Time Slips By - One Training at a Time

Hi all,

It was a full week again.

Monday I was only at half my lessons, as Hugo and I conducted a short two-hour teacher training in a local village. His counterpart was tasked with arranging them once a month for the next three months in different villages and I'd been invited along for the ride.

Now, this meant that on Sunday we were still finalizing touches. The glamorous life of trainers. It's an interesting trade-off, doing co-facilitator. It feels very natural with Hugo, since we started in training two years ago, and so there's a very good sense of each others strengths, mode of operation and cues of requiring a helping hand. This helps to mitigate the worry that the other person won't or can't back you up if you get stuck, and the consolation that you'll go down together if it somehow crashes and burns.

And it didn't crash or burn. It was interesting, because we basically had modified a presentation that I had thrown together for a previous training, and then added a "demo class" to demonstrate the communicative approach. Hugo ended up getting stuck at the same place I had - which is mainly demonstrating the four parts of the communicative approach. Normally, I'd be a bit leery of jumping in on someone, but I felt comfortable slipping in some examples and things continued smoothly.

Our demo lesson was on the theme of Halloween. It went fairly well, but we both agreed afterward that it needed some more updating. So, as we'll be doing this "same" training twice more, we have more opportunities to sort it out. We needed to get the teachers more comfortable with speaking, and get them up and moving a bit more.

Next time, next time.

We also got asked to come in about a month to Uzhgorod to present to another group of teachers. Plus, Will is having a training this Thursday that we're doing part of the communicative approach in and part basic lesson teaching - reading/listening/speaking. We're doing half hour session rotations, so I'll have 30 minutes to hone my skills on teaching reading. I have a ppt and a lesson plan from my organization, that I'll have to cut down. So that'll be my Wednesday.

Anyhow, busy week ahead - lesson planning as usual, special Halloween-themed club fun for Tuesday (as next week is fall break), my first tutoring lesson in Ukrainian on Wednesday in the morning, seminar prep in the afternoon, traveling in the evening. Training on Thursday, and then teaching as usual Friday.

Hope all is well,

Steph