Let's all make a difference in Thailand
Make a difference with Design for Change
You can change the lives of your students and improve the quality of life in Thailand by spending just a few hours a week organizing a Design for Change contest at your school.
Things I won't do for work
They say that everybody has a price
Although most of my TEFL experience has not been in Thailand, there is still a long list of things I won’t accept in a teaching job. Talk numbers and cross my palm with silver because these are the things I simply won’t do for work.
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.
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?
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.
Is TEFL teaching a career or a job?
Perhaps it's not such an easy question to answer
Should an individual accepting a position as a TEFL teacher think this is the first step in a career or should one consider it “only” as a job?
Why?
Standing up for the teaching profession, and the complicity of silence.
“Someone wrote on your blog that you are 'dangerous'. I say you are a neurotic loose canon and a liability for a school, working with children”
Leave teaching in Thailand to the hacks
This is all just ridiculous
I no longer teach ESL classes to Thai school students. I will never again work for another Thai boss. I now work for a Chinese man with Thai citizenship (caters to the Taiwanese test prep market) and a pair of foreigners. If you're smart and resourceful enough, there are thousands of opportunities out there
A teacher, an old wise man, two punks, and a chicken
Taking responsibility for your teaching
Every once in a while I get frustrated with my students. Yes that’s right; I’m not a perfect teacher. But the person I should get most frustrated with, however, is me.
Of teachers and emperors without clothes
An ironic view of a job ad
Employment agencies in are in dire need of actors for live performances on stage. Body piercing, visible tattoos, drinking or smoking in public, or any kind of physical handicap, even if slight, will qualify the applicant.
