"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." Neale Donald Walsch

I did not have clearly defined expectations for myself coming into the course as I do not have a teaching or academic language study back ground. I spoke with quite a few people about TEFL courses and did a lot of research on the internet so the one thing I did expect was that a four week course including a week of practical teaching would be far better training than an on-line course that I could complete in two weeks at home with zero practical teaching. My expectations were far exceeded by Maximo Nivel and especially Claudia Behnke. I was fortunate to have some very hard-working and caring teachers back in school but I never had a teacher who loved teaching like Claudia. She gave 110% all the time and never held back. There were what appeared to me to be a full spectrum of learners in our class with a much broader range of challenges that I would have anticipated. From an on-line learner coming in half way through to illnesses and other incidents that took people out of the course and required incredible flexibility on Claudia’s part. To be fair, the entire staff exceeded my expectations. They were friendly, warm and never hesitated to stop in the middle of their busy day to help with whatever we needed at the moment. This included the teachers we conducted our observations with. They were more than happy to speak with us and answer any question we had about their style and the level and character of their classes.