Born with a Delta? The Myth of the Eternal Expert

Shady Abuyusuf

Mon, 09 Jun 2025

11

You know what’s becoming a bit of an epidemic in the world of teacher training? No, it’s not poor lesson staging or confused ICQs. It’s something more dangerous: Trainer Ego Inflation Syndrome—a condition where some trainers, after a few years in the field, start to believe they were born with a Delta certificate in one hand and a Cuisenaire rod in the other.

Let’s talk about this curious species. You’ve seen them. The moment a newly qualified trainer enters the room with fresh ideas and a heart full of enthusiasm, they raise an eyebrow so high it could serve as a whiteboard rail.

“Who approved them to train? They just finished CELTA like… yesterday!”

“In my time, we used to teach in candlelight with no handouts, barefoot, uphill both ways.”

“Everyone wants to be a trainer these days. No patience. No humility.”

Ah yes, the classic amnesia of origin. These trainers forget that once upon a time, they too were nervously writing their first lesson aim while googling the difference between eliciting and asking a question.

Let me tell you something blunt, with a generous dash of Egyptian sarcasm: You were not born knowing how to concept-check “used to”. None of us were. You stumbled through model sentences, mispronounced genre, and overused gap-fills just like everyone else. So let’s not act like today’s new trainers are unworthy just because they haven’t grown grey hairs in a staffroom yet.

At Britishey, we believe in something radical:

Education is a cycle, not a gated community.

People get trained. They practice. They make mistakes. They improve. Then guess what? They train others.

But instead, what we’re seeing is a handful of “veterans” acting like bouncers at the entrance of the Trainer Club. If you’re not carrying three DELTAs, a PhD, and a Polaroid of yourself in front of the original CELTA Centre in 1962, you’re apparently not welcome.

Look, I get it—experience matters. Of course it does. But humility matters more. A great trainer is not the one with the most certificates or Instagram posts from plenaries. It’s the one who remembers what it felt like to be new… and helps others grow.

So to all the trainers out there who are still in touch with reality, thank you. And to those floating in a cloud of self-importance:

Come back to earth. It’s warmer here. And there’s coffee.

To all the newly trained trainers reading this:

• Don’t let anyone dim your light.
• Keep learning. Keep questioning. Keep growing.
• And most importantly, don’t become the kind of trainer who forgets where they started.

Because in the end, we were all beginners once.

Some of us just had better mentors than others.