My TEFLtastic Life

Initially raised in bits of London that didn’t know whether to be scummy Sarf London or boring middle class “It’s Surrey actually”. Same problem with my accent, so hopefully I have students all over the world talking what they now call Estuary English.

The fact that we moved house at least 7 times before I was 13 might have helped develop my itchy feet, although the pre-monsoon humidity in Thailand was the first time it became literal.

Somewhere along the way we moved to an isolated gamekeeper’s cottage in Hertfordshire and then Bangladesh. Come to think of it, was my family on a witness protect programme or something??

Have such good childhood memories of Bangladesh and India that I am determined to never go back and spoil them. Learnt for the first time that I never get homesick, which has been very useful since. Also learnt that living a sheltered life abroad might be morally dubious, but it can be an awful lot of fun.

Someone obviously decided that was too much fun and excitement for my delicate constitution, because I was then brought up in a small town somewhere between Worthing and Eastbourne and less exciting than either. Average age of population: 55.

Escaped to a satisfyingly dirty, industrial, cosmopolitan city to study Physics. Decided fairly soon that university in the Midlands was the second best experience of my life- bar the actual studying Physics, which was just as dull as all those who didn’t do so would imagine.

Took my first holiday abroad, where I discovered that you could communicate perfectly well with the natives in English but that wouldn’t stop you feeling embarrassed everytime you met a Dutch guy who spoke 2 foreign languages better than you speak your first. So went back to university and read an American medical romance in French when I couldn’t bear to go to lectures (often). If my French teacher in school had only told me I could do something so pointless and time consuming with the language, I might have learnt something at school!

Having only taken the first 3 weeks of my degree to understand that I never wanted to see a Physics book again, it took me 7 months after I finished uni to realise that I didn’t want to be unemployed either- despite having the free time to listen to Tibetan nose music and learn “To jest novy adaptor” (This is a new record player) in Polish.

Did a CSV (Community Service Volunteer) because I knew they couldn’t refuse me however bad my haircut, which turned into 3 years of care work. Learnt that I’d rather work with books than with people and my patience is easily stretched, but working with people and developing my patience is exactly what I need. Which is not why I became an English Teacher, but might be one reason why I still am.

Took the RSA/ Cambridge CTEFLA (now the CELTA). My tutors were pushing me for an A because I had read all the books, but I just scraped a B in the end- but then if there is one group of people who should know that book knowledge doesn’t mean much it should be language teachers!

Went to Turkey because it was the only place available after May that didn’t mean a summer trapped in England. Did Koparan summer camp in Erdek for 20 pounds a week and had the time of my life. From what I hear this camp is no more, due to a cross dressing teacher in the evening entertainment actually being a Turkish cross dresser rather than just an English public school boy (why that is more shocking I’m not sure). That particular scandal got on Turkish TV (no pun intended). I’m sure most other teachers who have taught there will agree that Koparan summer camp will be sorely missed.

Came sorely back down to earth teaching 50 year old local government lifetimer beginners in a school called Anglodil in Bursa, ex-capital of the Ottaman Empire, where I saw levels of cheating and protesting over test results that I would have to wait for Spanish teenagers to see again. Haggling in markets for sheer necessity rather than fun due to 80% inflation but no payrises had a certain appeal for a while, but have managed to save Turkey for holidays with hard currency in my pocket ever since.

Came back to England to work in a very expensive summer camp in Sussex. We had a Colombian family who really were on some kind of protection scheme, and the 7 year old Russian mafia kids in the leather jackets, and the Saudis who popped over to their fathers house in Kensington while the rest of the kids went to Camden Market etc. Quite an eye opener. We also had a boss who was an ex-Catholic priest who had become a headmaster of a boys’ school, but 7 weeks passed off without incident this time…

3 months in England and a psychotic ex-girlfriend made me want to go further away than ever- no jobs in Indonesia so settled for Bangkok with Shane English Schools Thailand. Major buzz for 6 months, major downer for the next half a year when I realised there was nothing left to see and nothing left to do that didn’t involve pole dancing. So became a pole dancer.

Only joshing! Actually ended up doing nearly two years in EF in Waterloo, London. Was not as bad as those of you who have seen the swarms of Spanish and Swedish teenagers might think (or not as good as those of you who are into such things might think) as it was a totally seperate school to the summer schools bit. Mainly taught students who were staying for a full 9 months, which was a challenge by the time they’d seen 500 hours of class time. Learnt to cope with that, and neurotic Brazilian females and paranoid Chinese males, but suddenly remembered what TEFL is for- travelling.

And so, reader, I did.

Decided learning a useful language might be worth a try, so flew into Madrid to try my chances. Despite not being able to roll my Rs, managed a level of fluency that I sometimes now have difficulty matching even in L1 due to the simple expedient of never speaking, reading or listening to anything other than outside school. Full sink-or-swim exposure really does work, but not sure it was worth listening to Spanish pop music, watching Hollywood films dubbed into Spanish, hanging round with people I wouldn’t normally because of the language they speak etc. etc. Having a girlfiriend back in the UK also didn’t make things more fun- something I somehow took two years to notice!

So back to London again, this time for teacher, SAC coordinator and Social Programme Organiser for Central School of English right on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. Good school, good students, good staff- only slight problem was the country it was in! At least not having to learn a language meant I had time to start writing EFL stuff, mainly for onestopenglish.com to start with, and I then moved on to Greece to pursue that ‘dream’ (i.e. vague plan on how to get out of classroom teaching for a while).

Worked for a Express Publishing in Athens, which is like Istanbul without any of the good bits. Found that after working 9 to 5 had so much more energy and desire to talk with people than after teaching all day. Also found that Athens had nothing worth using that energy on and all the people I could have talked to spent their time talking to their families. Did get sunburnt on my birthday (November), though, doing a sailing course round some islands or another.

3 months of that and made up a paperwork reason why I had to go to Italy instead. Ate foccacia from a supermarket 20 minutes after getting off the boat from Corfu and so started a very happy escape from real life for 7 months. My stomach and my smile grew, my wallet shrunk, and after less than a year of my Roman holiday at Byron it was arriverderci at time to let me bank manager decide my next placement.

And so here I am in Japan, back in Asia, back full time in the classroom and back with Shane. Have my off days and my on days, but I’ve been here 4 years, which is a record. As I think everytime I go on holiday outside civilisation (i.e. anywhere outside Japan) or I get perfect service with a one pound seventy five pence meal- you’ve gotta love Japan!