You may wonder how that is possible!

Of course, we are careful to select candidates who have a good potential for success!

Before Each Course

• We screen them – to find out if they have the required knowledge and ability to analyse language
• We test them – to see how quickly they can think; our tests are timed and highly reliable
• We interview them – to check their accuracy and fluency as well as their personal qualities; teachers are not just carriers of knowledge! They need to have the right personal qualities too!
• We warn them – in case they think four weeks in Greece is going to be a great holiday with afternoons on the beach and evenings at the night club or bar with just enough energy to take oneself to the CELTA session the morning after for a nap :-). It’s hard work! Not a piece of cake!

Which is probably why the CELTA is so highly respected by the industry! CELTA holders know how to plan a lesson with their assigned course book but also without it!

It’s so easy to accept a candidate who hopes to be a teacher of English but who does not have what it takes to pass the course! But accepting everyone makes you a CELTA factory – quite a few of them around – not a quality centre.

Image courtesy of Trickart  http://www.trickartt.com/notes/2014/02/how-my-mind-works-or-the-best-gif-ive-ever-made/

During the Course

Once we have accepted a candidate, s/he becomes our mission for success by raising the bar higher on every single course we run; always looking for better ways to introduce our content, to show our trainees how to be the best teachers they can be, to give them constructive feedback and to help them fulfil their potential for excellence.

Our trainees have outstanding support – tutors, library, online resources and social networking, all in combined synchronicity to inform, to connect, to show them what being a professional teacher is like, to turn them into creative and reflective practitioners, to show them how to keep learning long after their CELTA is over.

Isn’t that the main aim of every educator, to make the learner independent of their teacher? 

After the Course

Since we have refused to be a factory institution, it stands to reason that we have a vested interest in following up our trainees’ progress and development. Today, this is so much easier with social networking tools, that we find our bonds with our  past trainees grow stronger as time goes on.

We follow their triumphs and help with their problems, answer their questions and on occasion, even work with them in new projects, offering them opportunities and opening new doors for them.

It’s also great that we are often invited by them in their new roles and capacities as trainers, directors of studies, writers of materials, managers or coordinators to collaborate with them! This is a fantastic feeling!

Teaching is our passion and we hope this is evident in our writings, in our communication, in our sharing with our community. Our hope is for our trainees to get the necessary knowledge and qualification, yes, but also for some of that passion  to rub off so that their pursuit for excellence may begin just as their course ends!

P.S. You can find out all about our upcoming CELTA courses here