Archive for the ‘TEFL heroes- Mario Rinvolucri’ Category

Sandy MacManus, who turned 72 on Friday and will be confirmed this week as the oldest first-time TEFL World President nominee in history, has shot himself in the foot while attempting to inject some youth and a feminine touch into his flagging presidential campaign by choosing some 23 year old random posh bird, a self-confessed “jolly hockey-sticks, like my Mum” with a degree in Women’s Studies from Exeter University as his running mate. A source as close to Sandy as anyone could bear to get said that in private he gave his reason as “I’ve been out of the country too long and don’t know how to deal with those scary English women anymore, so I didn’t know how to say no.”

This is a historic day, however, as for the first time it is certain that there will be a female or a carrot top in the TEFL Presidential Office (”the White Room”)* next year
TEFL World Presidents through history: 

W D Minor
Wilfrid Owen
Rex Harrison
Dick Van Dyke- for his amazing ability with accents
Sean Connery- ditto
Mario Rinvolucri’s beard (he was in a delicate time in therapy at the time, and not talking to the rest of his face)
Sandy MacManus (disputed/ retired)
*Actually, the second cubicle from the left in the 3rd floor toilets  

I must be the least likely blogger of all time, being neither technically savvy nor generally interested in online content- I’d never read a blog before I started this one, and I still reckon most of the best stuff is still in books. Anything from Zoltan available on the web? I thought not.

Once in a while though, I do stumble upon some good stuff. As that gives me even more stuff I want to read, I usually don’t find time to even mention it here, so here goes while I still feel a little recharged from my summer hols:

The Linguist Blogger

Some very thought provoking stuff, and perhaps a lesson to me that blogging less frequently produces greater quality… Two recent ones that particularly took my fancy:

Building Nations with the Cunning Use of Foreign Languages

Language Learning and Weight Lifting

Back in the world of TEFL, the other Dave is going through some highlights from his articles and he has chosen well, particularly:

In Search of a Word: Can Ambition Survive in TEFL?

When is it too late to get out of TEFL?

If like me you were stimulated by the ELT World articles but irritated by having to have a Google ID to comment, feel free to leave your comments here instead:

While I’m on the subject and have to make the most of Favourites on this PC (it’s staying in Japan when I go to Korea), here is a list of TEFL, linguistics and Japan related sites I most often end up at, in approximate order:

1. Dave’s ESL Cafe international job forums (the pointless bitching makes it more memorable somehow, maybe it’s the Dynasty of TEFL sites)

2. The TESall.com TEFL news ticker (including links to the forum discussions that are actually worthwhile)

3. The TEFL tradesman (as foul-mouthed and crusading as we’d all like to be)

4. The TEFL Blacklist (does exactly what it says in the title)

5. EL Gazette digital (a real TEFL newspaper. Click on the link on the main page to subscribe for free)

6. An Englishman in Osaka (just very funny, and so beats all the much more informative Japan blogs, of which there are many, in competing for my online time…)

7. Guardian TEFL (some real journalism would be nice- see EL Gazette for that- but a good way of keeping up with TEFL press releases anyway)

8. The Life of Mike (some odd changes of direction, but some thought provoking and entertaining posts)

9. Notes from the TEFL graveyard (hits the funny yet practical, cynical yet enjoying the life balance that I struggle with on my blog)

10. Teacher in Development (would probably be around number 2 if there were more posts)

11. Metatesol (pithy, to the point and almost inactive- this one would also be higher if this little bit of prompting results in more posts)

If I was a better person the list would probably be different, and Rave’s ESL Au Lait wouldn’t even be in the list let alone at the top and Insights into TEFL , Humanising Language Teaching  and Developing Teachers would be in there, but like my irrational desire to eat cheap gyudon, that is where I really end up. End of confession- how many Hail Mario’s for absolution?

I’ve been ruminating on for several years of how Continuing Professional Development like observations, workshops and being given responsibility for a supplementary file or two often start off seeming like an opportunity and then gradually come to seem like just unpaid work that benefits the school more than you. While I’ve been thinking, someone else has been writing- and has summarized the situation in a simple and very direct letter in this month’s Humanizing Language Teaching Letters Page:

“Dear Ms Kryszewska

I wrote to you sometime ago - after I had been enthused by Mario Rinvolucri - and told you I’d be submitting to HLT. You very kindly sent me back the guidelines. I apologise for not getting back to you sooner.

I’ve since received your hand-out: “13 Reasons Why You Might Want To Write For HLT” which you circulated via e-mail to all the readers of HLT.

Unfortunately, as always in this exploitative industry of ours, there is no question of payment for this extra work. This is not your fault. I’m sure, as always, there is no budget for this in my school.

However, I have already produced many worksheets for my school and taken several teacher-training sessions without payment, and, to be frank, am sick and tired of not being remunerated for my time and effort. I can’t feed my family by “raising my profile in the company”.

As it happens, I already share creative ideas and infect my colleagues with enthusiasm on a day-to-day basis out of an feeling of basic human solidarity, which the people with their hands on the purse strings in our industry would do well to emulate. Perhaps I am harking back to a golden age of the 1970’s when teachers originally set up schools as co-operatives which have since been taken over by mercenary, corporate EFL barons who place cost effectiveness over pedagogy every time.

I object to a premiership elite of pop star EFL methodologists being handsomely rewarded, while the rest of have to slum it in the lower leagues on casual contracts and insulting rates of pay, wondering whether we’ll be timetabled out next week or not. With the greatest of respect to Mario Rinvolucri, whose work I admire immensely, I think it shows insensitivity and disrespect to expect others to produce for gratis what he does for love and money.

Instead of a school asking teachers to contribute for free, one sure way of avoiding the kind of de-motivation and stuck-in-a-rut-ness, would be to stop undervaluing our contribution every day of the working week by paying us a decent wage in the first place.

Yours ”

(End of quote. Name not published, but I would put money on this person working for International House, as this almost exactly echoes what people who worked for them in Madrid who did my DELTA with me used to say)

My twoyenworth on this matter,  slightly changed since I’ve been in Japan, is:

(more…)

There is a rumour going round that the ever-increasing practice of EFL publishers based outside English-speaking countries (especially Greece and Spain) pretending to be more English than the Queen’s tea has reached silly new heights.　

One Greece-based English language publisher (although you wouldn’t know it from the address on the back of their books, which is the address of someone’s Granny’s shed in Buckinghamshire), long infamous for using fake names for its (Greek) writers has lost a potentially ground-breaking deal with Mario Rinvolucri (King of Humanistic Language Teaching) after asking him to write his next book as ‘Mark Richards’ because they ‘don’t want it looking like some Italian wrote it’.

So, Thierry Henry finally going to Barca, eh? And in the season when everyone had got so bored of the rumours that they had almost stopped talking about it. So maybe British Council Jeddah really are going to swoop for me, pay the escape clause in my contract and make me a 4 year 8-million dollar offer.

I guess there’d have to be whatever the English teaching equivalent of the medical exam is (get me to teach a lesson from inside a CAT scan machine?) before the signing on live television, and obviously I’d want to know who else they are planning on signing (I hear rumours that Pilgrims might try and cash in on Mario Rinvolucri before he can leave on a Bosman transfer next year and that Jeremy Harmer is looking for a player manager post).

Or maybe I will just continue being paid the same as every other teacher, however good or bad they may be, and just take my extra reward as the number of comments I get on my blog… It’s not like English teaching is the only profession in the world where you get no reward for extra work, and it might not even be the only one where people get paid more just for having an MA. More ranting on the world of the EFL MA coming up…

Come to think of it, I’m pretty much the same kind of teacher as I am football player. Anyone else?