It's the Final Countdown

Yup, listen to the song while you read this.  G'head.

Man, that is a whole lot of hair .  I'm jealous.  And I forgot how epic this song is.  But it's been in my head since we listened to it last night at Aminah's place.  We got together with Brian, Alec, Kate, and Nick and had a mellow sangria night.  At one point our music taste went retro and we were listening to some classic 80s hits (like this one).  Fun.

But actually, the title of this song is pretty accurate right about now: it's the final countdown to the end of my CELTA course.  Friday is that last day of the course, but my next and last day to teach is Thursday, so I've got four days to push through.  Woo!  This weekend we've been given a fair bit of work, but luckily tomorrow is some new national holiday created last year (Día de la Soberanía Nacional, or National Sovereignty Day, which commemorates the Battle of Vuelta de Obligado, where some fiercely patriotic Argentine troops stood up to the Brits and the French, who wanted to colonize the newly-independent Argentina) and we have the day off.  The battle actually took place on November 20th of 1845, not the 28th, but hey, I'll take the day off without complaint.  God knows I need the extra time to work on my assignments for the weekend.

The biggest one is what they're calling our Skills Assignment, where we have to come up with an authentic and original lesson plan to work on our students' receptive (listening or reading) and productive (writing or speaking) skills.  We have to find the text that they'll read or listen to and the come up with three activities to do with it, two for the receptive skill and one for the productive.  We have to justify all our choices, of course, and outline how we'd teach the lesson in 60 minutes.  They've told us that we can use these lessons for our last TP, which just happens to be 60 minutes long, so I'm using a song for mine, since my final class needs to include a listening segment.  I've chosen the song, so now it's just a matter of coming up with the activities and justifying it all in less than 1,000 words.  For those of you who know how I write (which is all of you because you're reading my blog), the word limit is a joke...I tend to be pretty prolific writer and always write way more than necessary.  At least the word limit will help keep me more concise (in theory).  So here's the song (called "Not on the Test" by Tom Chapin):

I like this song because it will give me a good, hopefully controversial topic to discuss with my students once they're done listening to and understanding what it says.  This upper-intermediate group really like talking, and they definitely have opinions to share, so I think that getting them going on the education system in Argentina should be right up their alley, after we bash the U.S. public education system when we talk about the song itself.  It's not too hard to understand what's being sung, and while the students will understand most of the words, I'll still have to teach them things like "No Child Left Behind", so there will be a good new vocab element to the lesson as well.  Or at least that's my intention.  We'll see, as I wrestle with the lesson plan and then actually teach the lesson, if it turns out that way.  Stay tuned.

Admittedly, I'm putting a good amount of pressure on myself to finish strong.  My eighth lesson, which I gave on Friday, earned me another "above standard" mark, and I can tell that both tutors are rooting for me to make this last lesson count as well.  Of course, I also just want to get an "above standard" grade one last time, because I just want to.  Duh.  (coughperfectionistcough)  So stay tuned.  I do have to finish the assignment by Tuesday but then, the nice thing is that everything will be almost planned, and I'll have two days to solidify it all.  Timing worked out rather well, don't you think?

Our second assignment for the weekend is entitled Lessons from the Classroom, and we just get to write about our feelings.  Yay!  Kind of, anyway: we're supposed to pick three or four of our strengths and weaknesses as teachers and describe them, backing up our choices with quotes from all the feedback we've gotten from our tutors during our TPs, and then speculate on how we'll either maintain or work on improving them.  Beyond that, we have to add some notes about what we've observed in other experienced teachers or in our fellow students that we'd like to incorporate into our own teaching repertoires, and comment on the resources we've used throughout the class (like the grammar books we used, etc).  It shouldn't take too much time or effort, but it still has to be done.  I should be getting to work...

But on a totally different note, let's talk about weather for a second.  Remember how I said in the last post that I was glad it was nice and sunny?  Well, I still am, but I would kill for a big chunk of snow in my bed right now.  Or a fan could work too.  Point being, my room is a stuffy sauna without the steam, even though I have the only window as open as it can be.  I'm wearing a tank top and running shorts and still sweating...I get up and wherever I was just sitting is slightly damp.  Ick.  I kinda miss winter, now that I don't have it (funny, I always want what I don't have...).  OK, no, I'm being dramatic.  I do miss winter in some ways because snowball fights and crunching ice on the sidewalk and snowboarding would be fun.  However, I'm glad that it's bordering on summer here and I get to be in the sunshine.  I will be thankful to be moving farther south into Patagonia as the height of summer comes...should be similar to summer in Colorado, and that I can definitely deal with.  But you all enjoy your snow and your ice and your soups and your sweaters and your boots and your scarves and your hats and your... (enough?  Yeah, ok.)

And this is what procrastination looks like.  Bam.

Sending love from the sweat puddle on my chair.