Sustainable TEFL blogging Part One
I really should wait until I’ve been blogging for 3 or 4 years before I presume to give lessons to the overly keen and/ or angry TEFL bloggers who have quit the game recently, but haven’t got anything else to write about since I got the whole professionalism thing off my chest, so here goes anyway:
Sustainable TEFL blogging uses most of the rules of ecological sustainability, and here they are:
- Save energy
- Recycle
- Use second hand goods
Saving energy is easier said than done perhaps. One method I’ve come up with is to write short posts on my mobile phone and email it to myself, leaving the evenings free for the bottles of champagne, Bentley convertibles and rooftop hot tubs that are the life of a TEFL teacher who has been a good boy and got his blogging out of the way.
Recycling is even easier. Classic recycling method- take a comment you have made on a TEFL forum, polish it up a little (if at all), and there is a post! Might do the same with my comments on the Gaijinpot discussion on Does Japan ruin your teaching? sometime soon. I’ve even tried the same thing with some old cover and handover notes with the names taken out, but can’t say I’ve got many readers on that one so far…
And finally, there is just taking someone else has written and giving a link with maybe a sarcastic comment or two. Usually when I say “You’ve gotta love technology”, it’s after I’ve made another computer crash, but the little link button at the top of this box as I write is indeed the work of the TEFL angels. And here it is, getting to work again. Stories I will be taking credit for discovering by actually finding the time to read my Google Alerts today include:
A kid manages to get out of Spanish classes and call it a political protest (like to see my teenagers try that one on me!)
Fabio Capello finds the English language less challenging than the England players
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers- looks like a good way of reading a novel in English and pretending that you are learning something about teaching at the same time
And if you haven’t got time for that, or are looking for literature you can actually bring into the classroom, 6 word life stories should just about do it
And as easy as it is to be sarcastic about the British Council with the camp receptionists and the most well paid miserable teachers in the world, a story on them taking decisions so that people don’t worry about their jobs makes it a paradise compared the attempts at HR that most of us have to deal with