CalmSpace Coaching

here comes the bride...

Here comes the bride My lovely landlady, Mai, very kindly invited me to the wedding celebration of her younger brother, Son…. I turned up in my best TK Maxx Ted Baker shirt, although a lot of men decided it was T…

this explains a lot...

Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong What really causes addiction -- to everything from co***ne to smart-phones? And how can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand, as he has watched loved ones struggle…

In case you still haven't decided...https://youtu.be/USTypBKEd8Y via

Michael Dougan EU referendum With 10 days before Britain goes to the ballot box, the Vice-Chancellor hosted the latest staff open meeting focusing on the EU referendum.

History (Partial and Partial)

It was September last year (remember when the media wasn't obsessed with referendum?)

I had spent 18 months working to build my coaching business. With sporadic success. It was insufficiently rewarding, both professionally and financially.

So, at sixty one and three quarters, it was time for another change.

Therapist, Salesman (a terrible terrible job and one I was totally unsuited for), Arts Management, Trainer, Child Counsellor, Human Resources, Optical Technician, Ice Cream man, fruit picker, making people redundant for people who didn't have the guts to do it themselves, sucking up to p**s poor senior management (you know who you are). All had been tried and found wanting.

I had flirted with the idea of teaching a few times, I like kids, I'd enjoyed my experience of being a trainer, nice and secure, semi-decent money. The plan was to do the training, get a nice part time job in a junior school. Lovely jubbly.

Except that you have to pay for the training. And pay to live while you are training. And primary school teachers work, on average, 59 hours a week. And they test kids at 6/7. Yeah, really. What Tory eejit $€¥$€ thought that up. And the bureaucracy. So that was out.

I was getting a bit despondent. And then someone suggested TEFL. (Thanks Fran - yes people will be named in this blog).

As someone who loves travel, especially if it's travel to nice hot countries with great food, this seemed an interesting idea.

So a whole new career was born. Well it is more of an embryo at the moment, but you get the point.....

In 8 days I will be flying to Hanoi. And taking a very deep breath. This feels like a risk. To be honest quite a big one. I have moved out of the my apartment, got rid of most of my possessions and I am not at all sure what I will do if this doesn't work out. (Apparently adding a bit of drama to your writing makes it more likely that people will come back)

Now, on to Task 219 - Tenses and Timelines.

Distracted…

By football.

By people calling me about buying my car

By people calling me about a car accident I haven’t had but can’t not answer in case they are calling about buying my car.

By dreaming about saying goodbye to my therapy group and then turning up the next week anyway to find it full of North London guitar playing hippies.

By the need to do some ironing.

By worrying that I am not studying hard enough.

By lying in bed on Sunday morning

By writing this blog

How many?

Learning Teaching by Scrivener. Well written and organised.

But there are hundreds of tasks and exercises. My course starts in three weeks and I am going to have to do about 10 a day. And do my grammar. And eat… and sleep

No, I am not panicking.

Not even slightly.

Even though it took me two attempts to spell panicking..

And I even worry that my English in this blog isn’t good enough.

Not writ like wot is should be rote…

breaking assumptions

My friend Kate has just completed her CELTA….

So it makes sense to meet up and tap into her experience. Which was something of a mixed blessing. She passed. (she’s smart, and worked hard)

And then she showed me some of her notes and lesson plans. Which shocked me. I didn’t realise that I would need to learn so much educational theory. I didnt realise that I will need to write proper essays, with references and everything. And with only 1,000 words to play with. (3,000 word essays are easier, there is more room to breathe). 1,000 words is going to need some discipline.

One of the students failed. Kate worked everyday, and every evening and every weekend for the four weeks of the course. And Kate is smart.

The course suddenly seems much more daunting. I need to do much more prep. With 28 days to go – I need to step it up. I could fail the course. Of course, I knew this before. But now I am entertaining it as a real possibility. Which is going to kick me in gear.

Downloading Scrivener’s Learning Teaching. It’s a bot of a bible – all 415 pages of it.. Time to dive in. Properly……

The difference between simple and perfect…

You might not think that there is necessarily a difference. But there is when we are talking about the English language.

Hanoi is calling – 20 days until I step into the classroom, in a student’s seat….

I’m not nervous. I mean, I went to a grammar school, I’m clever – how hard can teaching English to Vietnamese students be? The fact that the aforementioned grammar school didn’t bother to teach me grammar (don’t snigger at the back) brings me to the perfect/simple dilemma.

So the difference between (past) perfect and (past) simple? (Skip this bit if you aren’t that bothered)

I went to the movies. Past Simple

I had some dinner and then went to the movies. Past Perfect.

Do not ask me WHY the perfect is perfect. I do not know and right now I am more interested in just understanding the difference. I really do not care why they are called that.

Or why Past Participle....

I have revision cards – phonemes, for tenses…

I am too old for this. Yes I am…..

Tomorrow is another day

this seems quite convincing...

Letter to friends: this is why I will vote Remain in the referendum The LSE’s Nicholas Barr explains why he will be voting to Remain in the EU referendum – citing a wide range of arguments about sovereignty, migration, international influence, regulati…

Don't we all?

Check out this link