11 REASONS NOT TO STUMBLE UPON TEFL
Continuing my public-spirited series of Free TEFL Tips, here is a little list I tossed off last night when none of my students turned up. (Don't worry, I've learned not to take it personally.)
This list is totally personal and does not represent the opinions of any person, real or fictional, except myself.11 REASONS NOT TO STUMBLE UPON TEFL (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER):
- You will receive a starting salary well below that of fellow undergraduates and it will remain largely unchanged for the rest of the century. Your Gran's earnings will easily outpace your own;
- You will be expected to be witty, bouncy and enthusiastic at all times, even if your house has just been repossessed or a favourite pet maimed in a freak glass blowing accident;
- You will start seeing caravaning as an economic holidaying alternative;
- You will find yourself joining calls for more bicycle lanes;
- You will be expected to relentlessly suffer gibbering incognates very gladly indeed;
- You will be expected to ditch all opinions that may be construed as individual or offensive to the arms dealers and/or corporate fanatics you are tutoring;
- To have any chance of professional progress, you will be expected to fork out large sums of your hard-earned salary on cash cow qualifications that few seem to pass first time;
- You will escape to foreign climes only to find that, while, if you're lucky, you're marginally better off financially, the job is exactly the same, only with all the complications that come from living abroad;
- Every time you take a day off sick, an effigy of you will be burned by both the teacher who had to replace you and/or the Director of Studies/school owner, who will feel vindicated in their belief that you are a recovering alcoholic who has plunged from the wagon;
- You will develop a passion for overwhelmingly desirable and impossibly complicated foreigners, and pine away into an emotional sack thing when they inevitably leave you for somebody real;
- You will spend your days feeling like a hamster on a wheel. A hamster on a wheel of a heavy goods vehicle.
Before I am accused of negativity, I shall soon be scraping together a list of reasons to suck TEFL and see.
posted by M C Ward | 09:51
11 Comments:
Ouch, again. I'm convinced that some managable form of insanity is the only way to survive such employments. Being a fruitcake gives one mystique and makes one somehow impervious to the inevitable illogicalities of ones function.
I remain curious to hear how you sell the positive side of TEFL, but I'm glad you're going to try.
I added two more to the list on my blog.
I must say it's number nine which is getting me at the moment - not only do I receive a joke like wage, but I can't even take a day off.
I asked for some days off so I could work for the government on a polling place test this week. Work finally confirmed they could give me the days of on Friday afternoon - now the govt probably doesn't want me because I've been saying maybe...er maybe.
SCREAM
One way of getting back is to teach your students some infra dig accent, like Brummie or Carlisle. This way people would know they were idiots without having to wait for them to say much. You'd be doing everyone a favour.
The more I think about it, it's Number 6 that's worries me most: I'd naively thought one could pretend to oneself that one was teaching future Joseph Conrads and Vladimir Nabokovs.
All wiser comments/suggestions than what I am capable of producing innit.
That number three gets me, it does. Caravanning is the ONLY way to holiday, I reckon! The kids like it, and the wife doesn't mind being cooped up in a tin can for a fortnight or two. Beats slumming it in a B&B anytime!!
No good boyo - 'Carlisle' is not an accent. Cumbrian is.
Just saying.
Tefl Tradesman - reminds me of Ricky Gervais' comments on caravanning on Room 101 - childhood memories of waking up hearing his gran relieving herself into a bucket...
That list could well be enscribed on my gravestone.
I disagree with number 1...Particularly if you're teaching here in Spain.
Not only with you remain at your starting wage but when you take into account inflation, 5 years later you will see yourself collecting cigarette butts off of street corners just to make it to the end of the month.
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