Most of us are familiar with the idea of ELT as a global industry. But while it is not uncommon for teachers to move around and work in various countries and contexts, grasping an understanding…
Tagged By teaching
Strength Through Solidarity – English Teacher Worker Group Chile
IN NOVEMBER 2019, a month into the Chilean uprising against massive inequality, I published an Open Letter to the English Teaching Community in Chile. ‘Chile has woken up’ I wrote, ‘and we have the duty…
Time to talk about … Beating the Binary
When my new boss ordered me to change my appearance at my first day on the job in a new country, I knew the rest of the year would be an uphill battle. I was…
Time to talk about … jumping ship
In this interview Phil Longwell talks about his research on how teachers have handled the Covid-19 pandemic, positive psychology, and why he’s jumping ship. We’re publishing this to coincide with the final Time to Talk…
Will Covid spell the end of ELT?
In April, with the first wave of Covid-19, we had our first #eltworkerchat. Many teachers had lost hours, student numbers were down – and there was a strong push to go online. Some teachers found…
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…
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 … 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,…
Supported by Unite ELT Ireland
Supported by TEFL Workers Union
