A 30 PESO PRICE HIKE ON THE METRO was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We all understand the reasons behind the nationwide protests in Chile. We see them in memes…
Tagged By elt
10 Things I Learned About Precarity
In August 2018 Richard Smith of the Centre of Applied Linguistics at Warwick got in touch to see if I’d be interested in writing a key definition of ‘precarity’ for the ELT Journal. So,…
Monkeys and Rotten Peanuts
I’ve taught freelance Business English in Germany since 2009 for three language schools. In none of them was I paid enough to live on. Their contracts were similar. This is my experience of the worst…
Five steps to leave ELT
To kick off the new year and Blue Monday take a look at this article by Aileen Bowe: Five Steps to Leave ELT. The article is one of three in the second issue of ‘The…
I Am Literally a Bullied ELT Teacher
Prior to Donald Trump’s visit to the UK Ash Sarkar of Novara Media appeared on ‘Good Morning Britain’ and was bullied by host Piers Morgan. He criticized her for not demonstrating against Obama, presuming, incorrectly,…
Divided unions, continuing precarity for Spain’s teachers
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…
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,…