CELTA

This is a very delayed blog!  Back in November I (Becky) completed a CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to speakers of other Languages) course. This is an intensive 4 week course run by the British Council in Nepal but awarded by Cambridge English in the UK.

About 60% of our students at KISC speak English as their second language (ESL) and so over our time here we have learnt to adapt our teaching to support these ESL students and help them to access their education. In the autumn of 2015 the opportunity came up for me to cover an ESL teacher for 6 months while she was on home leave. I enjoyed working with the ESL students, directly supporting them as they worked to improve their English and therefore access their education better. I decided that I'd like to stay teaching ESL.

So this school year I have been working solely in the ESL department working with students in years 1, 2 and 6. It has been a big change from teaching Secondary Geography, and so the CELTA course provided some much needed training!

With my certificate

As I mentioned above it is an intensive course, 5 days a week full time plus working every evening and weekend to get assignments and lesson plans done. It was exhausting. Nine of us started the course and only six passed which shows you how grueling it was. The course looked at the theory of teaching English through classes every morning plus practical experience as we taught either beginner or intermediate level students each afternoon.

I certainly felt like I had earned my certificate by the end. It was a tough course, but rigorous.

The course finished two weeks before the end of KISC school's term so I returned to work for two weeks before a well earned break over Christmas and New Year. Now I have to apply all I learned.