YL Chester training week- January 2017 and the first two days of my placement at Escuelas San Jose- Jesuitas

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the training week in Chester. The UKLC team are brilliant and I’d like to thank them all for how fun and informative they made the whole experience. I have learned so much! Emile and Jen, you are the best, good luck for the future.

After two days I am well settled into a lovely Airbnb apartment in Godella (which boasts a toaster, cafetière, and kettle to name just a few amenities). There are no complaints on the accommodation front.

Escuelas San Jose is a school in downtown Valencia that teaches almost two thousand children, teenagers, and adults. I have been placed in the secondary school part of it. Being from a small town in England I found the school quite overwhelming at first. Classes can range from between fifteen to thirty-five children, so I get a nice variety. After two days I have already gotten lost twice trying to find classrooms and have been bombarded with countless names, only five of which I can remember and none of them called Maria! Another aspect of my school is that I seem to be getting passed around the department like the common cold. Juggling seven different teachers obviously comes with its own positives and negatives but I have met the majority of them already and will enjoy getting to see their different styles and whether or not they are reluctant to use a more student-focused approach.

The teaching style is similar to British secondary schools, high TTT and levels of L1 in the classroom. On the first day, I took the opportunity to run open class feedback. My main focus now is to set some class rules that will hopefully manage the volume levels over the next few days. If not, perhaps an Emile sneeze will do the trick?

 Felis anno! xx

TTT

Many thanks to the Tremendous Training Team at UKLC for a full on week of Terrific Teacher Training. It was intense but pitched perfectly to a very mixed bunch of participants with differing levels of experience and knowledge. Everybody learned a lot and we left you as prepared as we could be for our month teaching in Spain and full of excitement and enthusiasm.

YL Training and first few days in Spain

It feels like a very long time ago that we all arrived in Chester! I was pretty nervous to start with but it was good to see some familiar faces from the interview and get to know everyone else. I think the whole week was invaluable for us all and we learnt some really useful stuff from Jen and Emile. I enjoyed learning diffferent techniques for working with young learners and am looking forward to hopefully putting some of them into practice with my kids.
I think we all bonded really well as a group which made the prospect of heading to Valencia way less daunting. I feel much more prepared for the month ahead than I did at the beginning of the week.

I´ve observed nearly all my classes now so am just trying to prepare the first lessons I´ll have with them. It´s all a bit overwhelming - the classes are pretty big and incredibly loud. Will need to try and rise above the noise...! The kids seem lively and their level of English is actually prety good so I'm looking forward to working with them. The teachers at my school don´t seem to speak a huge amount of English so I´m trying to practice my spanish. I keep getting the word for month and table confused though so I´ve told a couple of the teachers I´ll be in Valencia for a table which was pretty baffling for them...

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.

Good Morning from Gandia

Just spent about an hour trying to set up my blog as I am not very teci but here at last. 

The week spent in Chester with the trainers Emile, Jen, Laura and our fabulous first aider (whose name escapes me at the moment)  was excellent. Emile and Jen, our YL trainers, gave us loads of vital information about teaching Young Learners.  I felt they applied the principles of teaching to us. They created a relaxed, friendly, warm, encouraging and positive environment. The sessions were on clearly defined topics and there was plenty of time to try out games and activities. They were very approachable and left no question  unanswered.  They gave us plenty of "food for thought" and the lesson planning sessions were invaluable. I feel  this was a very practical way of running a course and not just theory based.  They  followed up with all the power points and information has been emailed to us  as promised. They also sent lots of games and activities for us to incorporate into our teaching.  Laura's sports coaching session was fun and informative. The whole UKLC team Carolyn, Amy, Jen, Emile and Laura manage to combine a professional approach with very friendly atmosphere.

The group of teachers doing the course were  a lovely bunch of people from all walks of life, the information being exchanged, ideas, experiences and humour added to the whole experience. I would recommend this week to anyone wanting to increase their teaching skills.

YL training and placement at Escuelas San Jose, Valencia

Writing this after a lazy start to my newly scheduled day off, before I go light bulb shopping and to find a little cafe spot to settle down and work in.

Had a really good week in Chester meeting some very interesting people. I would have liked to have spent some time planning by myself and then applying the the concepts that were taught so I could commit them more easily to my memory and have more confidence in them. This is an even more important point for me than most as I won't be teaching Young Learners at all during my month here, as I'm working with ages 18+ doing higher vocational training. In some ways that's disappointing, but the placement itself is very well suited for me. I find it easy to relate to the students, and they all come from very interesting backgrounds, including the 59 year old former Argentine architect retraining in energy efficient technology! The structure of their courses means that they are taught particular things in particular ways at particular times, and I have arrived at a time when much of their reading and writing is reasonably well established, but they need significant speaking fluency practise, as they will be giving presentations in English to companies and assessors in March. As such, I've offered to teach lessons on giving presentations and public speaking, concentrating on material that's going to be of more use to them.

As my latest finish is 2 pm and Yas and I went hunting for vegetables on Sunday night, I imagine I've already had more chance to explore the city than other people, and I'm mightily impressed. Despite an absence of many notable tourist sights, the city is a joy to wander around, especially the El Carmen neighbourhood, composed of winding narrow streets and occasional preserved medieval architecture, as well as great street art and friendly locals. A lovely, if chilly start!

YL Training Week - Chester January 2017

I'm sat at home now after a brilliant week in Chester learning loads about classroom management, teaching techniques and delivery of some really engaging and fun lessons with two of the most inspirational teacher-mentors I have ever known in Jen and Emile. Thanks so much guys!! Whilst I wish that I was now on placement in Spain, I'm hoping to use the next month to plan some of the activities we practised in training together, for different age groups to take with me next month. I also want to do a little research on the life and culture of the Valenciana region to help me ensure my lessons are focused on the lives and experiences of the students I'm teaching. As I type this, I've just found a CD by Paul Field called "The Wiggly Worm and Lots More Brilliant Kids Songs"! I think 'Fit For Life' would be great to use for a warm-up activity!! 'The Wiggly Waggly Song' and 'The Vegetable Song' may have some potential too! Check them out and see if you agree. Hope day one has gone well for all of the class of Chester, January 2017 who are now on placement and I send you all my love and encouragement to go and make a difference to these young people's lives. Have a ball guys! You can do it! X