What an intense year this has been. So many people inspired me along the way, fellow teachers, ex teachers friends and total strangers. Thailand first touched my heart and introduced me to the most basic of Buddhism more than twenty five years ago. (Koh Samui was a lush magnificent tropical jungle then, as it still is now). I went back to the UK and was fascinated by the whole possibility of a completely opposite to all I knew way of life. Suddenly less was more, and the call from my heart was to try to live a more simple life, not more complex.

Anyway, something called me to come back and say thank you. I was never particularly pro the concept of English teachers in a foreign country and thought maybe it was some leftover form of colonialism, our way is better. The truth is many people really want to learn a second and often third language. It turns out I had the courage to be able to stand up in a classroom and deliver some inspiration or at least be persuave why learning could be fun and over the year my focus was pure and simple, how to be really the best teacher I could be.

It was an extraordinary year, living in some absolutely ghastly places, (one house a school provided, actually had no back door), and being at the bottom of the food chain in a profession that is a business. I have no idea why I at times was so completely unhappy and disasatisfied with the politics of the profession, and yet, so completely sure that I was tapping into some really sweet gift that I had no idea I had been given.

Seeing students love learning, love each other and be willing to give up so much to try something new, has shaken up everything I think right now about everything. It is always been hard for me to fit into corporate systems, on the one hand I am totally passionate and out there giving my all, and then I am supposed to be meek and subordinate. I am reminded that I am if not an excellent teacher, I am certainly an excellent insubordinate! I have been trusted to totally do my own thing, and have respected that trust and worked hard to ensure that my own thing, followed really good learning principles. Like all teachers, at the end of the first year, I am happy, exhausted, certainly willing to reflect, and I promise myself after 31st March to go explore anything but teaching for a few weeks! ♥

Jojo Tiger