Job Discussion Forums

[thrifty]

TEFLer fantasies 1-15

1. 2000 YTL a month is great.

2. They picked me up at the airport-wow

3. I didn't want a 9-5 job so I do TEFL where I either work 9-5 or worse do split shifts.

4. TEFL house parties a great.

5. It isn't about the money.

6. I have the CELTA so I am a teacher.

7. I have experience so I don't need any qualifications.

8. If I do an MA I will get a good TEFL job.

9. TEFL is a real job.

10. Non-TEFLers envy TEFLers.

11. I never want to return home.

12. I am lucky because I am not in debt like my mates back home. (I also have nothing)

13. Showing Mr. Bean and The Wrong Trousers to my intermediate class of engineers is a good idea.

14. Bus travel is great because it is less environmentally damaging and I can afford it on my TEFL salary.

15. House shares in your thirties is OK.

[Henry_Cowell]

16. Constantly complaining about your sorry lot in life will make you feel just a wee bit better about it.

[Baba Alex]

I liked number thirteen. It reminds me of a time when someone came to class I was teaching to promote a work and travel scheme. One of the students (quite rightly) complained that it was cutting into his lesson time. The person asked him why he didn't want to learn about "work and travel", the student's rather eloquent reply was

"I'm a qualified engineer, not a chambermaid, and I do not wish to pay two thousand dollars to become a chambermaid, either."

[Sally Vaite]

17. I have proven that I am not unemployable, after all!

18. If I work hard in a school, I have no doubt that I will be treated fairly and will be rewarded with a long term future with lots of perks.

19. The management respects my opinions and will work with his staff to make school the best. ( snigger snigger)

20. It is all about helping people and teaching English, which is, after all, the only real international language, will make the world a better place.

Honestly, this is just an exercise in cynicism. Everybody starts a career with wide eyes and innocence and then they turn jaded. Either you accept the shortcomings of the job or you leave. Teaching as a profession only survives, I suppose, because new innocence blood is refreshing the tired and the cynical.
As you told me in another thread, take it or leave it.

[thrifty]

We are back to the ya sev ya terket attitude you find so common here.

A third way is to carry on TEFLing and moan on and on.

[Henry_Cowell]

[molly farquharson]

it disturbs me that thrifty and others use TEFL as a bad word. We are teachers and that is an honorable profession. if we were after money we would be businesspeople. In this profession, we can travel to other countries, we can learn so much about the wider world, and we can share our world with our students. I have been in this profession for longer than just about anybody I know here. I am not jaded, though I am occasionally cynical. I love teaching, whether it is the language or anything else. And I love the learning that comes from the teaching. Maybe it is cool to be jaded, so I'm not cool. If a person chooses to be a teacher for short or long term, that person must be responsible for teaching her students, whether life seems to be a bowl of cherries at that time or not.

[thrifty]

You get what you pay for.

[Henry_Cowell]

[Hector_Lector]

I think this is getting a bit personal. ObviouslyHenry and Molly, you have axes to grind. Please do it elsewhere sparks are flying

[Baba Alex]

[tvik]

i enjoy it too. the people who suggest that there are better things to talk about generally don't talk about anything better and better talk, you can bet is never better than mildly boring. The thing we share here is our jobs and this country and that's what we talk about. For better or worse.

[Henry_Cowell]

better = Molly

worse = "thrifty"

[thrifty]

[thrifty]

Do you also carry a notebook around with you called ''Entrailicus' ideas?''

Do you have a personal mission statement?

I bet you have a copy of your five-year plan posted on your wall.