NEW TEFL GRAVEYARD POLL!

Some call it Customer Relationship Management...

Vote now, only six days left!

(UPDATE: The poll is now at the bottom of the page)

Comments

Anonymous said…

You easily won out over that Dave chap!

David from ELT World

12 October 2007 at 15:22

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 .

6 RANDOM THINGS ABOUT WARDY

The splendid Gyppo Byard has kindly requested that I write six random things about myself. I note that the adjective "interesting" didn't feature, thankfully, so here goes: According to my late father's genealogical rummaging, I am (very) distantly related to Sir Francis Drake (or Sir Walter Raleigh , I forget which); I've suffered two bouts of severe clinical depression (the last 17 years ago) and used to suffer panic attacks. I regained my fragile sanity without recourse to professional help or drugs, partly by reading Free to Be Human by David Edwards, a personal friend with whom I have shared many a beery night over the years. In fact, it may have been the beery nights that cured me, who knows?; When I was a baby I used to hum songs from the hit parade in my cot, way before I could talk, leading my father to predict that I was some kind of musical genius . Later attempts to learn the violin at primary school proved his optimism spectacularly unfounded ; De...

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...

Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

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