Been a long time since I posted anything really worthwhile. I feel like a lot has changed since I began my “career” (ahem…) as what’s known almost universally now as a “TEFL blogger”. What exactly has changed is a little difficult for me to put my finger on, but I’ll try.
I’m not the only one who has detected a change in the world of TEFL blogging world. In recent months it seems that lots of folks have taken note of this shift, among them the great Mr. Alex Case (who I’ll admit was the first and primary inspiration for me to get my feet wet in the whole blog thing) in his TEFLtastic post entitled “Has the TEFL zeitgeist changed?”.
Here he analyzed the bipolar nature of the TEFL blog thing, which in the end he terms “positive” and “negative”–this dichotomy between the “nice” bloggers on one hand, and on the other hand, the, er, “others”. The gist of it was this:
First you had the innocent, helpful and neighbourly TEFL blogger, ”serious” (Insights into TEFL) and/or “contemplative” (Teacher in Development) affairs and their genuine and generous contributions (of varying usefulness or viability, might I add) to the enormous virtual library that is the Internet and to the theory and practice of our “profession” in general.
Then there were the “negative” ones: seedy, scuzzy types—who conceived of their blogs as either vehicles for their satirical jibes at lame students, DoSes, fellow teachers and the TEFL industry in general , as in the case of the venerable Sandy McManus) or as journals to record their drunken shenanigans and intercultural exchanges of bodily fluids, in order to share these exploits with the world at large, often with hilarious and fascinating results, as in the case of the infamous English Teacher X.
(Also, I suppose you have the “crusade” blogs which by their nature are intended to help raise awareness of the many pitfalls and scams of the often shady business of TEFLing in the world (“positive”), but which often also had their scuzzy aftertaste, I guess by contagion from the villainous exploiters they sought to expose (“negative”).)
While the one-year anniversary of $trictly 4 My T.E.A.C.H.E.R.Z. is still a month or two away, I’ve been inspired to think about where I fit in with all this.
My conclusion is that I have a little of both.
When I started, I didn’t really think much about where I wanted to go with the whole thing. It seemed like a nice, new, interesting hobby. I wanted to try to hold my thinking and planning up to some kind of standard. I wanted to put some kind of pressure on myself to really polish up and think through some of the things I’d been doing and materials I’d been creating—the idea of letting other (probably better and more experienced!) teachers see your work like this makes one much more conscientious about certain things). And it turned out to be very motivating, and even kind of fun.
So yeah, $4MT is a friendly, neighbourhood teaching blog, real “positive”. But, at the same time, the contents of each individual lesson are a bit, well, on the shady side, why deny it. “Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll”, or almost. As American movie-goer types might say, if not X-rated, or even R-rated, a lot of what I (and my students!) seem to appreciate is decidedly “PG-13” if you will.
(That last bit in parentheses is important. I often find myself thinking, “Are they really going to be interested in this? Am I committing the cardinal sin of bringing something into class because it interests me rather than my students?” The idea is to please both, to generate interest on both sides of the equation. But then I tend to know my students’ tastes fairly well, that’s all.)
It’s not unlike a 12” hip hop single from back in the day (they still put those out?) – with the clean version and the dirty version. With that in mind, I’ve put together a list, like Side A and Side B, the “clean” side and the “dirty” side.
”DIRTY SIDE”
1. Unemployed Scientist reading lesson (booze)
2. Mr. Show “Lie Detector” Present Perfect/Past simple lesson (booze, drugs, innuendo)
3. “Intelligent Falling adj.+obj+to+inf lesson (not dirty but fairly anti-religious and heathen)
4. “Guilty Conscience” reported commands (this one takes the cake…)
5. Mr. Show “Do you have anything to declare?” Customs roleplay (drug smuggling)
”THE CLEAN SIDE”
Uhh, everything else here.
Now that that’s out of the way, I feel ready to get back in the ring and start posting again after my summer hiatus. Lots of random crap to sift through. And I promise, no more posts where I just put up some links to other posts (if I were a “rea”l blogger, I would know the term they use for that…)
