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.
Unfinished business
Musings from the tortured mind of a damaged teacher
I spend 12 hours a day at the school in which I teach. I don't have to, but I do. There is a two hour and forty-five minute break between the morning classes and the afternoon classes. That's common in Cambodia, I hear. The international schools and the language schools follow this pattern.
When your head is full of lesson plans
How to handle teacher insomnia
Have you ever experienced an inability to sleep, "sleep deprivation" or insomnia? Are you bothered by it? How do you overcome it when you will be teaching the next day for possibly 4-5 hours?
Language center rip-off
Postbox letter from Rose
I wanted a change of scenery and when I saw a job advertised in another area, I applied. I received an e mail back asking me to go and have an interview.
The enemy within
The evil side of the TEFL industry
It is a complicity of silence that sees many foreign teachers working hand-in-glove with a Thai administration that cares only about money and maintaining an educational system mired in cultural backwardness and social repression.
Agencies and monthly salaries
Postbox letter from Teacher Andries
Why is it when the school does not pay the agency on time the teacher does not get his salary as per contract?
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.
Student failings and blame
Postbox letter from Phetpeter
My stuggle is always the time I have to spend with each class and find my English only lessons are undermined by other imported teachers who will use more Thai in class then English when the previous year I taught them using English only
The good, bad and the ugly
Postbox letter from Ian
I am lucky enough to be teaching some students that are, not only bright, but show signs of free thinking and a desire to expand their boundaries. I don't and will not pass every student, and if it costs me my job, who cares?
