After more than a decade designing and leading online and higher-education learning projects, I decided to go back to the classroom myself—this time as a language teacher in training.
In summer 2025 I enrolled in the Cambridge CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults), an intensive, internationally recognized qualification for teaching English as a second or foreign language.
Why CELTA?
Because I wanted to merge my instructional design expertise with hands-on classroom teaching. I’ve built countless digital courses, but I wanted to deepen my understanding of how people learn English in real time—how they interact, respond to activities, and overcome language hurdles.
What the Course Involved
CELTA is famously practical. Over several intense weeks I:
- Planned and taught eight live lessons for multilingual adult learners (from pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate).
- Received lesson-by-lesson feedback from experienced trainers.
- Completed detailed language analysis and lesson-planning assignments.
- Reflected on every lesson to identify what worked, what didn’t, and why.
It was challenging, fast-paced, and immensely rewarding.
How This Portfolio Fits In
As part of building my next career chapter, I’m turning those eight lessons into a public portfolio:
- Reflective posts on each lesson—what I taught, what I learned, and how I’d teach it again.
- New-and-improved digital lessons, built in LearnPress, to show how I integrate instructional design and CELTA methodology.
Whether you’re a prospective employer, a fellow teacher, or a curious learner, I hope these posts offer a window into how I teach and how I keep improving.
Looking Ahead
Completing the CELTA has confirmed that teaching English is the right next step for me.
It blends my love of language, years of curriculum design, and a commitment to learner-centred, communicative teaching.
Over the coming weeks I’ll publish eight lesson reflections, each paired with an updated, fully online version of the lesson. I invite you to follow along as I share what went well, what I’d change, and how I’m continuing to grow as an English language teacher.
