I had to share this with the world, this is a short history of a person I am proud to call a friend. When I visited and lived with him in Zhuzhou City, last month, I asked him to write a short text about his experience since completing his
CELTA with us at Swansea University, this is what he provided me with. An inspiration? If I wasn't an English teacher I think I'd want to be one after reading this!
"My Experience of CELTA and TEFL teaching
All my life I have wanted to live and work abroad. I have a brother eight years older than me and when I was nine years old he left home and for twenty years he travelled the world. He periodically came home and told his little brother of the wonderful experiences he was having in all these foreign lands. I spent my youth dreaming of doing the same. However at fourteen I was labelled a defeatist and lived up to this self- fulfilling prophecy and at the age of thirty one I hadn’t succeeded in accomplishing anything worthwhile in my life let alone my dream. To cut a long story short I had experienced a breakdown in my value system which could not comprehend the pitiful demoralisation I was experiencing. I had adopted a lot of conceived values from others and ended up bankrupt in all areas of my life, mentally, physically and spiritually. I was close minded and unwilling to learn and had no concept of how to create a life for myself.
When I was twenty six someone entered my life, who has been, and still is a great inspiration, teacher and friend to me. At that time he was unemployed, like me. He told me he was going to train as a Teacher of English as a foreign language at Swansea University by doing a CELTA course.
In the space of twelve years he had risen up the career ladder in the Centre of applied languages at (CALS) at Swansea University. Periodically, during the years of 2001-2005 he suggested that I train as teacher in his department at Swansea. I believe he could see something in me that I was unable to see myself. I declined every time until I eventually agreed to apply and to my great surprise they accepted this painter and decorator without a University degree onto the CELTA course at Swansea in July 2005. I was going to be a student again at the age of forty!
The Course
There were eighteen people, all different ages and from different walks of life, on the course. The first morning we spent getting to know each other with Ice breaker exercises and a general introduction to the course. In the afternoon we had our first “teaching experience”, some peer teaching to the other students and the trainers on the course. I was terrified, I had never done anything like this before. However, it was a really fun afternoon teaching some basic things like the time, numbers 1-10, colours etc. I survived and thoroughly enjoyed my first teaching experience.
We were informed that the course would stretch us to mental and physical limits that we probably hadn’t experienced before. They were not joking. On the second day we were allocated our peer groups for our teaching practice, three groups of six, which we were to spend the next month together helping and supporting each other for our practice. There were three levels of students who we would be teaching: Pre- intermediate, Intermediate and upper Intermediate. The Students were actually foreign nationals who lived in the Swansea area and were offered free English lessons to be our students for our teaching practice in the afternoons.
The course was split into two parts. In the mornings we were the students with our excellent trainers, Kevin, Peter, Emma, Jo, Lucy and Lisa delivering intensive lessons that covered all areas of EFL teaching to us. These included: Grammar, Vocabulary, methodology, lesson planning, phonology, games and songs, using video, error correction, types of learner and learner needs, classroom management, concept checking, reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.
Then in the afternoons we were to use these lessons to help us in our afternoon teaching practice.
As the course was four weeks and there were three levels of students the level you started with on the first week would be the level you finished the fourth week with. My group started with the pre intermediate level and unfortunately one of our peers dropped out of the course on the second day which reduced us to five.
To be honest I struggled in the first two weeks of the course. I couldn’t seem to get it, but a great debt of gratitude goes out to my trainers and my peers who helped me through this difficult period. I suffered a lot of sweat and tears. Then after my mid- course appraisal with my trainer something clicked in my mind and everything became clear. I threw myself wholeheartedly into the course and fought it through unstintingly to its conclusion and I believe won a struggle to enlarge myself.
In the third week I grew in confidence and felt very comfortable in my teaching and believe I was becoming a kind of facilitator to the students learning. My good friend who I mentioned earlier was my trainer during this week and his observations and feedback of my teaching, even though I felt they were harsher as we were friends, have become invaluable to my experience of being a teacher and I sometimes hear his comments in my head today that still help me.
In the fourth week my group returned to the Pre Intermediate students and it was a wonderful experience being reunited with them. I had grown as a teacher and the students level of English had greatly improved in a short space of time. The first week we were planning individual lessons that lasted twenty minutes. We had now progressed to planning with our peers a series of sixty minute lessons. I was becoming more confident each day and I even volunteered for extra lessons to fill in for the peer who dropped out. After passing through many storms, suffering some defeats and incredible insomnia the course was coming to its conclusion and I was given the fantastic news that I had passed the teaching component of the course. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
Subsequently, as part of the course there were two written assignments:
- A self- evaluation. Me as a learner on the course ( 1500 words)
- A case study of a learner. I chose a female student from the Middle East. This involved a taped conversation with the learner and a 1500 word study of them as a learner. Their needs and some problems they have in learning English and how I as a teacher could help them overcome these problems.
We were given a week at the end of the course to complete the assignments before submitting them. I spent a week, day and night, on my PC completing these assignments and sent them off in hope to the University. Six weeks later I received a certificate from Swansea University stating that I had passed the Post graduate certificate in teaching English as a foreign language. Yes!!!!
This course helped me without a shadow of a doubt to open the heavy door to life. It wasn't easy, indeed it was one of the hardest tasks, but one of the most satisfying I have ever accomplished. For opening the door to your own life is more difficult than opening the door to the mysteries of the Universe. But, the act of opening the door validated my existence as a human being . No one is lonelier or unhappier than the person who does not know the pure joy of creating a life for themselves. The CELTA certainly enabled me to begin to create a life for myself.
I returned to my job as a painter and sent off many applications for teaching positions.
After three months I landed my first teaching job. I was going to work for Her Majesty in one of her establishments on the small island of Portland in Dorset, HMP The Verne a category “c” prison for medium risk offenders. I was employed on a six month contract as cover for a teacher on maternity leave. It was certainly an interesting baptism into the World of TEFL teaching. This was October 2005 and I have very fond memories of some of the students, Alex from Romania, Pavel from Poland, Carlos from Columbia to name a few. Some of these students were murderers and here I was standing in front of them on our first day of class a little anxious and scared to say the least. In fact it turned out to be a wonderful experience and I believe it certainly aided in my ability to manage a classroom. There were constant disruptions in the lessons and on many occasions I had to press the panic button for the security forces armed with guns to enter the class and dispel the near riots about to happen. On the whole the students were very keen to learn English and I was actually asked to teach extra lessons to individual students. In April 2006 I and many students were quite emotional when I left. I often ponder what they are doing. It is a wonderful feeling and a great gift to have some effect to aid in the change and course of someone’s life.
In the summer of 2006 I experienced my first Summer school for the Salisbury School of English at Weymouth, Dorset. Teaching Spanish, Chinese and Italian teenagers on three, two week General English courses. This consisted of English lessons in the morning, games and activities in the afternoon, social evenings and trips to local tourist attractions and London on the weekends. Not only is it a great job being a TEFL teacher it also helps to make wonderful friendships. I am still in contact with some students from this summer school, Valeria and Claudia from Vicenza, Italy and Javier from Madrid, Spain.
After the summer school I returned to painting for a few months and then out of the blue I received a phone call from my friend at Swansea University inviting me to work there for a ten week period. I thought it was a joke, but he was serious. Me working at University?
In January 2007 I relocated to Swansea and began my employment as a fixed term tutor on a 10 week EUS (English for University Studies), course. An IELTS based course designed for non- native speakers of English who need to improve their level of an English to a level that enables them to enter the university as a full time student. It was wonderful to be reunited with my CELTA trainers and to be working alongside them.
This was a great opportunity to further my career and was a very valuable learning experience for me.
The ten weeks turned into seven months and sadly due to the onset of the financial crisis and drop in student numbers I was laid off. It was suggested that I apply for a teaching position abroad. But where to go? One of the receptionists at CALS forwarded an email to me, it was a job description from a private language school in Pribram, a town an hour outside Prague in the Czech Republic. Maybe this was the path that would lead me to work and live abroad? After a few emails between the owner of the School, Katerina Klimova and myself I flew to Prague and on to Pribram for the interview.
The package was very good and after consulting with a few people I duly accepted the job. After an emotional farewell at Swansea I left the shores of the UK at Dover in August 2007 for the short ferry trip to Calais and so began my adventure as a TEFL teacher abroad. I had ten days before I started my new job and spent a wonderful time driving through Europe, with two girls from the Czech Republic as passengers, camping in France, Belgium and Germany before arriving in Pribram.
I was the first native English speaker to be employed by the School, so the students were very excited about my arrival. The school helped me settle into my new accommodation, a new self contained furnished flat on the weekend and I started work in my first teaching job abroad on the following Monday. I stayed in Pribram for one academic year and taught a variety of classes from pre intermediate general English classes to CAE exam preparation classes at the school only a ten minute walk from where I was living. These classes ranged in ages from teenagers to adults. I also taught in-company classes at various companies in and on the outskirts of Pribram. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I certainly grew as a teacher. I was extremely busy working but it was also very important to enjoy my free time. I had learnt to snowboard a few years earlier and knew Central and Eastern Europe had a lot of snow so I was looking forward to the winter months to explore the ski resorts in the Czech Republic. Just one hour south from Pribram lay the Sumova mountains and two hours to the North were the Krconise (Giant) mountains. I spent many a weekend by myself and with friends I had made staying in quaint little cottages in the mountains. I tried cross country skiing but it wasn't for me.
At the end of my contract in June, before driving back across Europe to Wales to work in the Summer for ten weeks at Swansea University in a similar role as before I had decided it was time to move to the big city in Prague. A friend and a student, Lenka offered me a flat to rent just outside the centre in a beautiful location called Podoli. I had somewhere to live now I needed a job. A very good friend of mine who was director of studies at a small private language school (P.A.R.K. school of English) in Prague offered me a position as a teacher for the following academic year . It was a wonderful year working at this school. A very warm, friendly atmosphere and the relationship with staff and students was like a family. There were about fifteen full time teachers and we formed very good friendships that are still strong to this day. I am going to a wedding in the Czech Republic this year for two teachers who met each other there. Even though the school was relatively small it had a great reputation in Prague and many of the students returned year after year because of the excellent service they received. However as we were a small operation, we only had nine classrooms and could have easily filled another nine if we had the space, we relied heavily on in- company classes and Tesco was our biggest customer providing us with 40% of our annual business. The financial crisis was starting to affect Central Europe and in January 2009 Tesco stopped their English language lessons for their employees and ended their contract with us. This was devastating to PARK school and sadly after nine very successful years of operation the owner had to close the school. It was a very sad day at the end of term garden party in June with many students and teachers shedding tears.
I had long before this fallen in love with the Czech Republic, the culture and the traditions. So here I was almost forty five, unemployed again and living in a foreign country, but I wasn't anxious of not gaining employment. I believe that I had acquired a set of skills that would be an asset to a language school. I needed to gain employment for an organisation that would survive or not be too badly affected by the financial crisis. I applied to one of the largest organisations in the World for teaching languages, International House, and I got offered a salaried position with then in September 2009. This was a much bigger operation with over seventy teachers working for them. IH at least in Prague are a very professional organisation. The training and development that was on offer to employed teachers was excellent. As I was a new teacher with them I was given a lot of in- company classes travelling around the beautiful city of Prague on the wonderful tram system ( in 2010 Prague was voted the 3rd best city in Europe for its integrated transport system). I was given a few classes at school, mainly Cambridge FCE and CAE exam preparation classes. I can honestly say that all my students that took these exams passed. Every Friday we had a meeting with our respective Dos which was followed by professional development workshops.. There were also a lot of training courses on offer and if you were employed by IH you could get a 90% discount. An offer to good to refuse. In my first year with them I obtained the IHBET (International house certificate in teaching business English). Towards the end of the academic year I started teaching young learners to make up my hours to the required 26 per week which I thoroughly enjoyed, but felt I didn't have enough experience or the necessary skills to teach them effectively. In May 2010 I was offered the opportunity to stay on with them for another year and to choose my own schedule. I duly accepted without any hesitation. To round off the twelve month contract I spent a wonderful three weeks on a residential summer camp in Southern Bohemia with a hundred and twenty children and teenagers from Prague and IH Bucharest.
My teaching schedule for the second year was much more user friendly, mainly due to the great relationship I had with the staff in the logistics office. I had many more classes at school ranging from young learners to adult exam preparation and conversation classes and only a few in-company classes. I also obtained the IHCYL ( International House certificate in teaching young learners) which was/is a great asset to my teaching of children.
In January 2012 my friend from Swansea University called me and asked me if I would like to work in China for one year, on a collaborative teaching programme between Swansea University and Yandi Institute in Zhuzhou City, Hunan province.. Bin Chen, the owner of Yandi Institute's son had studied at Swansea's English language department and after graduating from his Masters degree had stayed on at the University & had formed an excellent relationship with the Head of the English Language Training Services department and over the following years the possibility of this collaborative programme had developed and was now coming to fruition.
I had to seriously consider the proposition. As well as loving working for IH, living in Prague had given me the opportunity to visit many of Europe’s great cities such as Berlin, Vienna, Bucharest, Bratislava, Krakow to name a few. I did accept the job , the compensation package was excellent and to spend one year in one of the most interesting countries in the World was too great an opportunity to miss out on and after all it was just for one year.
I left IH Prague on very good terms with the management and if the opportunity arose In the future I would be welcomed back with open arms.
I am writing this on Tuesday 3rd April, with three weeks left on my contract. It has been an absolutely fantastic, unforgettable experience living and working in this enormous country. I had some experience of teaching Chinese students but I don’t think you can prepare yourself for China. When I first arrived I thought I was on another planet, literally. It was so different from everything that I was used to. The sheer size of the place overwhelmed me, the amount of people was incredible, I live in Zhuzhou city, a population of 3.5 million the same as my country of birth, Wales, and this is a small city in comparison to Beijing or Shanghai.
It took some time to get used to the very strange aromas that overpower you at times and the constant staring from everybody, young and old was very strange.
I was part of a team of five. A director, A deputy director and three senior teachers of which I was one. One senior teacher left after a week for reasons I am unsure of and the Director was removed from his position after 2 months for being incompetent at his job.
This meant we were very short staffed for the scheduled teacher training workshops for Chinese teachers of English to be held here at Yandi. However we managed and then thirteen students from Swansea University came over for twelve weeks to assist in the summer camp and to deliver lessons to a state middle school in Zhuzhou. I felt overall they did a wonderful job and had a wonderful experience.
Since October I have been working at Number Four Middle School delivering oral English classes to senior 1 and senior 2 level students (fifteen and sixteen year old ). The class sizes are on average forty five coupled with the fact Chinese students are very shy and I teach them for just forty five minutes every fortnight it has been a difficult, at times frustrating, but overall a truly gratifying experience. The Education system here is so different from the UK. Students start school at 7.15 and finish at 9pm at night and even attend school on Sundays also the amount of homework they are given by teachers of other subjects makes me want to weep at times. They work so hard as there is so much pressure on them to succeed. They have been fantastic to me and I hope I have been to them. I have over the last six months tried to deliver light hearted, interesting lessons to improve their speaking skills. There has been a vast amount of fun and laughter in the lessons. To quote a person I met on the bus the other day, she said she knew of me as she used to work at the school before I got there and one of the current teachers at the school, her friend told her that "they have a very handsome teacher from Wales who is very funny and brings a ray of sunshine into the students life” What a beautiful thing for someone to say about you.
I also had the opportunity of living out one of my ambitions to travel across China to Tibet by train. It took three days and was just amazing and Tibet is a truly remarkable place that didn't dispel my expectations. I am travelling to Beijing next week for a brief visit as I couldn’t leave without sitting on the Great wall.
I am leaving this amazing country on April 27th and returning to the UK for the summer before moving to take up another teaching position in Southern Spain with my girlfriend, hopefully soon to be my wife, from the Czech Republic.
Today and for the last six years I have been living my dream."
Mike Anslow
