Well, the intensive month is over, and I'm on my way again. Not much to say since pretty much all of my time the past month has been totally monopolized by the course. It's been a great time and I'm definitely glad to be moving in this direction of doing even more of them. One thing I realize from this is the great maxim that you don't really know how well you know something until you have to teach it to someone else. I found that out over and over again this course! Some things I surprised myself with how well I knew and could talk about, a whole bunch more that I thought I knew pretty thoroughly, but when it came time to plan a session around it, all kinds of holes and gaps showed themselves. The participants gave me a lot 
of motivation and even some insight as far as the ESL classroom goes, and I'm excited to experiment with some of the recent things I've learned. This particular group rather spoiled me, they liked each other so much and made the classroom like one big community where everyone was so interested in learning and, what is more, making sure their co-learners were also doing fine. It is remarkable how much better people learn when they are in this community and cooperating, rather than competing under a system imposed by the Teacher.Now the travels continue, alas, and Wednesday I move on to the Vipassana center (again) in Pecatonia, near Rockford, Ill. I will serve the upcoming course and possibly stay on the site an extra week before getting to see some family for the holidays. It will be another case of some extreme culture shock moving from one kind of world to another, even though there is so much in both environments that is similar.
Here are some pictures below of the course, taken on the last day. The first picture is of the class participants, just before we all went our separate ways (although in fact everyone still couldn't stand to leave each other so went to a nearby Chicago landmark restaurant, Exchequer's, instead...) and the second photo is of me with Ron and Ellen Bradley, the wonderful husband-and-wife team trainers who helped me out immeasurably this last month. Here is the site where they run their own SIT courses... http://www.globaltefl.org/
