Kineta Abraham - TEFL course diary

We’ve made it! All exams, course work, and lessons are complete, but what’s left to do is say good-bye. Robin and I taught our last lesson at WESLI and finished it off by taking our students to a nearby Chinese restaurant. It was nice to get out of the classroom and communicate with our students one last time in a natural environment. I only wish we had done something like this sooner. As I talked to our students one on one I was able to see their strengths, intelligences, and pin point their weakness more clearly. I truly enjoyed our students and will miss them. They are the kinds of people I’d like to be connected to for a longtime, and in some cases I think I will.

As far as graduation goes we are literally minutes away. However, I had to say good-bye to Tom, our classmate who was voted as number one for asking the most questions, prematurely. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to attend the graduation because he has to report for military duty. It’s kind of funny, but I already miss him and his many questions.

When I made the decision to attend the MTTP program I didn’t stop to think about the relationships that I would form with my classmates. We bonded from the first day, and I have to credit our teachers for that. Right from the start they taught us to trust and rely on each other by creating a team oriented treasure hunt, and throughout the course re-enforced the value of a team by encouraging pair and group work followed by feedback. We all are equally qualified to teach anywhere, but the best part is that we truly be that, too.

I’m looking down at my TEFL Certificate and my mouth has curved into a simple smile. I did it. I mean I really did it. I haven’t been able to bring myself to pack it away for the journey back to Georgia, but I can see that things are beginning to come full circle. Deciding to attend the Midwest Teacher Training Program (MTTP) in Madison, Wisconsin was easy. I felt at ease from the moment I looked at their website (http://www.mttp.com), everything that I read and saw about the institute said this was the place for me, and throughout the five week (130 hours) program I never found that I was wrong.

Since the program is part of an ESL institute, which teaches English to adult speakers from around the world I not only had the opportunity to interact with them, but gained 10 hours of practice teaching followed by immediate oral and written feedback from trainers with over 15 years of experience.

Some who may want to teach in Europe may think that they need a CELTA, and so did I. However, once you look at the course breakdown: Five weeks (130 hours), which includes 10 hours practice teaching, classes in lesson planning, grammar, and all the skill areas such as (reading, writing, pronunciation, etc.), it’s easy to see how receiving a TEFL certificate through MTTP is a strong competitor in regards to CELTA programs. This all became even clearer to me after checking a few sites. I noticed that the MTTP offered more hours and equally important when comparing certificates I would be able to equally compete with those who possessed a CELTA.

Finding ESL jobs in the U.S. is a little harder than if I decided to go abroad immediately, however; I’m making good use of the job placement assistance (two interactive workshops: The Job Search and Resume and Interviewing Tips for EFL) that was provided during my program and my searches have left me optimistic.

Week five, the final week has just started and I have my running shoes on. There’s no time to waste between getting final assignments completed and studying for final exams. My grammar exam is my most pressing exam and it happens to be my first exam. This week’s pressure is mounting, but I’m forced to focus on my future simultaneously. My initial plan to attend graduate school after getting my TEFL certification hasn’t changed, but I’m itching to go abroad again. I’d like to teach in Italy or somewhere in South America or even Africa, but for now I will keep my feet planted on U.S. soil. After I successfully complete my program at WESLI I’m hoping to use my TEFL certificate to get a part time job teaching English in the United States while attending a graduate program for secondary education. I figure completing both will allow me to help my future students more and will allow me to teach in almost any country, but for now I’m taking things step by step.

We’re in the home stretch and I’m trying to finish strong, which is a challenge that is proving to be evermore challenging. There are only two more teacher training lessons to go and these will be the most independent and lasting lessons that I will plan during this course. It is independent in the sense that my partner Robin and I will not collaborate on any areas of the process and lasting because they will be the lessons that will remain most recent in the minds of our students. Putting this aside I am forced to draw on what I’ve learned throughout the lesson planning course to produce and facilitate a lesson that is most beneficial to our students. Among the many things I’ve learned in this course is that communication is key, cohesion for my students starts with me, and always ask “Why am I doing this?”

I still struggle with when to stop my students in order to move onto another activity because I feel like I’m cutting them off. Sometimes I find myself wanting to do an activity because I think it’s fun, but the truth is it’s not about me. I’m constantly asking myself why am I doing this. Is it benefiting my “ego” or my students. If the answer is me, well I simply swallow my pride and remove it from the lesson. And as for cohesion starting with me who ever knew a class who understood a teacher who didn’t know where she/he were going. That kind of direction or should I say lack of direction only leads to chaos.

Well, my anxiety has passed and Robin and I felt that Wednesday’s lesson went well. All of the students were engaged in the activities and learned a lot from each other. There were some great discussions related to gender and relationships, and the conversations could have probably been extended if time would have allowed for it.

It’s hard to believe that our lessons will soon come to an end because it feels like we’ve on begun. Yet we have completed three of our five weeks in this program. The teaching experience that I’ve gained and the skills that I am learning are irreplaceable. I’m having a blast both in and out of classroom.

Just the other day my conversational partner Marwa, who is from Saudi Arabia, and I participated in a tour of Madison’s capital. To some it may seem boring, but to Marwa and I it was a chance to delve into the unknown. Since neither of us is from here we welcomed a guided tour. I couldn’t tell you our guide’s name, but she used the capital’s murals and architectural elements to help breathe life into the stories about Wisconsin’s history. However, one of the best parts of the tour was when Marwa told me she enjoyed herself and said that she understood, but she didn’t really didn’t have to say anything because she was beaming with pride.

It’s Wednesday morning and I’m feeling a little anxious because I don’t want a repeat of last week. Every Wednesday and Thursday my classmates and I are responsible for teaching from a lesson plan that we’ve created and last Friday’s class seemed to be going in too many directions.

Robin, my partner, and I have taught four lessons in the Midwest Teacher Training Program (MTTP) and have some awesome students from Korea, Brazil, West Africa, Japan, Taiwan, and more. Although they’re from different areas of the world, they have no problem collaborating. Some are studying to improve their TOEFL scores, seeking to get into a university, or need English for their jobs, so they’re eager to learn. They give me their best, so I want to give them my best. Hence the anxiety.

We’re in our third week of the Midwest Teacher Training Programing and things seem to be running smoother. Today my partner Robin and I finalized our plans for our lesson plan and were able to give each other some good feedback. It really helps having someone to bounce ideas off of. My partner and classmates give me the opportunity to pretend that they are the students and I the teacher. This practice has really helped me to see if my ideas come across as clearly as I intended them to. My classmates and I all have different strengths, but what I’ve noticed about this program is how much it encourages its students to draw from one other. We are definitely a team that learns from each other.

Who would have guessed the girl who everyone described as shy would be asking to stand up infront of a group of strangers. Highschool speech class terrified me. Like clockwork when I was called on to give a speech my hands began to sweat and to those listening my voice noticeably shook. So when a pastor told me that I was going to be a teacher one day everything in my being was like, whatever you don’t know what your talking about. I literally wanted to run. To make a long story short I ran all the way to Japan, and guess what I did…yep…I taught conversational English for two years and am now enrolled the Midwest Teacher Training Program (MTTP) in Madison, Wisconsin. I ran into the very thing I was running from, but the good thing about it is that I finnally found something I love. Go figure!