Crazy left-handers can make excellent teachers - my story
Is being left-handed a curse or a gift?
As a small boy, I would pick up a rock with my right hand and then my left, to throw it into the ocean. I remember my father telling me years later that I was trying to figure out whether I was going to be left-handed or right-handed.
Memories - good and bad
Casting my mind back to a government school I taught at years ago
Part of our family holiday was to be spent in Kalasin so I decided to reach out to my ex-colleagues and see how they were. Truth be told, I was also curious to learn about the school and if my replacements had been successful or not.
Stumbling blocks
What I didn’t learn in my 100-hour online ESL course
I can see my skin through my dress shirt because the thin layer of fine linen is totally soaked through. In short, it’s too hot to care about anything academic.
An amazing TEFL journey
From Saudi to Thailand to China (and a bit of America in-between)
China is definitely on the upswing as far as English teaching goes. Thailand is a place I love but professionally dead to me. Saudi was challenging, interesting and of course lucrative.
Going Home
The difficulties of finding employment when a teacher returns to the USA
The economy is functioning like an alcoholic's ailing liver. This has been headline news for several years, but seeing it in the news and experiencing it first hand was quite different.
A Guinness book of records candidate?
I know a man whose worked for 19 schools
Ben said that he didn't plan to hop from one school to another. It just happened. From the time he started teaching at age 20 - but now in his 60's - he had taught in 19 schools (excluding tutorial centers). He taught in thirteen schools in the Philippines, five in Thailand and one in Afghanistan.
Happy hour at the ESL bar and grill
Amusing the students to death
Students are being scammed out of their money by an industry that is content to amuse the students to death by turning English language education into a perverted version of happy hour at Joe's Bar. Teachers and students deserve better than that.
An unwanted duty
Is this Thai tradition pain or pleasure?
In many schools in Thailand, Thai teachers, as well as foreign teachers, take turns in standing at the school gate to greet parents and students. Two or more teachers are assigned, depending on the size of the school, to do this each day.
I've given up looking too
Postbox letter from Sir Heath
I made the mistake of bringing some first year students' problems to the attention of the head of the section last year. By September, after four and half year at this university, despite 'an excellent record of work' the university decided to let me go.
One year later
Thoughts from a first time teacher on living and working in Thailand
The end of the term has made me very contemplative. A year ago I was in a very different situation than I am now; I was jobless and overwhelmed with debt and I was very confused about how to lift myself up from that desperate situation and pursue my dream of living abroad.
