Not the game – Just questions I ask (asked) myself
I knew everything when I first started teaching. Mwaaahahahaha.
I’ll say that again… Mwaaahahahaha.
No need to ask questions about what I was doing in the classroom. It was easy – you just stood at the front of the class and explained for one hour what the present progressive was and then asked if there were any questions. :-0
That was in 1989 and I was a cowboy teacher in Bangkok. I loved it because I had just quit my job as an accountant in England. It was the first job I’d had that left me with a smile on my face when I went home every evening. I did that Bangkok job to earn some cash to save up money for the flight to Australia so I could continue backpacking. I worked every day for 11 weeks and decided I wanted to be a TEFL teacher.
After 2 1/2 years of living in cheap guest houses, tents and sleeping underneath buildings, I went back to England. I wanted my CELTA to continue my travels. I went to Izmir, Turkey to do my CELTA. And then the questions started coming. Thousands of them. The first one was – Just what was I doing in Thailand with a 99.3% teacher talking time?
More followed:
First peer-observation questions (Izmir):
1. Why isn’t the floor opening up so I can make my escape?
2. Why are my lips quivering uncontrollably.
3. Why do my peers have to stare at me like that?
4. Why aren’t all students answering all of my questions using the form I’ve just presented?
5. Why did that 28-minute role play take 28 seconds? What now?
Post CELTA questions (On the plane from Turkey to Japan):
6. How in the name of all methodologies and dangling participles can I teach English?
7. How does one become a butler?
8. What happens if they ask me to explain the difference between phrasal verbs constituted by a verb + particle + object(s) + wh-clauses, and those taking a transitive verb + preposition + pronoun + wh-clause. …….. What’s a phrasal verb?
9. Will they sell Jeremy Harmer books in Japan?
10. How many TEFL teachers drive BMWs?
First job interview questions (Osaka, Japan)
11. Why a question on how to teach the passive? He knows I just finished my CELTA. Grrrrrrrrr….
12. Will my 11 weeks of experience be enough to get this job?
13. Am I really being interviewed for a job in one of Japan’s biggest schools?
14. Will I have enough money left to survive to the next interview if I don’t get this job?
15. Why doesn’t he know what a CELTA is?
First lesson questions (Japanese conversation school, Japan)
16. Why aren’t they laughing at my really very hilarious jokes?
17. What’s “Are you having a good time?” in Japanese?
18. Why do they all nod when I ask them “Do you understand?” and then look confused when I say “OK, go.”?
19. Should I go for sushi after this lesson and then do karaoke and then go back to England?
20. Ahh… wait… someone answered… could there be a career in this for me?
Well, they weren’t the 20 questions I had in mind at all when I started this post. They suddenly appeared from nowhere. The 20 questions I had thought about and written down will come in the next two posts.
