You’ve been in TEFL too long when…
1. You laminate your shopping lists
2. When you have a house or family meeting, you ask people to discuss the issues in pairs first
3. Two thirds of your favourite teaching books are out of print
4. The worksheets at the bottom of your pile of things to try have started to decompose
5. You speak to your family with Elementary level English
6. Your foreign students teach you about the latest music from back home
7. You even try to elicit your proposal of marriage - “What do we call it when a man and …”
And there must be many many more. Anyone want to join Mike in adding some?
This is “inspired” by the many many versions of “You know you’ve been in Japan too long when…”, of which you can see my own attempt here.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
… you start reading this blog.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” - Plato (I think)
Just thought I’d throw that one in. Now watch Alex make a blog-entry all about it!
April 8th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
And there’s this one too, along the same lines, from Edmund Burke (?).
“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”
Get my drift, Alex, eh?!
April 8th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Having a bad day Sandy?
I’m not “doing nothing”. His name is appearing on new blogs all the time, including 2 this week and, believe it or not, my school teachers’ newsletter, which will go out to 250 people in the next couple of days. All this is driving him to increasingly desperate and pointless attacks against me, which are no doubt distracting him from doing more damage elsewhere such as saving his business or attacking you.
I have achieved all this by sticking to the easily provable facts and so coming at him from a position of strength- the facts being that Paul Lowe threatened to sue before there was any mention of him on my blog and the unpleasant comments he emailed and posted here since. If you think it is better to give him ammunition with racist insults and by publicizing rumours that probably started with the man himself, I am afraid I disagree. The fact that the only place you can now freely (give or take a few edits and deletions after advice from a journalist friend) comment on him is here suggests to me that this different way of doing things is at least worth a try.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Good on yer, Alex. No harm intended, by the way.
Incidentally, do you think you could spare a bit of time for this marvellous piece of EFL idiocy - er, sorry, methodology…
“Walk around the class and talk to other students about camels. Change partners often. After you finish, sit with your original partner(s) and share what you found out.”
Don’t laugh, it’s been taken from here…
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0804/080403-camel.html
I’ll be using the text in question today in class, but I reckon I’ll be skipping that neat little warmer.
Sandy
April 9th, 2008 at 9:35 am
[...] You’ve been in TEFL too long when…. [link] [...]
April 9th, 2008 at 10:20 am
My God, there’s even this…
“1. Talk to your partner about toilets (on airplanes & trains, in McDonalds or public toilets, at train stations & airports, the school toilet or your own toilet, your country’s and other country’s toilets…)”
I am NOT making this up!!
April 9th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
You’ve been in TEFL too long when……
Alex Case has a MEME related to TEFL going. I'm copying it here and then adding my own to the list. You laminate your shopping listsWhen you have a house or family meeting, you ask people to discuss the issues in pairs first Two thirds of your fav…
April 9th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
You know you’ve been in TEFL too long when you go back home and people ask what country you’re from.
This is a true story!