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?
Failing students and the failing ESL industry
Failing young students is simply a poor strategy
Without a doubt the ESL industry around the world is primarily a scam that is governed by unscrupulous business people that rarely have any pedagogical knowledge or academic backgrounds in the field of education
How did salaries drop so much?
Postbox letter from Ronald
What in the blazes has happened to the salaries in the Thailand teaching profession?
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?
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?
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”
The courage of Arpaporn
In defense of exclusion, discrimination, and xenophobia
I would like to say that my latest writing assignment given to my grade 10 and 11 classes has given me hope; but I can’t. While some of the writing showed ‘glimmers of hope’, at least in my eyes, many of the opinions my students shared unfortunately matched the biased, ignorant, and bigoted statements made incessantly by many Thai adults.
The harsh reality
Postbox letter from Ralph Sasser
When a student inevitably fails the semester final exam and/or has poor grades, the foreign teacher is instructed to dumb down the exam and let the student retake it so he/she will get a passing grade or retake it several times if necessary. If the teacher refuses to give the exam until the student passes, the foreigner teacher is deemed incompetent and terminated.
Why so bitter?
Postbox letter from Ell Tee
You English teachers in Thailand sure are a grumpy lot.