This piece was commissioned from the SLB cooperative and is published simultaneously on their blog. We will not accept botch jobs or blackmail. In keeping with our principles, we are not going to sign an…
Blog
The Well-Being Talking Shop
Pour yourself a glass of wine. Sit down. Put your feet up. It’s time to relax. Put some music on. Forget your worries: the classes, the planning and marking, the commuting. Take some time for…
Time to talk about … contracts
I signed a 6-week contract. One of the lead teachers said he didn’t need a contract as he was an ‘old hand’ and ‘had it on trust’ he’d have work through the summer. But he…
Time to talk about … gender inequality by Nicola Prentis
If you start a conversation about women in ELT, you seem to end up talking about men pretty quickly. How they might be feeling at being excluded, how they too suffer from sexism by having…
Time to talk about … mental health: Interview with Phil Longwell
We rarely talk about mental health problems in ELT—the stress, anxiety, the hidden injuries of bureaucracy. Yet these are problems experienced by grassroots teachers across contexts and cultures. In the build-up to UK Time to Talk Day 2017,…
You don’t need a CELTA, you need a pulse
I don’t often miss working in language schools but when I do get misty-eyed over old workmates I usually have one or two memories in the back of my mind to give me a reality…
My other job is teaching English
The National Council of Teachers of English looks like a CPD and lobby group for teachers, which, of course, includes ELT people. They caught my eye recently after Stephen Krashen (yes, I twitter-follow him) tweeted…
The drip drip
Recently I was prompted to recall the Chinese water torture (a nice racist name) which was a staple playground talking point at my secondary school. How such torture caused pain was quite puzzling for an…
Why join TaWSIG? Because you are not alone
Teachers by nature work in self-contained units, where their classroom is their castle. Even teachers in state schools essentially work parallel to each other. Freelance teachers may not be fully integrated into an organisation. Language…
Supported by Unite ELT Ireland
Supported by TEFL Workers Union
