Preparations for the TEFL Olympics on schedule
So, the Beijing Olympics is totally on schedule. Damn!
That reaction is partly my fear of what a future China-dominated world could be like. Quite apart from the human rights issues, have you ever been in a restaurant, casino or hotel full of just mainland Chinese? Can you imagine the whole world like that? I just hope Japan will still be a little oasis of calm…
The main reason for my “damn”, though, is my own national pride. Sydney was great, Beijing will be amazing, even the Greeks managed to get their act together- where will I be able to hide when the British fk up London 2012?? So, to take some of the negative publicity away from that organisational mess up and instead give such much needed positive publicity to my much maligned profession, I would like to propose the TEFL Teacher Olympics. Provisional event list:
- Long distance voice projection
- Pre-school children herding (like a sheep dog contest)
- Tag team teaching
- Lesson planning sprint- Finding a particular page in the mock up Teachers’ Room as quick as possible
- Headway quick draw (find the article about how great British food is quicker than your opponent)
- Herding kindergarten kids with a sheepdog
- Throwing chalk at students (points for distance, accuracy and artistic content)
Any other ideas anyone?
August 31st, 2007 at 9:06 am
That’s somewhat harsh on the Chinese - for all the quirks, I’ve never met a bunch of people better at getting something done. China’s a Yorkshireman’s paradise away from home, I reckon - and if she’s going to make the whole world a little more Chinese then, well, rather than than yet more Americanisation, thanks. It can be very hard work here sometimes, but they’re a truly fantastic lot - I might even get around to submitting an article about this at some point in the future
As for 2012… I dunno, *only* the English could have a strong enough self-loathing & fear of success that we’d actively resist & be unenthusiastic about the honour of staging the Olympics. I personally hope it’ll be a massive success, and heck, it might even drag me back home for a bit…
As for the TEFL Olympics? I guess you’d have to have some kind of gymnastic-related miming contest, and, of course, the 4×10m cassette player relay, as the teachers of a hard-up school frantically take turns with the one working piece of junk remaining from the early 80’s…
September 1st, 2007 at 1:20 am
I must be picking up the Japanese fascination/ paranoia about their big neighbour, I guess…
Like the event suggestions. Also, tape queueing race (without the tapescript). Board cleaning. Synchronized group changing (seen from above, could look like a Buzz Berkley dance routine). Photocopy weight lifting.
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:10 am
man to man marathon? who can teach one hour private lessons back to back for the longest amount of time…
Also working pen sprint, finding the one working board pen amongst a pile of unusable ones.
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:47 am
Love both of them, especially the board pen one.
Also
- photocopier unjamming
-hot teaching (like hot yoga, but need to elicit vocab with mimes in a room of rapidly increasing temperature and humidity)
and the opposite
- teaching winter sports, e.g. drawing on the board with ice cold hands
September 5th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
ha ha that hot teaching one is good… not too far from the truth in the Japanese summer either.