Skip to main content

DAVID'S A GOLIATH

The affable gent in the picture with the grin as wide as the brim of his hat is none other than David, tavern keeper at the rather splendid David’s English Teaching World. Judging by the vast scope and sheer ambition of his network of blogs, I imagine he lives in an extinct volcano on a remote South Pacific atoll, as the fellow clearly courts English Teaching World domination. He seems to spend a good deal of his time philanthropically promoting all TEFL-related blogs in the hemisphere, including my own humble jumble sale of shaky wisdom and myopic insights, garnered from over a decade spent wandering, with no little wondering.

What is refreshing about the big man is his willingness to give equal column inches to both the determined “TEFL is a serious career” crowd and the irreverant, back seat of the bus “TEFL is a lot like skiffle” splinter group (of which I am the self-appointed Brown Owl.) We should, I feel in my bones, be distrustful of anybody who seeks to attach a brightly coloured, Windows XP interface to TEFL, accentuating the positive and conveniently ignoring the darker side. After all, in working in TEFL, we are neither guaranteeing our sainthood nor doing the devil’s bidding – like every job, it has its ups and downs, its moments of low farce and genuine, heartwarming pleasure.

So, if you're busily looking for the TEFL lowdown, or even a TEFL hoedown, be sure to swing by David’s empire – just avoid Oddjob and be careful not to fall into his shark tank on the way out...

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've really gotta change that picture. Thanks for the kind words and keep up the good work.

Expect a detailed post on the Graveyard any time soon...

David V.
Anonymous said…
Er, as promised...

http://elt-world.blogspot.com/2007/10/blogs-brazil-south-america-tefl.html

Popular posts from this blog

FOOLING WITH SCHOOLING

One of the commonest figures to be found within TEFL is the aspiring administrator. This is a teacher who, often drained by years of repetitive, poorly remunerated clowning around in the classroom, seeks a position managing other teachers, such as Director of Studies (aptly and attractively known as "Doss"), from which they can sit in an imaginary TEFL director’s chair smoking a cigar, bellowing, “CUT!” and enjoying not having to pull a linguistic rabbit out of a hat twelve times a day, five days a week. I include myself within this TEFL subgenre, although my past experiences of administration have left me with an odd yearning to get back into the classroom and be king of my own modest sandcastle. In 2005, whilst I was working in HR at a local factory, my Brazilian friend Bert and I decided to start our own school. I had recently managed to wriggle out of a honey trap I’d set for myself, when I offered to give a free English course to my colleagues in the factory’s Training a...

NO MORE A-CUSSIN'

In an effort to rid himself of the habit of using foul language at the slightest provocation , a Facebook chum recently asked for suggestions for harmless expressions he could use in front of his Gran and her bingo clique during moments of high stress, astonishment and/or extreme disappointment. I weighed in with, " Crikey! " and, " Great Scott! " Please feel free to add your suggestions, and help to make the world a tiny bit less like a trucker's stopover in Eindhoven .

TEFL ANTHEMS VOL. I

An interesting debate over at ELT World in answer to the question, Are your students learning anything? has got me all reflective. Many rock songs are claimed by religious maniacs to include subliminal messages when played backwards or by missing every sixth word or summat, but others are more easily deciphered. As TEFL anthems go, perhaps one of the most memorably haunting has to be Dave Gilmour/Roger Waters' bitterly ironic collaboration reflecting on TEFL one-to-one classes being taught abroad , Wish You Were Here : How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here. As TEFL mongers we often feel like we're in a fish bowl, year after year , not least because the majority of our students exhibit the retention capacities of the goldfish. After painstakingly explaining that we use the preposition to after various verbs, the ...