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Avoid doing celta at this place. You can choose to believe or disbelieve this, but you have been warned! If you're looking for a cheap provider look on celta/delta. I thought I was saving money by doing my celta, it it cost me more that it would have if I went to a more reputable college.
I started the course full of optimism and confidence, but by the end of it I was a nervous wreck. I took time off work and rented a room in london to make sure I gave the course the full attention it deserved. Upon arrival, I noticed rick’s attitude toward me was different, he was friendly yet did his best to pick on me at all times. His verbal feedback was constantly negative and offered no solutions, sometimes when I took his advice he found something else to criticise. He’d say things like: “you are too loud”, “the students don’t trust you”, “people like you fail this course” or “you don’t seem to know what you are teaching. ” every time I asked for help his response was, “you should know that already. ” I had read the recommended books but this made no difference to his attitude. I was there to learn and improve on my weaknesses but I did not get the support I needed. I was open, honest and willing to accept criticism. The longer the course went on the worse his criticism grew, I went home and cried most evenings.
My experience worsened in week two when I genuinely prepared the wrong lesson. I was advised to prepare a lesson from page 52 of the total english upper intermediate textbook. The page had two lessons, a reading lesson and a vocabulary lesson, I prepared the reading lesson. As soon as I noticed my error I informed rick. I approached him apologetically, hoping he’d understand, but his reaction left me shocked and traumatised. He became visibly angry and said “you are lazy and disorganised; you should be more organised. ” with rage he stormed out of the room. He returned about 15 minutes later and told me he would give me a chance to prepare another vocabulary lesson. I tried to show him that despite picking the wrong lesson I had a lesson plan and material for the students to use, his response was “keep it, it’s no use to me. ” he then asked me to teach unobserved and left the room without looking at the material.
In week three I had a new tutor, who was more supportive and gave honest criticism (Bee govi). Unlike rick, she affirmed the correct methods I had used and gave me helpful suggestions to change the incorrect methods I had used.
This same week I had to go back to rick’s upper intermediate class to make up the lesson from tp4. I spent three evenings preparing this lesson. I was going to teach a listening/vocabulary lesson on phrasal verbs. These verbs were in relation to the conversation the students heard during the listening part of the lesson. I double checked with both cambridge and oxford learner dictionaries to make sure I got the meanings correct.
Whilst trainee teachers are teaching, rick likes to sit in front of the class right next to the trainee. When he thinks they have made a mistake he quickly steps in to correct the trainee, this alone made me very uneasy, and it caused the students to seek clarification from him rather that the trainee teacher.
When I started teaching rick was busy reading and writing comments on another trainee’s self-evaluation form. Eventually he finished and looked up. I was in the middle of explaining the phrasal verb ‘bound to’ from the context of ‘he’s bound to get that job. I explained to the students that ‘bound to’ in this sentence means ‘likely to’, for example ‘he is likely to get that job’. From behind me, I could hear rick saying “no. No that’s wrong. That’s wrong”. I carried on teaching because I knew I was right. The next phrasal verb was ‘on the verge of’ from the sentence ‘i’m on the verge of quitting my job’ I explained that ‘on the verge of’ meant ‘close to’ or ‘almost’. In this case the person was almost quitting their job, but they hadn’t done so. Again rick said this was wrong. At this point there wasn’t much time left in the lesson and I was aware that I was correct, so I carried on teaching.
I also explained that ‘at the point of’ means the moment you do something, whereas ‘about to’ means the moment before you do something, the two words are very similar in meaning, so I drew a time line on the board to illustrate. This is what I gathered from the dictionaries. Rick however believed this was wrong because the two phrases mean exactly the same thing.
It was at this point when one of the students looked at me with concern and showed me a piece of paper. The paper had rick’s writing on it. The secret note was instructing the students to disregard my explanations and copy what he had written on it. Since I had a good rapport with the students they didn’t want to ignore my teaching, so they were left confused. Rick continued gesturing to the students to copy the definitions from his note. I was very upset but I continued teaching until the end of the lesson. When I asked rick why he wrote the note he responded by saying that was convinced that I did not know enough to teach the students properly and english was not my first language. English is my first language.
As far as he was concerned, he had an obligation to make sure the students got a proper lesson. I had put every effort into making this lesson a success but rick undermined me, inaccurately judged my background and failed me. I knew from that point that I wasn’t going to pass the course. He made it obvious he had no regard for me whatsoever. The time he allocated this lesson he informed me it was a tp4 lesson, but instead it was moved to tp7.
I have been teaching english successfully since september 2011; my teaching was not perfect but it was effective. I did my best to adjust and learn, but rick made every effort to belittle me and made sure I felt it. By the end of week three my confidence was gone, I couldn’t stand in front of the classroom without feeling nervous. I spent time rehearsing all my lessons, but when I was in class I was a nervous wreck. This was also noted by a number of my fellow trainees. It will take a long time for me to comfortably stand in front of a classroom and teach. In rick’s own words “when you identify a strong student, the best way to get then to learn is to find their weakness and dwell on it until they feel weak. Then they will learn. ” this notion has had a damaging effect on me
I regret doing my celta at saxoncourt. I felt like leaving at the end of week two. Instead of quitting, I persevered. I hoped that things would improve. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
Unfortunately I fell on the same trap. I had a terrible experience there too. The building is in decaying conditions, the materials and equipment they provide are precarious, the quality of the teaching is questionable, some of the staff is unprofessional and unfriendly. They have had a bad reputation for years, I wish I had made a better search before enrolling... too late.
saxoncourt-celta-nightmare.blogspot
http://teflblacklist.blogspot.it/2006/07/shane-schools-saxoncourt-recruitment.html
I want to agree with this complaint while also offering the mitigation that I also found Rick to be an extremely knowledgeable and engaging instructor. Ultimately I passed the course and learned an awful lot about teaching, so my experience of Saxoncourt was a positive one.
I too had Rick for the first two weeks of my CELTA, followed by Bee. At first Bee seemed far more intimidating, but under her tutorship I found her criticism constructive and her general demeanour more welcoming and reassuring.
With Rick I didn't know where I stood. I feel the complaint's quote “when you identify a strong student, the best way to get them to learn is to find their weakness and dwell on it until they feel weak. Then they will learn" perhaps explains this. I have a self-confident, relaxed manner which I think could easily be mistaken for arrogance, and throughout the course a large part of me felt that Rick was deliberately trying to knock me down a level or two.
I personally felt I was one of the stronger candidates from my group, and the feedback I had from my students, my fellow trainees and Bee was largely positive. However, at the halfway point Rick was less than complimentary and even made a point of hand-writing 'weak candidate' as a caveat in my assessment book, something he didn't do for others on the course and something I thought unnecessarily unkind at the time. I think reading the above quote about Rick's teaching philosophy confirms the suspicions I had during that meeting.
All of this was because one of my assessed lessons in week 1 went, according to Rick, terribly. I had been due to photocopy my materials for the lesson during the final 20 minutes of the lunchbreak, but as I was doing this the fire alarm sounded and we instead had to leave the building. While outside waiting for the fire drill to end, I asked Rick if I could start the lesson ten minutes late, permission he granted.
However, after less than ten minutes I entered the classroom to find Rick waiting there telling me I was starting way behind time as if the conversation we'd had during the fire alarm had never happened. I was marked down on my assessment for being unprepared and lacking punctuality, and this set the tone for the rest of the lesson, which could have run a lot more smoothly but was not as bad as he made it out to be.
Long story short, the pressure then made me overthink every subsequent lesson plan, and I spent hours trying to devise precise semantic explanations for pieces of language that simply do not have them. Rick's self-assuredness in his role as a guru of the English language in spite of the instincts of other native speakers is certainly something I recognise in the complaint.
The flipside of this is that I passed the course, doing sufficiently well on every other assessed lesson and also the assignments, so you could say that Rick's methods made a cocky and potentially lazy student really put his back into it. I think this is what Rick would say in his defence, and there is a strong argument that his job is to produce high quality teachers and not to massage egos. However had I failed the course, I would immediately have been complaining about the lesson with the fire alarm and the 'weak candidate' comment, as there is no objective way that were these 'fair' assessments, and ironically I know that in the final week I was being considered for a higher grade than a 'pass'.
My advice is this: do go to Saxoncourt, the teachers there will make every effort to help you become a better teacher and to help you achieve the criteria needed to pass the course. Don't go expecting to have an easy ride, don't go expecting that your own charisma or your prior knowledge and experience will help you in any way, and don't take everything they say about you personally, because clearly sometimes they feel a stick is more effective than a carrot.