… though it’s felt like a close thing a few times. Anyone who’s done the intensive version of the Cambridge CELTA course will understand why…
It’s hard to believe there’s only a week of this left. Three weeks ago I’d never taught a class in my life; yesterday I honestly felt like I belonged in front of that class, despite three days of working till 2-3am, feeling utterly wiped out and somehow having done something bloody painful to my knee (I still have no idea what, I’m just hoping it fixes itself over the weekend). Felt like I’d been put through a mangler but it was the best teaching session yet. Go figure. There’s still time for me to screw things up horribly, I’ve got one assignment I haven’t had a grade for yet and one more to do over the weekend, but with one week to go my teaching sessions are still on track for a standard pass. It’s put me through half a dozen kinds of hellish nightmares and I’m still enjoying it. Hmm.
While I won’t miss carrying around half a classroom every day, I’m going to have to come up with some things to do when the course has finished. Four weeks of intense pressure and full timetables, then complete freedom with no plans… Sounds like a recipe for flailing around aimlessly. There’s a course I’m looking at which takes the skills I’ve been learning and applies them to one-to-one teaching online, which looks like a good idea. Time to get out with a camera in the meantime though, I think – I want to get to grips with shooting video, try making some very short films, but I’ll think about that in a couple of weeks when my brain doesn’t resemble a dead sponge…