TEFL Waffle

 When people think of 'teaching', they often think about a knowledgeable person at a whiteboard talking to the class. What they don't consider is the hours and hours and hours of loneliness at desks with stacks of papers and red pens. Boring and useless, right? Wrong! Or perhaps right! We don't know - or maybe we do. Listen to us fight, argue, bicker and quibble about this with much righteous indignation. Listen out for the sound of the curtains being closed!

What do you think - should teachers teaching English teach English English or American English? How's that for a question, huh? What if you are a South African? Can you teach South African English? And how about if you are Australian? Can an Australian teach English English with confidence, or should he teach American English, or would he have no confidence with that either? And what should the students learn? Does it matter? Are there enough questions in this blurb? Should we add a few more? What would your English be like if you would of lived somewhere other than the place you have got to have been in?

In this exciting episode of TEFLwaffle, which is the 41st of the series, incidentally, Troy challenges Steve to go through his lesson planning process. Steve, challenged and up against the wall, plans a lesson under the watchful gaze of Troy, whose critical approach to watching Steve is both stressful, hurtful and rather amusing. If you are a lesson planning sort of person, you can compare what you do with Steve's rather Steve-ish approach to managing what he will do with his class. Every time Steve makes a mistake, gets confused, or fumbles with understanding what it is he has to do, give yourself a point. If you get more than 10 points, you win!!

Yort and Evets give a lot of spoilers away here. If you haven't seen this movie - don't listen to the podcast if you plan to. But if you are a teacher, and you want to find out about why this movie is called Bad Teacher, it gets explained here in exquisite detail. Find out how not to teach, what a bad teaching colleague is like, how to buck the system, and how to just be completely awful as a teaching professional by either listening to this podcast, or watching the movie - either will do. Yort and Evets agree that this movie about a bad teacher is a really very good representation of a bad teacher. Or should that be a very bad representation? Or, er =wait, I'm lost. I think this experience is affecting my ability tp tippe

Steve really goes on a waffle hunt of note today, on and on and on about the content, nature, use, purpose and philsophical nature of an EFL course curriculum. You had no idea this was such an interesting topic. Just listen - by the end of this, you may just firmly establish for yourself that this is really not that interesting at all. Troy is patient and kindly offers suggestions when Steve deigns to stop waffling for a moment. Oh, and just what is the plural of curriculum anyway?

Teachers who are already teaching benefit from additional training: what we called in-service training. Should this in-service training be internal (at school) or external (out there somewhere, like a nice fancy hotel), and how much time should be given to it? Who should conduct it? Who should be the teachers who go for this kind of training? What exactly are the benefits of it all? Today, Troy has a nerdy story about off-site in-service training from his school which gives us plenty of food for thought.

Do you ever ask another teacher to help with lesson ideas? Do you give other teachers advice on how to run their lesson? Well, in part 1 Troy stupidly asked Steve for advice on a lesson, and Steve stupidly gave it. In the mean time, Troy went and stupidly taught the lesson, and brings his stupid tales of woe, suffering, hardship and destruction. Of course, it's all stupid Steve's fault because his stupid advice was stupid. Ot was it because stupid Troy has no idea how to implement good stupid advice when he hears it (stupidly)? Or is it something else stupid? What isn't discussed, but should have been, is the philosophical implications of asking and giving advice in the staffroom. This isn't as stupid as it sounds, stupidly enough...

"Oh man, I've go to teach this page tomorrow and I have no idea how to." "What am I supposed to do for an activity?" "Huh, Really? OK, I'll try it..." Sometimes teachers ask and give one another advice on lessons, activities, dealing with students and the like. That's great because teachers share, get new ideas and form part of a community of professionals. But how does it go? Can your ideas easily transfer to another teachers class? How much tweaking is needed? Well, this episode Troy asks Steve for help with a lesson, and Steve obligingly obliges with lots of ideas, tips, tricks and even makes the material for Troy to go and teach in his lesson. Is this a viable way of getting out of having to plan your own lesson? Just how long does it take anyway? Surely Troy could have planned it himself in the time it took Steve to explain his ideas? Which one of the wafflers is writing all this in third person? Listen along to find out the answers to these and several other unasked questions on this week's episode.

It's Teachers in the Movies! Yort and Evets are analyzing the Breakfast Club - that paragon of teen angst with a hateful teacher and 4 troubled individuals who find themselves and each other and help us find ourselves along the way. If you're a teacher, there are lots and lots of things going on here that need to be questioned with deep concern. If you haven't seen it, don't bother - just listen to these two guys waffle about it all. Listen particularly as Evets vents in righteous indignation about this absolutely incredible display of educational ineptitude.

Eliciting and concept checking form an important part of teacher talk, at least according to some. But what are they? Are they really necessary? How do you do them well? Why bother? What's the point the point of asking redundant questions that you already know the answers to, like this one? Would anyone ever do that? Well, teachers do, and students don't seem to mind, and there is a possibility that we sound like pompous idiots. But possibly not. So, let's waffle about these questions about questions to find the answers that might be the answers to all answers.