Job Discussion Forums

steven_gerrard · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 155

When I said they had their own places, I meant that they owned their own flats or houses out here, not schools. We all work for the same company.

As for NI, I pay voluntary contributions but some of my collegues have their NI taken out at source. Its your own choice really what you do- some pay none at all.

Phillip Donnelly · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 43

Yes Steven, do tell. Where is this golden land of opportunity?

bobs12 · Joined: 27 Apr 2004 Posts: 310 Location: Saint Petersburg

I'm on the edge of my seat, fingers poised over the keyboard ready to pound the destination into STAR travel's online ticket finder...

I do know one teacher here with his own flat. His parents bought it for him.

steven_gerrard · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 155

With the best will in the world bobs, with your attitude to your profession, sorry, stopgap, you'd never get a job here.

Phillip Donnelly · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 43

Stephen's playing coy.
I guess we'll never know where this TEFL Eden is.
It's understandable really, I suppose-he probably doesn't want the place filling up with unprofessional cynics corrupting the virtuous. I guess there's no place for us in Teacher Heaven. The archangle Thornbury won't be waiting for us at the Pearly Gates of Communicative Methodology. He'll merely point his thumb downwards in a kinaesthetic gesture, and it'll be surly Teen 1's for eternity, in 10 different sites a day, with no holidays, and no such thing as a non-observed lesson.
Repent sinners!
There's a special ring of Haedes reserved for unprofessional TEFLers that even Dante couldn't bring himself to write about.
Repent...

bobs12 · Joined: 27 Apr 2004 Posts: 310 Location: Saint Petersburg

Steven, if you don't tell me where it is, I'll obviously never get a job there Very Happy

I know- you're in Wales, aren't you? Undoubtedly in the mountains just north of Pontywyslystwthartystfwyth, teaching shepherds to speak English so that you can one day get directions back to Aberystonystywithystith train station. Your colleauges have their own mud huts, but you have to rent one.

Yes, with my attitude to this job, I'd never get anywhere near that level of prestige. I have turned down the Moscow State Railway University before. Mainly because I had no intention of ever living in Moscow again. But that ain't half as good as the Welsh mountains, coz everone wants to be there. Oh yes.

Are you sure it's my attitude towards my 'profession', or is it just because I don't wear an anorak, sport a dishevelled beard, smell faintly of cabbage and harp on a bout the latest 'ground-breaking methodology' that promises to finally get students to stop saying 'he' instead of 'she' by use of transcendental meditation and tantric-productive practice, where students work themselves into a silent frenzy, thinking about all the things they want to say but without actually allowing themselves to make a sound?

At this point you're undoubtedly clenching your fists to symbolise the contractions in gotoPhillipDonelly'shellandstopbringingshametomyprofessionyouuncouthlittleupstart...

My attitude to my profession would explain how, after four weeks teaching in a school famed for slave wages, my hourly rate was more than doubled, how after three months I was assigned to run a residential intensive business course in Finland single-handedly with students including the Dean of the economics and finance faculty of the Moscow State Railway University and two of his lecturers, why they specifically asked for me to teach them again on their upcoming course in Stockholm, how in my next job I was asked to teach the school managers' children, why I was asked to train two non-native teachers for another Finnish language camp, and how after a total of about ten months in 'professional' TEFL, I was hired as an in-company teacher. And all that without a CELTA.

I should hang my head in shame.

You don't have to take TEFL seriously to do a good job of teaching English, mate. If, as you say, you have students standing up and telling you what you're doing wrong in class (in the Welsh mountains, no less) and I don't, maybe it would help if you lightened up a shade or two?

I apologise for my inexcusably long sentences.

steven_gerrard · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 155

Spot on the lot. Nice one! Well done on all your achievements in the EFL world bobs.

As for Phillip Donnelly- I'll edit this as I'm not naturally a catty person, there's just something about the omnipresent Bobs whch brings it out in me....

bobs12 · Joined: 27 Apr 2004 Posts: 310 Location: Saint Petersburg

Tell us where you really work so we can be sure never to apply there!!

Rice Paddy Daddy · Joined: 11 Jul 2004 Posts: 425 Location: Japan

Great!

bobs12 · Joined: 27 Apr 2004 Posts: 310 Location: Saint Petersburg

While it is always nice to be admired by men of intellect, it is more important to be despised by fools.

steven_gerrard · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 155

Actually I have the DELTA now, not that it's any of your business. Anyway, I,like many others who live and work in Russia who venture on this site, have indeed found Bobs to be just a bit too much.

Good luck everyone. Sorry for being bitchy- as I said, it's not really my style but the guy really brings it out of you.

zaneth · Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:16 pm Post subject:

Getting a little over the top, guys.

Is there anyone who's been in such a serious position all of their working life that they've had no contact with the ridiculous in this field? Does being serious about your job mean you don't find some things funny? Don't even doctors and air traffic controllers find some things funny about their jobs? Ridiculous even? Isn't this life?

It's a funny site. We don't need to get into the whole "Is teaching a serious profession debate". Being serious and finding something funny are not mutually exclusive are they?

Phillip Donnelly · Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 43

Agreed!