CELTified

"In looking for ways to move forward as a teacher,

you will also find ways to grow as a person.

Good luck. I hope you enjoy it all."

Jim Scrivener

My story begins more than one year ago, when my English teacher said: "You really don't need these lessons anymore. You should actually do the CELTA and teach English, not learn it. And you're also a foreigner, therefore you know the grammar, which we don't. Think about it."

As weird as the idea might sound at first, I started thinking about it and almost one year later I sent my application for the CELTA course in Toronto. From that moment on, my experience is similar to that of 9 other people who were applying for the same session and who went through pre-course assignments, interviews, pre-course tasks and so on, and who were asked the same question at one point: "Are you sure you can do it?!" The answer we gave was almost the same: "Hell, yes!! Who do you think you're talking to?!" Little did we know...

The first day wasn't so bad, I thought I would have had a tough month but I wasn't worried at all; I started defining "tough" from day 2, and consequently started crying and never stopped for the next 4 weeks. Because I wasn't prepared for the work load the course required, nor to be in front of a class while my peers and tutor were observing me, and pretend I know what the hell I'm doing here. I learned how to manage a class while teaching something useful (and feeling like an idiot when asking ICQs...), I learned how to write on the board, I learned how to plan a lesson in English and how to try to meet the criteria to pass a teaching practice... and I also decided not to give a damn about the criteria sometimes, and teach the people to try and see how real life works.

During these weeks I questioned everything about myself: am I a good teacher? Am I a teacher at all or should I change career?? Why should somebody pay ME to learn English, rather than a native speaker? Do I have the real-life-knowledge that I need to teach English culture? At this point, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Then I started staging my breakfast: "toast the bread - 3 mins; spread the Nutella - 20 secs; feedback: is the Nutella evenly spread?" and after that, listening to Eros Ramazzotti sing "life sometimes cheats you, because it tests you before teaching you the lesson" I thought it was a perfect example of TTT... yes, I was on the verge of a nervous AND emotional breakdown.

But I'm alive, quite healthy and proud of what I achieved. And if I were to answer that question again "are you sure you can do it?" I would know exactly what to say. I'd say no. Unless you give me back those wonderful people who made this possible. I could write about a million things, about the unfair judgements and the incomprehensible standards, about the tutors, about the feedback, about the resource room and the printer that never worked... but I won't. I will write about the amazing Half-Italian girl whose laughter I already miss; I will write about the Aussie girl who speaks a mysterious language of her own that I pretend to understand; I'll write about my Tiny-Beautie that's always overanalyzing everything and never realizes what a beautiful person she is, and an amazing teacher as well; I'll write about the two Mothers in the class, that the students love because they're calm and confident and make you feel as if nothing could possibly go wrong; about the Half-Finnish guy that rehearses his lessons in front of the mirror, and everybody could tell how much he's improving; about the Clownish guy, who's the most entertaining teacher ever and spent time correcting my assignments and asking me why I put commas everywhere -because, I'm, Italian, of, course; and about the Actor-Teacher, who's not at the board - he's on stage performing his lesson, and the students love it. In this group I've been called the "Native-Italian-Positive-Vibe-Grammar-Book" and yes, as my teacher told me, I knew grammar better than anybody else. But they were all there when I was falling apart, and in their special way they gave me the strength to go on and never give up... and this is not something that you can learn from a book. So in the end, I learned a lot during this month, especially about myself. I learned that I can teach English as well as Italian, that students like me and don't give a shit if I'm Italian or not, that it's worth trying challenging myself because I never know how much I can achieve, that I'm generous and love to help other people... and I learned about friendship in the English-speaking world, where there's no distinction between love and affection, there's no "ti amo" vs. "ti voglio bene", there's only "I love you" and the idea that you will cherish a person for life.

I also learned a phrasal verb. It's a very special one indeed, because it's the only phrasal verb we used every day throughout the course and the only phrasal verb I definitely like. Whenever something went wrong or someone had a bad day, we would say to each other: "Hey come here, let's hug it out." And whenever I'll have a bad day and start questioning myself, I'll know I can just call a friend and hug it all out.