9 Things You Always Wanted to Know About the TEFL Racket

*but were afraid to ask*

What's with all the damn acronyms? TEFL, CELTA, ESL, FCE, DELTA... all these have something to do with teaching English. TEFL, incidentally, stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Learning English is Big. Big like Whoa! It should be no surprise, then, that teaching English is big business. I've heard Language Link --my employer -- referred to more than once as 'The McDonald's of language schools.'

In fact -- and this is where it begins to get Russia-specific-- demand is growing furiously, leaving the supply of teachers soundly in the dust.

As with other big industries, chain schools naturally move towards product uniformity. In this situation, that means that one or two certification processes have become the gold standard, and sine qua non of teaching English. CELTA is the chief of them all. It stands for Certificate for English.... something something something...

So what do you do when you run out of certified English teachers? Any company worth it's salt will find creative ways to meet the demand. Language Link solved this by soliciting people who lacked Certification, seemed to have some faint whiff of competence and hiring them as 'interns' for less pay. (I don't mean this bitterly... It's a better deal for me to do this then drop $5000 on a damn CELTA course).

But... you might think this would make a difference in one's responsibilities. You would be wrong. Here, the only distinguishing thing about interns is their paycheck. (That and they have quarterly 'projects' whose satisfactory--ie. >60th percentile -- completion is a prerequisite for pay increases.

'But Peter,' you ask, 'Don't the students care whether they are being taught by an experienced teacher rather than an inexperienced schmuck like yourself?' They may, but on this, where possible, they are kept safely in the dark. Teachers are tacitly encouraged to keep the lights off, as well.

But what if it isn't possible to keep the client in the dark? In my area of employment -- 'In Company' teachers who go to corporate clients -- most of the corporate clients demand resumes of their prospective teachers. On this I have nothing to say... Only that, I might have heard of some occasions where a teacher found out from independent sources that unbeknownst to him, he had become 5 years older and earned a Master's degree in Linguistics, according to his CV. Or, I might not have heard that...

I can't complain, though. The new Russia is a hard place to work, and they make this whole process damn easy. If you can't stand the grime (and Language Link is most certainly that... quite possibly the grimiest in Russia, which would place it high in the running for grimiest worldwide) find someone else to clean. If not...
Forget it Jake, it's Russiatown.

Kittens!

I grinned at her. The little blonde at the PBX cocked a shell-like ear and smiled a small fluffy smile. She looked playful and eager, but not quite sure of herself, like a new kitten in a house where they don't care much about kittens.

Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake

Winter Kept Us Warm

Sympathies

What determines where our historical sympathies lie? I'm talking about that purely arational affinity that you feel when reading about a conflict. I've certainly picked a side in nearly every history I've read. Sometimes your rational and arational sympathies coincide: you want your civilization to win because you like it more than the other. This doesn't mean you necessarily condone the conflict or your side's actions, just that you like them better.
Other times your rational position and arational affinities are opposed. You know, intellectually, that one side is better than the other, but there is something just irresistible about that other side.

Most of the time it is predictable: You root for the side which has a greater civilizational similarity to your own. For me, a partial list of these cases are:

Protestants over Catholics in 30 yrs war
Catholics over Umayyads in Spain
Crusaders over Arabs in Palestine
England over France pretty much always, even though
America over England in the Revolution
(remember, these are arational sympathies -- they don't have to make sense)

What about civilizations whose connection to your own is more tenuous? For me:

Byzantines over the Turks --indeed, over those Crusader dogs as well!
Arabs over the Turks in WWI
Chinese over Japanese, pretty much always (although if a conflict developed today it might be different)
Greeks over Persians
Persians over Arabs
Britons over Normans

For conflicts like these, the causes of our sympathies are not immediately obvious. A lot of the time, it can be something as simple as this: you sympathize with the side whose part was taken by the first book you read on the subject. Other times, you might see one side as more blatantly aggressive than the other, and throw your sympathizes toward the victim. Still other times, its simply a mistaken instinctual feeling of civilizational continuity. For example, its likely that I would have found much more in common with the Normans in 1066 than with the Britons. But, because of the names, it FEELS like I am siding with those damn frogs! As for my sympathies for the Arabs over the Turks, I can narrow it down to two causes: THAT movie; and the fact that I am still bitter over that 1453 business.

Post Facto

I know I'm about two months late on this, but I was just thinking...

So, a man gets hanged. His killers are a bloodthirsty mob, who, while doing the deed, shout out the name of the county's biggest terrorist. They called it justice, and after the hanging they went back to their day jobs --- exterminating people from the other clan.

The man gave them nothing - he died with stoic equanimity, muttering a single 'Go to Hell,' before his neck is snapped.

So who am I supposed to sympathize with: the snakes, or the man who locked them in their respective bags?

Oh Work

I've had a bit of a strange start. I was assigned to 'In Company' teaching, which means that I will be going to various businesses and giving lessons there. Apparently the In Company department twisted quite a few arms to be able to get more teachers as soon as possible. However, when I finished training they said they wouldn't have anything for me for 2 weeks. This pissed off the principal who made some calls. Anyway, I have my first lesson tomorrow. I'm a bit nervous since it is an individual lesson with a beginner, but I'm sure all will turn out.

In other news, Moscow is COLD! And I like it! It has confirmed what I have always thought -- that I prefer extreme cold to extreme hot. As long as one is properly dressed (which I am, thanks to my new keen winter coat), it is quite pleasant to go for walks in the snow.

Statues!

I took a walk in the snow on Saturday, and came upon many a statue.

This is my favorite. It is Vladimir Vysotsky, the famous Russian bard. His music being trenchantly anti-Soviet, it was, obviously, banned. He gained a huge underground following, though, and, as is clear from the picture, is remembered quite well.




During life, though, he was most famous for being an actor, his defining roll being that of Hamlet. Here he is preforming Hamlet's famous monologue.




The others don't get so extensive a description.

Here is Nikolai Chernyshevsky.


He was a famous Socialist author and philosopher as well as an influence of Lenin.

This is Mikhail Lermontov.


Poet and novelist, his most famous work A Hero of Our Time is one which, unfortunately, I have yet to read.

Aliens

The view of the biological anthropologists can be likened to the film series Star Wars, whose aliens have different physical anatomies but are rather disconcertingly united by an unshakable human nature. The view of the cultural anthropologists is more that of the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, whose protagonists take human form but retain their alien natures. (the film that got it right is Independence Day: If not human, it correctly suggests, everything is alien.)
Consilience E.O Wilson

Top Ten Things That Were Not as Expected

10. I have a TV in my room, and have already watched more MTV here than I ever have in the States.

9. I have no roommate. Apparently, they were expecting some fellow named Mike - in the same program - but he never came, and they still haven’t heard from him.

8. My training period will be only two weeks, now. It was to be three, but Language Link is short on teachers, and it is not a company to let lack of training get in the way of business. Seriously, though, I think I will be OK with two weeks.

7. Since I didn’t limit the expectations to me, I guess it’s appropriate to include the fact that my colleague Giorgio, an Italian who speaks English well, but as a second language, will not be teaching Italian as expected, those positions being filled, but English instead.

6. I guess the fact that I was always intended to teach in Moscow was never in question. Not that I have a problem with that.

5. I was under the impression that there was a dress code for teachers. In fact, that doesn’t apply to regular teachers, who seem to wear whatever they desire, but only to those teaching ‘In Company.’ That is, those who teach businessmen.

4. In fact, it seems likely that I will be one of those who teach ‘In Company,’ and constrained by the dress code after all. They ‘don’t normally have interns teach In Company,’ but are short on In Company teachers, as British and American males who dress well are the only ones who Russian businessmen take seriously, and of those, they are in short supply.

3. I’m writing this on my laptop in Kofe Khaus (Coffee House), where I thought would be Free WiFi. In fact, it requires some code, which I have no idea where to obtain. I will have to post this elsewhere.

2. There was no snow when I got here. It was been, as Artyom, the man who picked me up from the airport, said, ‘like summer.’ This is a bit of hyperbole, but the weather is, nevertheless, very very strange.

1. It’s snowing! For the first time since I’ve been here.