Archive for the ‘Teacher forums’ Category

Recently stumbled upon a few blogs on this subject due to them linking to me (hint hint), and here they are:

The Pain in Spain (the earliest posts are the best for getting an overview of teaching in Madrid)

A Small Flaking White House in Lost Spain (doesn’t have quite enough stuff about teaching to make typing that name out more than once in full worthwhile, but what I’ve read I’ve liked, so try browsing a relevant category or two):

Teaching English in Spain

And, unusually for a readable blog, the Academia’s point of view: (more…)

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?

As is my role as the navelgazer of TEFL, having had to take a close look at the battleground that is the teflnet recently has made me wonder whether something deeper is going on. Do I hear “class war” as an explanation? I’m never one to rule that out, but my theory is that, as is often the case with these arguments that go on forever, we are actually talking two different languages.

As me and Sandy have been doing more than our fair share of trying to see the TEFL capitalists’ point of view recently, let’s see if I can’t try and explain our particular (and peculiar) culture and viewpoint to them:

 - If you are a successful businessman who heads a large company, for many people that is enough to make you the enemy. and there is nothing you can do to change their minds. For example, how many people have admitted they were wrong about Bill Gates’s evil empire just because he has turned into Mother Theresa? That’s right- none! It could be due to a philosophy of class war or other political reasons, it could be bitterness, but it’s usually a version of the tall poppy syndrome. I personally think that the tall poppy syndrome is healthy, and while it suggests an abandonment of logic it’s no worse than the ‘rich and successful = good’ culture of the rest of the world (more…)

This interview was conducted by email over the last week or so, with me submitting the main outline and then asking a few follow up questions when the main answers came back. My questions are in bold, and the follow up questions and answers are in italics.

1. A brief history of your career
This was covered in a recent interview in the BKK Post but here it is again:

I began life in a completely different field—selling industrial equipment and negotiating Joint Ventures in China.  When the company I worked for had a problem with our customer in China, I was sent to Hong Kong to resolve it. 
When the company went under, I was somewhat abandoned in Hong Kong. 

The job market back home was not that good (and my field was very specialized) so I thought I would look for a job in Hong Kong.  A friend suggested I teach English to earn some money to pay the rent.

Before long I was teaching full time and loving it!  I then started opening small schools around Hong Kong.  But after several years I was burned out.  Married by then with a small child, we decided to move to Thailand.  Soon afterwards I decided to pen up a TESOL course.  The main purpose was to find and train qualified teachers for the schools in Hong Kong!  But after some initial success I decided to expand.

2.    A brief history of TEFL International, the secret of its success and the principles behind it

Started out as a Trinity course.  After some differences of opinion with the CE of Trinity at the time, we became independent on 1 Jan 2000.  As a small, newly independent school, I decided that the only way we could credibly tell our students that our course was internationally recognized was to be truly international.  Thus, the rapid expansion.

3.    A list of some of the things that TEFL International does now
 ·         TESOL Courses
·         Volunteer Programs
·         Guaranteed Jobs programs
·         Teacher Training for local teachers (usually through the Thai Ministry of Education)
·         Teach/learn language programs
·         Teach/Intern programs
 
4. Can you give some details of TI’s charity/non-profit status and structure

First of all, we do not need to be a non-profit.  We could avoid all taxes by moving our base to some offshore tax shelter.  And it’s not like I enjoy having all of our accounts (including my salary) available to the public.  But we work with universities and universities feel better working with a non profit than a for profit.  Plus, we do a lot of things that non profits do like real volunteer work and assistance for the less fortunate. 

I do not know a lot about US tax laws (which are extremely complex).  But every year we have to hire a special accountant to do our taxes and submit them to the IRS to ensure we continue to meet US non-profit status. (more…)

You can’t do much reading about TEFL on the Net without coming across stories of dodgy geezers and their nasty little business schemes, and then you can’t read much more without coming across the nasty little TEFL teachers with their dodgy feuds- and then all kinds of mental confusion breaks out. Who can you believe in the TEFL world? The answer is simple- me!

Joking aside, I’ve been trawling through hundreds of posts about TEFL ripoffs and DoSs with personality problems over the last 12 months and although I remain sceptical about most of the claims made on such forums, there are three people/ organisations that I get a particularly bad vibe about. As what I’m doing is trying to judge someone’s personality through the internet, it is obviously subjective- and if you don’t trust my opinion on most things, then of course please ignore me here too. Still, here is my opinion for what it is worth. If it was me, I would avoid these three:

Paul Lowe’s Windsor TEFL/ Windsor Schools

Mark Smith’s Smith Schools of English Japan

Bruce Veldhuisen’s TEFL International

My criteria for inclusion is simple and beyond reproach, I think you will find. The evidence I have on their business dealings is limited but they strike me as three examples of the less pleasant kinds of people that TEFL occassionally attracts. I’ve met a few unpleasant characters, and the usual pattern is that if you catch them on a good day and they need something from you, you might be charmed. If you have no dealings with them and a good person who has got trapped in their web is the person you deal with you might have a good experience. Get on the wrong side of them, though, and you will find yourself a victim of every vindicitve and manipulative tactic known to man, with the idea that there is a line they shouldn’t step over in order to get their way not popping into their heads. Paul has shown on this site that he is exactly like that. People who have had direct communications with Mark Smith that I trust have told me that he is even worse. I don’t know how involved Bruce is in the day to day running of TEFL International, but someone’s ambition is making them step over the line of what I would call gentlemanly business practices.

Which leads me onto my philosophy of TEFL life. The system to have a good time in TEFL and not give more influence to the bad guys is simple- find nice people, avoid nasty ones. It’s worked for me- made me choose Spain, Italy, and Japan rather than Austria and Switzerland (though my nicest students ever were from Columbia, where I haven’t been yet), made me get out of DoSing and teacher training and back into the classroom, etc etc. So far, it’s worked- or not worked, depending on whether not being bitter is turning into a TEFL blogger handicap or not…

As I said, take several large salt mines when reading about any TEFL dodgy dealings, especially as many people have been known to place false information (both good and, for some strange reason, bad) about themselves on such sites, but here are some links anyway:

The TEFLtradesman on TEFL International

The TEFL Blacklist on Smith’s School of English

Usingenglish on Smith’s School of English

TEFLtastic on Paul Lowe

“My first two years in Japan were spent teaching English… The students… studied English- or should I say, English was taught in their presence. Nothing ever seemed to sink in. Years of classes and endless tests and still they couldn’t master the intricacies of a simple ‘How are you?’ When I tried to have the most elemental of English conversations with them they looked at me with blank expressions, shrugged their shoulders, and said ‘Wakaranai’ (’Huh?’) They did this, I believe, just to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong, these teenagers were polite and studious and well-mannered, but they were still teenagers, and teenagers are pretty well insufferable anywhere you go on this planet.” (more…)

Hope that headline got your attention, but actually I have nothing to say about the MA today at all…

Right, now to talk about the CELTA. I have decided to trust a whole lot of people I have never met and take the PGCE (standard British 1 year postgraduate teaching qualification) to be totally superior to the CELTA and a whole lotta learning more than a DELTA. The only compensation for me as someone who has done the C and the D but not the P is to imagine that the PGCE powers that be have been ripping off the CELTA as they have introduced classroom teaching earlier and earlier in the course.

Anyhows, as few more people are likely to start using 5000 pounds of someone’s money and two years of their lives to do a PGCE before popping off to Spain for a year I think the only sensible thing to do is combine the best of the two. And here it is:

The Super CELTA (although Advanced CELTA might be a better name!) will be a combination of the CELTA just as it stands now and in-service training once you start your first job, which will be set by Cambridge and admininstered and run by the employers. The employers will be able to easily justify checking up on their first year teachers and making sure they continue their training, the teachers will be able to choose a good school simply by the fact that they offer support for this extended qualification, and Cambridge will be able to use it to spread good practice in teacher observations and what have you.

So that’s decided then. You can disagree with me, but then I will just edit your comment to make it look like you’ve been blabbering on about lobsters invading the earth…. Only joking! Bring it on! And there’s also a similar thread in D’s E C you can comment in as well/ instead.

I must say, I really think I am onto something here. Since I decided that one particular person’s comments here and elsewhere were about as worth reading as Reader’s Digest and decided to not even glance at them anymore, I reckon I have improved my efficiency by 1.23% and my lack of irritation index by almost exactly the same amount. It is an extreme measure that I would imagine I will never have to use with anyone else in the rest of my life, but it sure does work!

Anyone who wants to borrow this method, including those for whom* I am the one they want to ignore, should do so quickly before I patent it! It could mean the end of academic feuds within our lifetimes, of which more here:

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/archives/241

*If I have misused “whom” here, it was not a deliberate attempt to annoy any ESL Au Lait pendants** who might be reading. That would just be a nice bonus…

**The mispelling of pedants was intentional though. Sorry…