Elche, about blogging time!

Sitting here in a spacious apartment in Elche, listening to the swallows chirping their evening chorus to each other, I think to myself how much I don’t want to leave.

It all began in Denbigh* with pre-project training and the whole gang of Leonardo aficionados. From the word go all 30 of us were spoon fed mouthful after mouthful of task based learning activities over a five day period to use in the classroom, certainly leagues apart from the strictly scheduled lesson plans you draw up on your CELTA and nervously stick to for fear of reprimand. Those days (you will be ecstatic to hear) are long gone for now my friend you can actually relax in your lessons and enjoy the teaching experience! With UKLC Leonardo training (and the fountain of EFL teaching knowledge that is the course director, Michael) you learn to go with the flow of your lesson, make learning fun, to turn your thinking away from the bullet points of a plan and turn instead to the needs of your students. Oh yeah, and you don’t need reams of photocopies and resources. All you need is a good class activity and yourself.

And so to your students...You will get to the end of your first week, I’m sure, and dread the last Friday that you will have to say goodbye to your classes. I’ve been given three different classes at Topschool (the partner school for the Project) full of wonderful people; all adult classes, all fantastic characters and I am certainly dreading the last Friday. I must admit when I discovered in Denbigh I was teaching just adults I was a little disappointed and not to mention nervous. I’d really hoped I’d be teaching secondary school kids, but I wouldn’t change that for the world right now (although I would obviously still love to teach kids and teenagers). During lessons my students have taught me about the Elche way of life and they’ve made me feel welcome and part of the city “imás español que inglesa!” They’ve been crucial in making my first taste of real teaching fresh out of CELTA a great experience and they’ve embraced a new style of teaching that many of them were unused to.

Talking of lessons, one thing I learnt quickly in the first week is that your best resource is each other. Speaking to each other in the evenings and sharing what went well and what didn’t go well is invaluable, not to mention a lot easier than trawling through text books and fretting on your own in a darkened, hot room, freaking out about what you’re teaching the following morning (hrmph!! Me? Do that on the third night? Nooo, never!! Honestly, just go out and get a caña y tapa and chat to your fellow teacher buddies. Relax. It’s a much happier experience).

Elche is a place where life soporifically cranks down a notch or two (or ten) on the life speedometer. Plazas and outside bars, palm trees and beautiful old buildings, narrow back streets and lizards scurrying along the pavement in 31 degrees heat - and more toy dogs you can shake out of Paris Hilton’s handbag (the majority of which seem to be Yorkshire Terriers with palm tree ponytails and florescent hair grips to keep their fringes out of their eyes. Slightly odd.) And we have a Pug that lives on the roof terrace, a friendly chap that snuffles in your face and definitely looks like an Alan. He looks like an Alan to me anyway, I'm sure you'll agree...

I envy those of you who are going to be here in Elche this time next year. I’m tempted to tell you all the best places to eat, to have a drink (or chipito) or the prettiest streets to wander through but that would take all the fun out of exploring the city. You might not get lost (essential in a new city) and you might not wind your way through the inviting streets and stop off at any one of the friendly cafes to plan your lessons….so all I will say is happy teaching, happy exploring and happy travels! Good luck and enjoy!

*An aside about Denbigh; the karaoke in The Vaults is a must, the food will stretch your stomach in preparation for the copious amounts of tapas y cañas you will inevitably eat (although try to resist) and it’s bloody cold in them there hills boyo. But it is beautiful. And the training is more than a bit useful.