YL Training Week in Chester

What a brilliant follow up to CELTA: Having no previous experience of young learners, the training week in Chester filled the gaps and equipped me as well as anything could for work experience in Gandía, Valencia. Jen and Emile's inspired training sessions demonstrated the creativity and fun of teaching. 
Experiential learning in a large group gave life to ideas in a moment by moment way that complemented my CELTA experience, much of which had been online learning. In Chester I felt the direct benefit of working in pairs and groups and how a relaxed learning environment makes it easy to stay focused, demonstrating the CELTA way of facilitating learning. 
The sessions were stimulating, lively and very interesting. I've come away with a valuable amount of reference material, from Emile and Jenn's PowerPoint slides, songs and games to useful websites. 
First Aid and Sports Leadership training sessions were a bonus. I hope I won't have to use my refreshed First Aid skills, but they're important to have. Laura's session in the sports hall dealt with an aspect of young learning that's unfamiliar to me, demonstrating, for example, the challenge of giving instructions in a huge space acoustically so different from an average classroom. I gained a new sense of the scope and opportunities of sports leadership.
I'm grateful for the hard work put in by Carolyn and Amy and everyone else at UKLC to organise the project and make sure everyone was comfortable during their stay at Chester and while travelling on to Spain, smoothly solving any issues that arose (such as cold rooms on the first night). The week in Chester was an opportunity to get to know UKLC better as an organisation and I was impressed by the professionalism and friendliness.
My placement at Colegio Los Naranjos begins today as my supervisor only returned from the US yesterday after the Christmas break. So more on that another day.