Job Discussion Forums

[Henry_Cowell]

In my (rather lengthy) career as a teacher and trainer in many regions of the world, I've frequently seen 'outsiders' come into a new situation and successfully do something a bit different. In almost all such situations, I've been magnanimous enough to welcome the changes and to change my own ways of looking at things that I thought I'd thoroughly understood and mastered.

To those who are so insecure as to protect their 'turf' against outsiders no matter how successful the latter might be, I say only this: Real teachers of English aren't Middle East TEFLers or Japan TEFLers or Mexico TEFLers. They are simply superb teachers of English wherever they might be teaching. I've seen this many times with my own eyes, and it never ceases to amaze me when myopic regionalists think that they are reinventing the wheel on their own private turf.

[globalnomad2]

That includes management: i.e., ESL people tend to make appalling managers (not all, of course; note I said "tend"). It's good to have someone come in with an MA in creative writing and run a university ESL Foundation department. And one of my best managers in this field had an MBA without any ESL background.

[moonraven]

First of all, Brian's comment was what was condescending and arrogant. Most formal contributions to learning theory have come from "rat runners"--and I did research of that sort 35 years ago, partly to support in the laboratory setting those hypotheses developed in university classrooms.

I can tell you that people are not rats, but also I can tell you that rats aren't either--in the sense that it is actually much harder to establish correct parameters of reinforcers for their learning, or even correctly define what is learned by rats than it is for people. Because rats do not share a common language nor form of living with us, comunication is not possible. When Wittgenstein wrote in the Philosophical Investigations (a work my freshman university students worked with in Communication classes back in 1968-1971): "If a lion could talk, we would not understand him", he said something with many important implications--maybe even here on Dave's.

As for the rude advice that I should be spending my consulting time listening instead of "lecturing", I have to ask globalnomad: Listening to WHOM? Doomsayers and players of Ain't It Awful all say the same thing--that changes can't be made, that education will always be a mediocre morrass at best and a Slough of Despond at worst. Frankly, nobody who is seriously devoted to making changes and especially in supporting changes in consciousness wants to listen to the same old negative stuff. Some of us even regard it as just a cop-out (another 60s expression), or justification for not doing anything except being a body in the classroom and collecting a paycheck.

And as for the comment about it being good for someone with an MA in Creative Writing to run and ESL department, please be advised that my first graduate degree was precisely that. That orientation--CREATIVITY--doesn't have to be tossed into the scrapheap just because someone decides to spend 15 years or so in the ESL field.

ESL is regarded by many on this forum as a low self-esteem field--and while I find that sad, I am beginning to see that it is a reflection of the acceptance of mediocrity that is rampant in some quarters.

I would like to close by offering 2 things:

1. A link to a Robert Fisk piece which my students are working with this week--http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0731-21.htm

2. This quote from Paulo Freire: "I�d like to say to us as educators: poor are those among us who lose their capacity to dream, to create their courage to denounce and announce..."

[Cleopatra]

[dmb]

[moonraven]

You really go to great lengths to justify maintaining the status quo in what you consider to be YOUR turf (since when are YOU the named replacement for King Fahd, BTW?)

If you read that article you should have noticed at the top where it had just been reprinted from its original source (The Independent): The Gulf Times.

If you plan to tell me that your students are forbidden to read an English language newspaper, save it.

I believe I mentioned that next week I will be going to the Bahrain campus to revamp programs. If I am not mistaken, that's a Gulf country. If the response there is even HALF what it has been here, I will be very pleased.

As for the restrictions that you are working under (suddenly now this has all morphed from stereotyping Arab STUDENTS to something quite different), all I can say is that if they are so onerous I find it rather remarkable that so many of you have logged so many years working in the Gulf. You wouldn't be doing it for the money, would you?

In the 60s we called that "selling out".

[Mark100]

Good luck Moonraven.

I admire your determination and courage.

Most teachers that spent a bit of time in the ME fail with their expectations and accept mediocrity or something a little less in my case.

I am not saying that things cannot be done and improvements made but most cannot be bothered to swim against the tide.
If you find the right institution and the right management you may just survive and even prosper a little.

[moonraven]

Thanks, Mark.

After living since early childhood with systemic lupus--which should maybe be called systematic lupus, as it systematically destroys the body's organs--I am approaching my 61st birthday with a more determined than ever belief that life is way too short to be wasted accepting mediocrity in any aspect of it.

I have spent my life swimming against the tide, and will continue to do so--whether that tide is chronic illness, educational anaesthesia, political idiocy or a host of other noxious-to-health tides.

I also believe in stirring things up, as we have a saying in Spanish: A rio revuelto, ganancia de pescadores. (Experience has demonstrated that fish are more easily caught in turbulent waters than in calm waters--perhaps because in turbulent waters the fish don't see the dangers they are courting.)

[web fishing]

I agree with the comments Henry_Cowell and moonraven makes.
I may be a no-body on Dave's forum, but I know my worth as an educator.

Regardless of my graduate degrees, as an educator [ESL teacher of only four years], my philosophy of education, an oath that I took to myself when I decided to teach was to empower my students so that they may not only make it in the academic world, but also the world outside the classroom. I am not trying to be the next Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, protester, solider... of education, but

[moonraven]

Hear, hear!

Funny you should mention Freire, too. I have been spending some time in the Instituto Paulo Freire website this afternoon, and my students will be debating the implications of "All education is political" tomorrow....

Freire is getting a lot of play again--especially in Brazil and Venezuela, although there are some folks working on Freire-inspired stuff in Mexico, as well. I used his work extensively in a Learning Strategies course I designed and gave in Spanish a year ago to entering university students with deficient academic infrastructure in southern Mexico, and students really liked working with his essays.

I have 5 of his books with me here in Jordan--unfortunately they are all Spanish and Portugese versions, so I have to translate the bits myself for use in the classroom. Thanks to you for including that chapter here, which I just copied into a word document!

Nobody is either a don nadie or a big shot here on Dave's--well, I guess Dave is a big shot--but the rest of us who are here for a variety of reasons, and despite some megalomaniacs who have sometimes posted here telling us that they were the owner of the site--or the Emperor of Ice Cream--this is a level playing field.

[Henry_Cowell]

Let's not forget how Shakespeare depicted "Cleopatra" when she heard news that she didn't like:

Messenger
Will't please you hear me?

CLEOPATRA
I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak'st....

The most infectious pestilence upon thee!

[Strikes him down]

Messenger
Good madam, patience.

CLEOPATRA
What say you? Hence,

[Strikes him again]
Horrible villain! or I'll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me; I'll unhair thy head:

[She hales him up and down]
Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in brine,
Smarting in lingering pickle.

Messenger
Gracious madam,
I that do bring the news made not the match.

[globalnomad2]

Some speak as though experienced instructors with stable personalities were devoid of creativity and competence. It is not new ideas we object to (not that Moonraven has presented anything new, however). It's the pomposity and arrogance with which those pearls of wisdom are presented. "Disagree with me and you're mediocre" is what is essentially repeated, many times over. A ten-minute perusal of her profile with previous postings will be self-explanatory--and will no doubt elicit some obvious questions about her continued presence in these pages.

[EnglishBrian]

Someone think of a steroetype quick.

[Hector_Lector]

Linda Blair in �The Exorcist�.

[Hector_Lector]

Kathy Bates in �Misery�, where she kidnaps James Caan because she thinks she knows more about his writing than she does.

(This and the one above are not really stereotypes, but both spring to mind. One - a demon-possessed child spewing wildly. Two - someone being a bit of a bully.)