Most teachers just don't care!

Postbox letter from Jim

In my opinion 80% of teachers don't care and never will. Paying them more than 35K per month is just money in the bin. 10% care somewhat and 10% take it on as a career and profession.

I don't worry about complaints

Postbox letter from Mike

As long as the majority of the parents and students in my class are happy, I don't worry about complaints. There will always be parents or students who have something to complain about.

Plagiarism, copying, theft, piracy and cribbing

Helping students find a way to avoid it

It can make a teacher’s blood boil to discover that a large proportion of the students have exactly the same content, including the grammar errors in sentence 4, all probably copied from Phoom – the star student of the class.

The DoS by default

What can happen when your director of studies is a clueless foreigner

I've worked under four foreigners. The first one was fantastic. A fully qualified teacher with his own business who really wanted to be the best. The thing I liked the most about him was his honesty. The next three were just terrible people.

Who is worth working for?

In search of the holy grail.

Is there a Holy Grail of ELT jobs? Why are some teachers happy, while others suffer under a yoke of abuse? Who are these employers that are spoiling our fun?

Ignore the negativity

Postbox letter from Jack

One does not have to allow all the negativity that the ESL industry in Thailand is so well known for to pull you down.

A word of warning!

Postbox letter from Anonymous

We had the bad luck of finding a great school in Trang, but our agent wasn't really up to scratch!

Why is English so poor in Thailand?

Students are simply just not 'taught' here

Recently I read an article that stated adults in Thailand are ranked 55th from a list of 60 countries on their English proficiency skills. From what I have seen as an English teacher working in government secondary schools over the last 10 years, I'm not surprised,

Another swipe at the system

I know I'm not the first to write about the education system in Thailand

Last week I was sat down by my managers (yes, this required all three of them) with minutes to go before the bell for first lesson and was told that my teaching style is not appropriate for the school. I had to clarify exactly what it was that they didn't like and was met with the response, "We don't want TEFL style teaching at our school."