-9 PM. At work, I had another meal maybe at around 3-4 AM. Then, as soon as I finished work, I ate something light before sleep, a slice of bread. That's all. 

Exercise even a little

Before working night shift, I had already had a routine. By the way, I worked mid shift from 1-10 PM previously. I used to start my morning with 30 minutes to 1 hour of yoga under morning sunlight and it always made me feel really good. Then, what about night shift work from 11 PM to 8 AM? I couldn't do my morning routine anymore. I was lost. I love morning sunlight and enjoy it so much that I do yoga under it. In the first few days, I tried doing this morning yoga routine, but what happened was I struggled to sleep. My body became active and fully awake due to the exposure to sunlight, and I had a difficulty to get my body calm down to sleep. So, I stopped it and changed my routine. 

I went to bed as soon as I got home. I had warm shower and went to sleep. I was thinking about doing yoga at another time, but when? A coach at the office mentioned that the exposure to sunlight could be done in the evening and any exercise was not necessarily to be done in the morning. I took this advice and decided to do short and simple yoga in the evening after I woke up. Trust me, working night shift makes our mood so bad that all we want is to be in bed and not to do anything at all for the rest of the day. That's why, at least doing a yoga would do something good for our body. Well, it doesn't have to be yoga, we can choose any exercise which is exciting for us such us Zumba or weightlifting at the gym. Don't let laziness hold ourselves back from keeping our body healthy. 

Schedule your sleep and get yourself ready to rest

How can I schedule my sleep? My sleep is messed up. You must be thinking this way, but trust me, I cant agree more. Now, let's take a moment to talk to ourselves that we do need some sleep. It is for our health. We may not be able to have a good sleep at night, but still we and our body deserve some rest and sleep. That's why decide and tell our body to slow down, calm down, and get to sleep. You could do the following steps to help. 

I started to commit to sleep right away as soon as I got home from work. Sometimes I took warm shower before sleep, sometimes not. The point is that I had to go to sleep as soon as possible. To do this, we need to get ourselves ready first. 

A coach once told me that we need to reduce the exposure to sunlight before going to sleep, and that's why I kept my hoodie on on the way home. If we like, we could even wear sunglasses. But, I wouldn't do that. 

My window was covered by 3 layers of clothes to make it completely dark inside as soon as I got into my room. I kept it dark. No light. Turned the AC on. Let the room cool down.

Oh, NO PHONE, please. If it is too hard for you to not play with the phone, reduce it at least. Put it away. Or, turn it off. Or,  put it in silent mode. Or, put it in time for bed mode. Believe me, once you are engaged with your phone, you will never get to sleep. If it's not never, at least a lot harder. Enjoy the cool and dark room on the cozy bed, with no trigger or attraction to your phone. We will have a nice sleep.

Also, NO ALARM, please. Sleeping in the day time is not easy, so shocking ourselves with an alarm, maybe in the middle of our nice and deep sleep, would be irritating. Better not set it on. Let our body wake up at its own time. 

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I know and I can totally understand that everyone handles this situation differently. I am here not trying to say that all those tips and tricks I did would work for everyone, but there is no harm in giving it a try, right? One more thing, the most important thing is that to manipulate our mind a little bit.

"It is okay to work night shift. Days are still in 24 hours and we have them all. It is not going last forever. It will be just for a while. All is well. We will be okay."

Well, I hope our mind and perspective are always positive. May God bless us all. Stay safe, happy and healthy.