Making the transition
Reasons why people teach English and the possible career paths
Foreign ESL teachers in Thailand or other parts in Asia are a diverse lot and have many different motivations for teaching abroad.
The road less travelled
What is the real essence of happiness?
One Filipino teacher from Chulalongkorn University Nonthaburi English Project told me that his mother adopted two street kids in the Philippines. The mother sends the kids to school and provides them their daily needs. What a way of attaining happiness!
The power of positive thinking
A positive attitude can make a teacher's life in Thailand much happier
Some foreign teachers love engaging with Thai culture while others find each day a struggle to overcome culture clashes. All the teachers experience the same culture, so why such different reactions?
The teacher's diary revisited
One teacher's descent into madness. Now updated for 2011
The diary is the heartbreaking four-week journal of Mr Jim Elmdon - a teacher who came to Thailand and failed miserably. Keep a box of tissues handy.
Who's insulting who?
Postbox letter from Lucie
We are all free to choose what jobs we apply for, and those of us lucky / well-organised enough to have a teaching degree or plenty of experience can choose to apply only for the better-paid jobs, confident that we'll get offered at least one of them.
Win-win teachers
How to become a more valued employee
Whether in the staffroom, lunchroom, shop floor, barracks, or around the water cooler next to the cubicles, the main topic of conversation has always been how incompetent the bosses and management were.
Are you a crappy teacher?
Time to take the self-evaluation test
If you have evaluated yourself honestly and you have come to a conclusion that you are in fact a crappy teacher, what can you do about it? Since most of these things actually have to do with personal motivation, probably not a lot.
What are we here to teach?
Should we see ourselves as missionaries for Western culture values?
As foreigners teaching in a foreign country, what are the expectations and where are the boundaries?
Its that time of year again.
Postbox letter from Ian
We all seem to be scrambling for something. It all depends on if that something is actually worth having. I count myself lucky inasmuch as I work with a very good group of people, plus there's a lot of variety.
Why older teachers find it difficult to get work here
Postbox letter from David Fahey
What I saw over the years in Thailand though were a number of older teachers who had, over the years, gained a lot of experience but somehow lost their love of teaching along the way and had failed to realise it or, if they had, they were often in denial about it
