Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

Despite being a self-confessed skeptic of The Secret and its rumblings, I have to admit that starting this blog has had a strangely positive effect on my life. Opportunities have appeared where I wasn’t expecting them, and I’m in the unfamiliar position of having to decide between several work options, a couple of them only distant cousins of TEFL. The only cloud on the horizon is my overpowering proclivity towards procrastination, and the very real danger that my blog turn into just another, slightly more sophisticated form of frenetic dilly dallying. With this fear at the back of my mind, I have resolved to remove most of the third-party functionality and widgets from the Graveyard, the searching out and finding of which have already cost me too many precious hours of my finite lifespan, and which I feel are the principal risk to my new-found productivity. Also banished is Google Adsense, which frankly made no sense. When resolving to include advertising, I was only too aw...

Anyone seeking a mind-bending alternative to the Sunday papers should check out this blog . The draft Kafkaesque novel Anti-Danube is set to become a post-hope classic. I think it's probably written in English, but it could well be Welsh...

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 bright...