Pariahs of the Tefl Trade

Pariah: An outcast; one despised by society.

noun: a person who is rejected (from society or home)

animal: a mongrel race of half-wild dogs which act as scavengers in Oriental cities.

Yes, just in case you thought old Sandy was going a touch soft-headed in his advancing years, I'd just like to remind my readers (all three or four of them) that the struggle for Tefl justice goes on, and Yours Truly is up there at the head of the infantry column, making sure that the Tefl shysters of this world get all the publicity that they strangely shun.

So I'd just like to provide an update on three personal projects of mine, all of which are designed to shine a welcome spotlight into some of the less edifying cracks and crevices of the EFL business, illuminating for the benefit of all members of the Tefl public the immoral and illegal antics of certain pariahs of our beloved Tefl Trade.

1. The Windsor Swindler
I'm happy to report that the odious shyster behind Windsor Tefl, Paul Lowe, has finally got his just rewards for many years of ripping off EFL teachers, students, and employees, etc. Click on the link above to read the joyous news of his SUSPENDED SENTENCE and 200 HOURS OF COMMUNITY SERVICE! Though I can claim no great credit in engineering his downfall (that belongs to Trinity ESOL), I have derived hours of personal joy and amusement in publicising the bastard's evil-doing, gloating over his well-deserved punishment, and generally being the greedy cunt's personal nemesis.

And there's more right here.

2. UKhelp4U
On a par with the evil parasite mentioned above is Tyler Davis, the apparent genius behind UKhelp4U Language School. Mr Davis, whose real name is Paulo Henrique Ferreira, first came to my attention a year or so ago in this case, when he shafted several of his teachers by leaving them unpaid for a month and then going into liquidation, thus absolving himself of any legal obligation to pay them. Then, one day later, he set up shop in the same premises under virtually the same name - very crafty, Tyler!

Now he has performed the same trick with his international money transfer service - filing for bankruptcy after snaffling more than 35,000 Euros of his clients' money (and not for the first time, apparently). Unfortunately (for him) he won't be getting away with things this time, as the evidence against him is quite overwhelming, and the relevant authorities have been alerted, so it's just a matter of time before ... time runs out for Shyster Davis. By the way, his school is, quite incredibly, accredited by the British Council and a member of English UK - clearly they have no worries about supporting such a fine upstanding citizen!

More on this corrupt bastard here.

3. The Laughing Coyote School of English
Words fail me on this one. Well, almost. Imagine a school set up by a couple of severely under-qualified and mentally challenged God-squad moralists, and which fires teachers for perceived 'moral infractions' such as sleeping with another teacher, and ... erm, strangling the class parrot? Well, that's the Laughing Coyote School and their Teacher Blacklist for you!

Actually, words do fail me here - I can't go on. Just google the name of the school, and you'll open up a true Pandora's Box of wild and weird characters. And you could just start here, too!

The Yeltsin Years

I had a new student in class today (no, not THAT sort of 'had', you dirty-minded bugger!). Nothing special about that, you might think, but ... the resemblance was uncanny. See that guy in the picture alongside? Well, they could have been twins!

All of which put me in mind of this little item of mine from April 2007, the month when dear ol' Boris actually popped his Russian clogs. And the story is quite true, honestly.

Really.

*******

The Yeltsin Years

Well, now that the drunken old bugger has finally shuffled off his mortal coil, I can reveal all. You see, back in those dazzling days of madcap Russian infant capitalism, the mid-1990s, Boris was one of my star pupils. Five star, as in the brandy, I mean.

You might think that I’m kidding, but it’s true. Boris used to send the Kremlin limo to pick me up from outside the British Council in Moscow. Then I’d be whisked off into that swirling vortex of the Wild East, the nerve-centre of new Russian politics, where a deal made with the wrong guy could earn you a lump of hot lead in the head.

Although Boris wasn’t the most conscientous of students, he did know how to entertain. “Forget homework”, he’d often say, “just share bottle of vodka (brand: Parliament, of course) with me, and tell me all about English mini-skirt!”... before falling over the red Kremlin rug and disappearing down a trap door.

Boris was very good at vocab, though, and was careful to pick his collocations well. “Fuck you, stupid prick” he would often shout at his aides, confident in the knowledge that they hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. On occasions he would ask me to bring along a female teacher, so that he could practice his chat-up lines, such as “Why nice girl like you want sleep with old man like Boris?”

I was saddened when Boris was first rushed into hospital, deeply saddened. You see, I never saw him again after that, and he still owed me 200 bucks for five lessons. Despite my constant calls to his colleague, Vladimir, all I got was a load of old flannel, half in Russian, half in German, about hidden Stasi files, and questions about why I went to East Berlin in 1988. Strange, that was. You see I was there in 1986, and it's not like old Vlad to get his dates wrong, is it?

Then I got a knock on my door one night (dark and stormy, of course), and there, standing before me dressed in black, was an extremely well-built Kremlin crony. “I give you one ticket for London” he said, as he pressed into my hand a large brown envelope.

Despite my protests that I had no immediate desire to return to England, and that I had a few weeks more to run on my BC teaching contract anyway, I was bundled into the back of an anonymous-looking Zhiguli sedan. Twenty minutes later, I was delivered into the firm hands of a waiting Aeroflot official at the airport.

Well, at least they let me sit in the back of the car, instead of the boot. And they didn’t send me home with a lead souvenir in my neck.

Nice touch, that was, Boris!

Teflers' New Code of Practice Revealed!

In the wake of the recent General Teaching Council guidelines forbidding teachers from letting their hair down too much at weekends (see 'Teachers moan that new code of conduct will stop them getting drunk at weekends'), the British Council and English UK have no lost no time in jumping on the proverbial bandwagon, and have drawn up plans forbidding EFL teachers from smoking and drinking to excess ... and more or less everything else.

Don't believe me? Just take a look at this summary of a recent press-release, published jointly by those two stentorian defenders of teaching standards and performance in the UK. The document, published after consultation with several well-known and teetotal Teflers from International House at a series of meetings held in the Lamb & Flag, Conduit Street, London, is guaranteed to invoke strong opposition from a good number of the UK Tefl industry's particularly hedonistic practitioners.

A draft version of the so-called Code to Regulate the Advancement of Professional Performance (CRAPP) states that all EFL teachers will be expected to 'maintain standards of behaviour both inside and outside school that are appropriate to their membership of an important and responsible profession - TEFL'. In accordance with this concept, sleeping with their own or each other's students, as well as shagging their own colleagues (either inside or outside the staff room) are to become strictly forbidden.

Moreover, it also expects Teflers to 'maintain reasonable standards in their own behaviour that enable them to uphold public trust and confidence in their profession'. As a result of this apparently vague but sweeping statement, many Teflers now fear that smoking dope and sniffing coke with their colleagues and students will soon have to be confined to the weekends, with that 'midweek staffroom binge' becoming a thing of the past.

Although a late addition to the code states that it 'does not limit an EFL teacher's right to a private life', many EFL Teachers are apparently demanding the right to get drunk, stoned, and almost everything else at weekends as they protest against this allegedly draconian code of conduct. A couple of quick calls to several of the Tefl Tradesman's colleagues in the UK revealed the following strength of sentiments against the plans to effectively neuter Teflers' free time activities.

Several prominent Teflers (Kevin and Darren from Bournemouth) are in fact considering setting up an online petition calling for the scrapping of "these fuckin' absurd rules that tell us to stay sober for almost five days a week". The petition was to be up and running by the end of the weekend, but both Kevin and Darren have not been seen since entering a Westbourne pub early on Friday evening.

Another Tefler was equally vociferous in his opposition to the draft. "Why should I have to be sober to teach Headway?" rambled Jason, from a school in Brighton."I've done it so many times now I don't even have to look at the pages anymore" he ventured, before tripping over a discarded copy of Murphy's Grammar and falling into his school basement.

Another teacher from Brighton, who wished only to be known as "Miss Whipp", complained that she would no longer be able to appear in her own online porn programme, nor encourage her students to indulge in 'exploratory sex' at her 'weekend therapy sessions'. "This has put an end to our midnight dogging sessions on the beach" she moaned, adding that the proposals are "completely unwarranted - it's pure harrassment of lower middle-class loafers like us" . Several of her colleagues appeared to agree, stating that it was "entirely unreasonable to expect Teflers to behave in a reasonable way like that."

Both the British Council and English UK were unavailable for comment earlier today, but one insider assured me that Teflers with Celtas would obviously be given a greater amount of leeway in their choice of recreational poison, whereas those with Diplomas would be restricted a little more - no spirits or hard drugs, for example. Any teachers possessing Masters degrees in TEFL would, of course, be limited to paracetamol wih codeine, with the occasional whiff of 'therapeutic' aromatherapy concoctions.

Crystals in the Classroom

Well, shag my old boots - look what I just found! An excellent piece from the sadly departed and much missed EnglishDroid, which just happened to be found loitering in one of my files on this tatty old laptop of mine. The article, I mean, not EnglishDroid himself, of course.

Whatever did happen to that cheeky little bastard, by the way? Does anyody have any news?

*******

Crystals in the Classroom

The Aries student certainly has a proactive metaprogram, which means he first acts then thinks. Just to give a practical example: first he leaves the classroom, then asks to be excused.

Witch Hazel

There’s nothing very new about the New Age, of course. Just the packaging. Spirit mediums have long since abandoned their darkened seances and their ectoplasm to set themselves up as “channellers” of wise old Native American spirits and long-departed Atlantans—most of whom speak surprisingly good English but in a rather silly voice; ring-dancing Victorian fairies have been replaced by currently fashionable angels and crop-flattening aliens; protective amulets and strength-giving talismans have given way to pretty crystals emitting “healing vibrations”. But remove the shiny wrapping and it’s the same old credulous crap beneath.

And what has all this got to do with ELT? Well, have you noticed the sort of people writing for English Teaching Professional and similar industry publications these days? Hypnotherapists, Master Practioners of NLP, Multiple Intelligence Theorists, shamanic counsellors. And it’s not just the magazines. Take a look at the titles of some of the teacher training seminars in your area. If it’s anything like where I live, you’ll see what I mean. As for the Internet, many ELT websites are awash with the sort of tosh exemplified by the above quote from the Language Fun Farm. (Notice, by the way, how Witch Hazel’s ridiculous and dangerous assertion that a student’s star sign corresponds to something called a “metaprogram” cleverly blends astrology, the world’s oldest surviving species of claptrap, with one of the newer and trendiest forms of pseudoscience, Neuro-Linguistic Programming.) Unfortunately, with so much encouragement from supposed “experts”, there are all too many teachers who take this stuff seriously.

So why is ELT so prone to such nonsense? It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to the sceptical ELT teacher that much of the Orthodoxy handed down on CELTA and DELTA courses is based less on objective, thorough research than on pseudoscientific thinking and such trendy but infuriatingly fuzzy concepts as “student-centred learning” and the “holistic approach”. The superficially impressive jargon, when it’s not obscuring the bloody obvious is all too often obscuring the bloody ridiculous or at best highly questionable. Against such a background, is it any wonder that so many dangerously irrational and anti-scientific ideas flourish?

Of course, silly ideas have been around for a while. Try your school’s bookshelves. There probably won’t be anything there that’s over twenty years old—however good some of the coursebooks of the seventies may have been, they just don’t have enough colourful pictures of house husbands and female construction workers to make them acceptable in the modern classroom—but flick through any set of coursebooks old or new and the chances are that you’ll find at least one section on horoscopes or similar nonsense, often thinly justified as presenting adjectives of personality or the “will” future. Now look on the discussion and role play shelf, if you’re lucky enough to have such a thing. Those helpful Speaking Personally-type books, perfect for the minimum preparation post-pub lesson, are riddled with pop psychology-style questionnaires on telepathy, palmistry and the like.

The difference nowadays is that, where once such things were just a bit of relatively harmless fun to liven up dull coursebooks or get students speaking on Friday afternoons, the recent ascent of the New Age movement has meant that equally bizarre ideas are rapidly becoming incorporated into ELT theory and methodology, with far more dangerous consequences.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ (NLP™) is a trendy and typically vague New Age pseudoscience. It dates back to the mid seventies when Richard Bandler, a mathematician and computer programmer, and John Grinder, a linguist, got together and decided that what we needed was a user manual for “programming” our brains. (In more recent years the highly litigious Bandler has been suing his old friend Grinder and other prominent NLP people for hundreds of millions of dollars, so I shall be very careful what I write.) Heavily influenced by hypnotherapy and the unsubstantiated Freudian notion that conscious thoughts and behaviour are greatly affected by the unconscious mind, it is perhaps best known to the general public through its use on corporate training events in which people unleash their “true potential” and learn to perform such amazing feats as firewalking. (Firewalking is allegedly a triumph of mind over matter but it’s actually a simple demonstration of the counterintuitive fact that glowing charcoal has a low specific heat—anyone who can walk can firewalk, but don’t tell that to your New Age friends.)

NLP’s infiltration into ELT has been achieved mainly through its pronouncements on “body language” and “learning styles”. In an article for English Teaching Professional, Jim Wingate, a writer, teacher trainer and regular contributor to that magazine, presents an activity from his book Knowing Me Knowing You. “When people are thinking,” writes Jim, “they tend literally to look at the place where their thought is situated in their heads, so you can tell from their eyes how (not what) they are thinking.” He goes on to catalogue the eye movements that supposedly correspond to each type of thinking—visual = up, auditory = to the side, kinaesthetic = down to the right, remembering = left, etc—and he helpfully provides an exercise in which students can record the eye movements of their classmates in response to various questions and instructions. “Keep the activity and the discussion light-hearted,” Jim advises. After all, the “principal aim is to give students fun language practice.”

Some might say the principal aim is to indoctrinate students with fashionable ideas that are superficially pretty but ultimately without any scientific validity whatsoever. Even more worrying, and equally without support in the scientific literature, is Mr Wingate’s assertion that you can tell when people are lying because “their eye movements will often give them away. If they are inventing information (rather than remembering the truth), they will probably look up and to the right!” Is this the sort of thing we should be teaching our students? Tragically, many teachers already are.

An alarmingly high number of people seem to believe that NLP is a science. It ain’t. Of course, it surrounds itself with the trappings of scientific-sounding language and a few of its techniques may even be effective for some people, but it eschews the scientific method. Its assertions, when they are not too hopelessly vague, metaphorical or ambiguous to be subjected to any meaningful test, tend not to be based on or affected by peer-reviewed experimental evidence (certainly not the findings of neuroscience) but on testimonials and anecdotes. Oh, and most sciences don’t trademark themselves.

Another intriguing idea currently fashionable in ELT circles is that of “learning styles”. You may have been told on a CELTA course or teacher development workshop that your students all have their own preferred ways of receiving and processing information: kinaesthetic learners like running around the classroom with phrasal verbs stuck to their foreheads, visual students respond to pretty pictures and diagrams, auditory ones need to hear things, etc. Now, I’m sure there’s a fair amount of truth in this. People, after all, are complex beings and often respond very differently to identical stimuli—for example, I’m told some people actually think Lenny Henry is funny—and it makes sense that different students will prefer information to be presented in different ways.

Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to mix up your classroom activities accordingly. (Note to teachers just off CELTA courses: some students actually learn better sitting down.) The problem is, as so often in ELT, common sense tends to be jettisoned as an interesting though not entirely convincing concept is seized upon and stretched to extremes. Well-meaning but patronising teachers start diagnosing and pigeonholing each student as a particular “type” on the strength of such ideas. Rather as astrologers categorise people with their utterly baseless horoscopes.

Often (deliberately?) confused with learning styles, and equally beloved of trendy ELTers, is the notion of “multiple intelligences”. Howard Gardner’s “Theory of Multiple Intelligences” goes something like this: There are seven (possibly even eight—I think he’s still working on the last one) types of intelligence which we all possess in varying degrees, namely linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic (that word again!), interpersonal and intra-personal. Interesting, but hardly original. It gets better: apparently, each one of these intelligences is resident in a separate part of the brain and each is independent of and unaffected by the others. There’s bugger-all hard evidence for any of this as yet but, predictably, the ELT world and the “liberal” educational establishment as a whole have lapped it up. After all, it fits in perfectly with their “everybody is gifted and all shall have prizes” weltanschauung.

Teacher trainer Rosie Tanner, for example, presents a totally uncritical look at the subject in Issue 21 of English Teaching Professional and offers her own questionnaire “devised specifically to help teachers to look at their teaching in the light of MI theory”. Among the 58 statements in Ms Tanner’s questionnaire, each of which we are invited to grade from 1 (never) to 5 (a lot), are “I would describe myself as a planner,” “I like units in my coursebook which deal with natural phenomena (e.g. volcanoes, animals),” and, er, “I touch my learners.”

Just add up your scores to discover your “MI profile”. Then, why not try some of Rosie’s suggested activities? Number 3 is particularly useful: “Using your linguistic and interpersonal intelligences, discuss with someone how you believe your intelligences influence you as a teacher.” Or, for an entirely different perspective, try number 4: “Using your intrapersonal and linguistic intelligences, write down how you believe your intelligences influence you as a teacher.” Fascinating. Might I suggest using your bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence to chuck this sub-Cosmo garbage into the nearest bin?

At this rate, how long will it be before there are crystals in every ELT classroom and new students are subjected to a thorough dowsing to ascertain their emotional and spiritual intelligence before joining a course? Think I’m joking? My colleagues include two witches, two astrologers and at least one fan of Ayurvedic medicine and our classroom walls are regularly festooned with horoscopes and photocopies of students’ palms.

Haven’t our multiple intelligences been insulted enough? Isn’t it time the silent sceptics and the advocates of common sense started to fight back?

Humouristic Language Teaching - Gateway to Debauchery?!

Let's face it, there are times in every tired Tefler's life when we feel like our career-choice, taken after nine pints of Old Speckled Hen at a mate's birthday party, was approved by Old Nick and has been steered by the God of Bad Ideas Gone Wronger. Take today, for example, when I realised that I had been given probably the worst class in the whole fuggin' educational establishment.

What I usually do in such circumstances is turn to a particular website that offers me hours of hoot-filled laughter and pants-wetting entertainment - Humanistic Language Teaching. And, I'm glad to say, my explorations today have been no disappointment, unearthing several gems of methodological madness, a comical cavern of truly Herculean proportions.

For example, take a look at some of these fruitcake-inspired "practical activities" below, and ask yourself, honestly: "Would my wife/husband/pet dog/conscience seriously let me do that in a class full of (presumably consenting) adults?". Consider your respones to these VERY carefully!

1. Hugging as a warmer exercise

Although officially billed as a "warm-up exercise", this could well set the mercury rising to uncontrollable levels. Here's what the author claims about groping your classmates.

I use it with a background of classical baroque music and encourage the students as they listen to show their emotions in a meaningful way by giving a hug to the person they feel friendship or sympathy with.

Here, hang on - can the teacher play this game too? I might have 'feelings' towards certain class members too, y'know. And what if I prefer Metallica to baroque?

Sometimes the whole class ends up being hugs and kisses and this kind of activities are scientifically proved to be a good way of relaxation as the body releases substances called endorphins which enables the child to be more active for the English class.

Mmm, I rather think a few more body substances might get released here, as Paco and Elena fall to the floor, nervously fumbling with each other's underwear. And sometimes it ends up in a class orgy? My Christ, learning was never like this when I was a schoolkid! How different my life could have been if I had ever gotten the chance to 'show my emotions' to that horny piece in the front row...

2. Classroom library

Now, this is a bit more like it. After the students have had their fun stroking each other's genitalia, they then get to (a) go to the library to choose a book, and then (b) fuck off and read it somewhere else. Excellent! I can then stay in the classroom and read my copy of Nuts in peace.

Some students go out to the school gardens and lie down on the grass, others bring a pillow from home and make like a comfortable bed in the middle of the class, or others just sit at the library seats. The aim is to make the reading of English comfortable and creating a home environment. The result is that the material learnt or read by the student is later better produced orally or written as he/she was relaxed when the child was dealing with it.

Fuck me, he's at it again! Making a bed in class, talking of 'orally produced material', and such - who is this perverted teacher?! Where did he get his Tefl certificate - at the Aphrodite Teacher Training Centre!? Is he sponsored by Durex??

3. Free choice project

Right, let's see what our libertarian language teacher gets up to here, shall we?

In my opinion students should never be obliged to do anything they don’t want to do.

I'm with you there, mate. Should apply to the teacher too, though, don't you think? I mean, sometimes I just don't want to teach a room full of spotty teenage herberts.

That’s why I choose a project in which they have to work as a group they always have to choose the topic they want to talk about, and the most important thing, being interested in them so they can show interest when they talk about it for the rest of the class.

Mmm, a bit underwhelming that one, I reckon. Hardly as ground-breaking as the class orgy, is it? Let's move on.

4. Role play

Ah, a good ole role-play. Can't go wrong there, can we.

Role-plays are very important to break-up with the barrier of traditional sexism education and the intolerance for people who have chosen a different sexual identity from mainstream society.

You what?!? "... people who have chosen a different sexual identity from mainstream society" - what the fuck's all that supposed to mean? Ooh dear, suddenly I think I'm coming over all queer...

In some of my role-play activities men become women and women become men.

So now it's gender-reassignation, is it? You'll be in big trouble mate! Especially if you teach at The School of the Immaculate Conception, or Our Lady of the HolyCross . It was never like this in my day...

... and with low primary levels I have boys impersonating princesses and girls impersonating traditional male roles.

Jesus, Mary and fuckin' Joseph - young boys in drag and butch girlies!! This'll never get past the Director of Studies - never!!

Oh Lord, ... it's gonna get worse, I can feel it in my bones!!!

5. Fairy tale transformation

You just knew this one was coming, didn't you? After classroom orgies and transvestism, we all get to turn into fuckin' fairies! Oh, the shame, the shame...

I have done this activity with primary students, often suggesting giving an alternative ending to a fairy-tale and the results have been more than successful. Many of them composed their own creations with lovely pictures on them and later invited the parents to visit our own personal private classroom library and they were delighted with the results.

Jeez, it seems he's come to his senses at last! I just hope the parents didn't get to see the class warmer and the cross-dressing, though!

Cheap as China!

Yes, the research has been done, and the UK TEFL industry can now proudly claim that ... London's EFL schools are officially just as cheap as their counterparts in China! No doubt the odious Tony Millns and his smug cohort of Tefl-busters at EnglishUK are celebrating this fact as I write, swigging back pots of champagne (and real ale), and chuckling mercilessly at how the humble EFL teacher gets screwed time and time again in this country.

The truth is, of course, often stranger than fiction, and this article, written by the excellent Tefl-sleuth Melanie Butler of the EL Gazette, puts the reality of it all into sharp focus. I'll just concentrate my two-pennorth on two or three aspects of the article, the ones that most get me SO fuggin' angry!

Firstly, the saddest of sad truths is that there are some accredited private language schools in London charging just over a quid per class hour for general English courses, which apparently makes them cheaper than many language schools in China! Apparently, in the land of the billion squinty-eyed students, the hourly rates in many Chinese EFL schools are the equivalent of £1.80–4.50. By way of illuminating contrast, Ielts classes in India now cost £2 per hour - still more costly than many London schools!

OK, those were extreme examples, but take a look at this, direct from the article:

"The average price across London for the same course type is £6.40 per hour, compared with £6.66 an hour in 1987 – a drop in real terms of 66 per cent over the 22-year period."

As the article points out, these very low fees are leading to decreasing hourly rates for London EFL teachers, which range from £8–13 (equivalent to 9.20–15 Euros). To hammer home the point, Ms Butler notes that hourly rates for EFL teachers in Dublin and Madrid stand at 19–24 Euros, whilst there is a legal minimum rate of 15.88 Euros in France. So, we can't even keep up with our European colleagues on salaries!

The section that really infuriates me is this, though: "many teachers are forced to work long hours and the British Council, which specifically excludes terms and conditions from its accreditation criteria, has accredited schools where teachers routinely work 45 hours per week. "

Yes, that's right. The 'good old' British Council is essentially colluding with shoddy EFL school owners by deliberately turning a blind eye to a situation that can not in any way be said to work for the benefit of the students or the teachers. Only the crafty school owners derive any advantage from this state of things, in which teachers are overworked and underpaid. Well done, BC - I hope this makes you feel feckin' proud!

Anyway, I shall be contacting those smarmy c*nts at the BC over the next few days and seeking their opinion on the above. I have also, by some sneaky means, managed to get hold of several important (and presumably confidential) BC documents regarding the accreditation process that they carry out, and will be sharing these with you over the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, if any of you downtrodded Teflers out there have any documents, stories, or compromising pictures to share about the BC and their accreditation at your school, please send the stuff my way: teflsandy@yahoo.ie

I'll be more than grateful to receive them!

Mr Bean Finds His Voice!

Oh NO! This is JUST the sort of thing that gives Tefl a bad name...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/theteacher/2009/03/090311_teacher_animal_bird.shtml

Go take a look at this guy. The appalling glasses, the naff hairstyle, the weird expressions and gestures, ... and such an extreme lack of dress-sense! Aaaargh!!

Do you sincerely want to be part of an 'industry' that promotes itself like this? Words fail me ... only my tears stop me from crying out "ENOUGH!!"

Fuggin' 'bird-brain' indeed!!

Keeping it up at 60

Just when I was getting a perverse feeling of dread about having to face new students next week, I fell upon this little piece from a few years back. It's just what I needed to put me in a positive frame of mind about venturing out onto fresh turf and facing an unknown away side for the very first time.

*******

I came across a wonderful little article in the online Torygraph the other day. It wasn’t specific to EFL, but teaching’s teaching, innit, and I thought some of you would appreciate its conclusions regarding knowledge, humour, presentation, and involvement – not to mention the lack of the prescriptive approach.

Anyway, I’ve lifted large chunks of the article (lazy sod, I am!) to present to you here, but I do recommend you read the whole piece for yourself.

So, to start off with, the author asked his class of youngsters what their “Ideal School” would be like...

"We want more lessons like Mr Orme's." they said. This provoked a collective gasp of approval. I was not surprised; our pupils have long revered Mr Orme, who has taught history at the school for nearly 40 years.

Nevertheless, curiosity and mild envy provoked me to ask why they so enjoyed his lessons. "We learn so much", "They're fun!" and "I don't know - they're just good" were some of the answers.

A few days later, I sat at the back of one of Mr Orme's lessons. He places a lot of value on the use of the visual image and had a slide of a painting projected on a screen as his pupils entered the room.

The whirr of the projector, the dim light and the sight of a wide-eyed teacher perched on his desk, greeting his pupils as they entered, all combined to create a special atmosphere.

He was successful, I think, for three main reasons.

First, almost everything he said was a question. It was clear that all the pupils felt confident that sensible answers would be warmly received with a nod and a smile.

This, combined with the fact that all the questions were demanding but answerable, meant there were always hands up. The children wanted to be involved and recognised, so they listened to each other's answers and their teacher's embellishment of them. This all generated a gradual build up of knowledge and confidence.

Second, the content of the lesson was demanding and stimulating. Even at a selective, academic school like mine, it can be difficult to pitch work at the right level.

The topic these 12-year-olds were studying - the difference between medieval and Renaissance attitudes towards mankind - and the level of thinking required of them, were impressive.

But Mr Orme's energy and obvious enthusiasm were perhaps the main reason why the pupils concentrated so well. They were engaged by his lively and humorous tone, by his depth of knowledge and by the way he made eye contact.

Afterwards, I told him that I hoped to be as energetic as him at his age (60). What, I asked, had sustained his enthusiasm for all these years?

There were, of course, many things about the job he loved, but he was especially emphatic when he said: "I get to teach what I am interested in. My head of department doesn't prescribe what I have to cover in my lessons, and he encourages intellectual debate."

At a time when teachers so often complain that their job is overly prescriptive and burdensome, it is an approach that seems especially wise.

*******

Now, I know my approach to teaching on this blog is usually a corrosive cocktail of cynicism and despair, but I really enjoyed reading the Torygraph article, as it restored my faith in my ability to possibly get something right in the classroom. The key-words are all there - student involvement, recognition of their efforts and contributions, humour, etc - yet there seems to be something more, some sort of hidden factor.

Can anybody tell me just what it is ... before I go all moisty-eyed?

Karenne Kalinago answers six questions...

Actually, the irrepressible Karenne Sylvester (of Kalinago fame) has, being the control-freak of a woman she is, done a sneaky one and added another question. Such cheek! Even worse, she has changed some of the questions and added bits on to others. Hey - who's the bloody boss round here, eh?!

I also requested a few spicy pictures of her armpits, or any other interesting part of her naturally unbounded anatomy, and here's what I got...! Phwoah! Classy and freaky, eh? Now, I do like an independent-minded woman ... as well as one with nice plumpy jugs.

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1. How long have you been in TEFL and how did you make this unfortunate choice?
I started teaching in Hong Kong after being robbed in Thailand in 1995. I'd been back-packing and working my way through Australia and was now exploring Asia. A friend I knew well took just about all of my last funds, leaving me behind on a beach in Koh Phan Gan.

Desperate, I flipped a coin between Korea and Hong Kong.

I was both too proud and too embarrassed to ask my parents to bail me out (they were not impressed with my resignation from a normal life) and I ended up in a horrid job teaching English for pennies.

For a while, I lived in the infamous ChungKing Mansions on Mainland Hong Kong, a destitute and demoralizing place, before moving over to the very bohemian Lamma Island.

From the very first moment of failing to answer a question on the Present Perfect - what the heck was that - I fell in love with the teaching English profession. It combined everything I loved doing: traveling, story-telling, drawing pictures, explaining stuff and learning.

2. What's your background prior to TEFL - any stories to tell?
I'm a wine-taster.
Seriously.

That and marketing.
Plenty of stories but basically I simply hated the plastic life I had in London. I left to see what else the world had to offer.

One of the best jobs I ever had was as cook, deckhand and hostess on board a yacht in the Whitsunday islands.

3. Compare and contrast - your worst EFL boss.
Actually, he was the worst boss ever. His nickname was Buzz Lightyear. A total and complete idiot: treated me and paid me like crap because I was married to an Ecuadorian.

Got him back though, took his best EFL teachers and we set up our own school (which later failed).

The thing is, I'm quite philosophical and each time I have had a 'bad' boss I have used that person as a sort of benchmark of the kind of person I never want to be like. I analyze everything they do and the reactions other people have to their presence and then do my best to be the opposite.

It's a Tao thing.

On the flip-side I have had some fantastic bosses. Annie and Sonia at the Experiment in Ecuador taught me so much about finance, managing budgets and responsibility, William of the Summerbridge Hong Kong board and Andrina, Tom and Fred here in Germany have been great.

4. Why did you set up your own website and blogs?
I blog for a number of reasons. Mostly because I'm in love with the independence of sitting in front of the computer, jotting down my own development as a teacher and teacher trainer and sharing that with the world.

That some people enjoy some of what I write is very rewarding.

You know what I mean, Sandy. Those private pat-on-the-back smiles you get when someone adds to the conversation and a dialogue opens up.

I also blog for students and often leave things for my students to review or re-watch, learn more about.

I've heard some rather disparaging comments about bloggers by a handful of ELT authors and I think it's silly. Bloggers aren't here, in my opinion, to replace books - we're doing something entirely different. They're welcome to join in the fun.

In many respects, it reminds me, romantically, of the ancient steps of the pantheon and of the philosophical debates tossed back and forth between the thinkers of the 17th - 18th centuries in letters. Except it's on an instant time stream and it's public. Read it now, not in a subjective history book in fifty years.

I'll just state, right up front, because this has been asked in a few emails and in sly side bar comments:

I have no intention of writing textbooks or becoming a big wig in the TEFL world. I'm not even remotely interested in that. I don't mind doing odd little side projects here and there (am currently) but I do not want my name on a book cover (although it's been offered).

Regarding my website, I wrote SimplyConversations, a simple speaking skills material a few years ago and then sent it off to several publishers. Two met with me and both came back with the same response independently of each other: it's not commercial.

The UK publishers told me that if I could figure out a way to make it profitable (photocopiable material sells one copy per institution, textbooks times as many people in a class: do the math) then they'd be interested in taking it on.

I didn't write the SimplyConversations sets to make loads of cash (I sell them starting at 79c a set). I wrote them because my students insisted on me bringing "my game" into class.

Their fluency and vocabulary dramatically improved and they loved the spontaneity involved. I later did a lot of research into why it works - all that information's on the website.

Selling them gives me a minor income, no great shakes and the ELT publishers were right, most people like photocopiable materials to be free. However, I enjoy the work and at the end of the month when there's a plus instead of a minus after paying my maintenance and production costs, I smile and am proud.

The best thing about both the website and the blogs is that they are mine and I can do whatever I want with them. I can stretch, I can shout, I can cry and I can laugh the entire way through my own work.

It's powerfully addictive.

The worst thing about both the website and the blogs is that they are mine and if I do whatever I want with them, I can also make a big fool of myself.

It's a risk I'm willing to take.

5. If you could do anything else, what would it be?
Write movies.

I will do this, of course, once I have made a million bucks from selling my materials piece by piece, download by download.

Perhaps by the time I'm 60. LOL.

6. What's wrong with the TEFL industry?
The current rates of pay in most countries around the world mean that teachers suffer and thus, students suffer because they simply do not get the quality they deserve.

I can't bear these chain-schools run by people who have yachts, islands and football teams but yet if you go into the language institute's staff room, the computer's from 2000 and it crashes three times a day.

Beautiful paintings on the wall, shiny folders with logos and teachers living on tuna fish and pasta.

Or worse, fantastic teachers leaving the profession because they simply have to earn enough to feed their families.

Translation: all that talent goes into some meaningless, uncreative, office job.

The issue of the non-competitive market salary has brought about an unacceptable atmosphere of incompetence - a small percentage of teachers believe that because they're not earning well, it's an excuse not to prepare, improve their skills or work hard and it's this group of housewives, filling-in-time-til-a-real-job-comes and general time-wasters who drag down the spirits of good teachers.

Basically creating the spinning hamster on a wheel scenario we're in nowadays, as the language institutes are then able to use this lack of professionalism in the field as an excuse not to pay the good teachers appropriately.

In an ideal world we need to raise the bar, understand that this is a profession not a hobby, get paid properly and introduce regulatory pay scales like in any other service industry.

7. Anything else?
The teaching associations need a good overhaul.

There is way too much kow-towing to the big wigs and not enough paying attention to unbelievably crucial - ney, vital - issues like the one I mentioned above.

I'm sort of cautiously watching the recent changes in a couple of the international ones here on this side of the pond - I've noticed that a few younger guys are becoming vocal parts of the scene - we'll see if they bring about change or it's just more of the same.

I also know that a few entrepreneurial people like Kenny Christian of The English Profi are working on creating a network of language freelancers - it is my sincere hope that he, and people like him, shake things up.

That's it.

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Anyway, many thanks to Karenne for her extremely idiosyncratic and interesting take on the six-questions routine. Meanwhile, here's a picture of those, erm, armpits, but in their more contemporary guise!

Goodbye to All That; Hello to All This...

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