What is the point of TEFLtastic blog?
Hopefully nobody comes here for special expertise or definitive answers, because my teaching is a continual struggle to work out what is best for my students just like it has been from day one and I’m going through a particular crisis at the moment with my kids’ classes as I’m rejecting most of the games I’ve based my whole career so far on. So, tips of the week yes, wisdom of the TEFL ages or methodological conclusions no.
Most people understandably come here to print off a worksheet and rush into class, and then there’s the substantial group of people chasing bizarre Google searches like “puke jap” (really!), a couple of my friends who still come occasionally in the vain hope that I’ll actually write something about my life, and that leaves the rest of you. I hope I can serve some purpose for both of you, and I think the main one is to pass on this message:
“If I can do it, anyone can” (to be sung to the tune of 50 Cent)
That goes for teaching (never the most social of people, atroshous spelling, physically shaking on my first CELTA obs, still get nervous before teaching new classes), being a BULATS examiner and level tester (every test is a philosophical crisis on the subject of “But what does level/ accuracy/ ‘Can do’ actually mean??”), TEFL writing (lose interest in every series of lesson plans or articles as soon as I know what I’m going to say, dropped out of the only two book writing projects I have been involved in, quit a full time job with a publisher in Athens after 3 months), blogging (detest computers, didn’t know TEFL blogs existed before I started one, don’t know a single line of html code), using teaching technology (when given another chance to polish up my programming project at university, I said “Can’t you just fail me and have done with it?”), passing the DELTA (argued with my DELTA tutors all the time and did a skimming and scanning lesson where the students did neither), teacher training (have doubts about almost every piece of teaching advice you could ever give anyone), etc. etc.
Of those, probably the most relevant to deal with here is TEFL blogging. Absolutely anyone can and should set up a TEFL blog, even if it will just be a glorified teaching journal, a place to put all your worksheets so that you don’t lose them when your hard disk crashes or all your Word documents get a virus, an online CV, links to your articles elsewhere on the Net, a place to link to when you comment on other people’s blogs or place to think through things that you are going to write up more “properly” elsewhere. Due to my lack of social life and the money for a gym membership and the return of a teenage tendency to navel gaze and write about it as a hobby, my blog has become all of those, but every blog that is any of them is an invaluable part of turning a search of the internet into something that is more useful than a desperate search of the teachers’ room bookshelves.
For examples of people who apparently read TEFLtastic, thought “I can do that!” and proved that they could actually go one better, have a look at
Karenne’s Kalinago English
More advice for TEFL blogging noobs coming up, due to Karenne’s bizarre and unpleasant threat about what she’d do to me if I didn’t take part in her forthcoming blog orgy.
July 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am
And the problem with blogging and blogs and public conversations is that I can hardly sit here secretly and chuckle to myself otherwise you’ll think I haven’t read this.
Alex, as your most loyal fan, you de best.
K
July 5th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I always enjoy your blog, whatever the topic!
July 6th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Thanks guys. Should try this fishing for compliments more often…
July 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I think you should consider book writing project #3. Compile your most hilarious posts (including this one) and hand them out to each new teacher worldwide to consult as a TEFL Bible.
Thanks for keeping us laughing in our various pockets of the world.