KASe StuDY: EngLiSH TeACHer EN
English Teacher EN has had a reasonably varied career in such plum locations as Hungary and Haiti, and now the home of the Tango, Buenos Aires, where I think they have about five new presidents every year. Gotta be fun! Here he ruminates on boiled bananas, brutal gang rape, and other various and sundry aspects of English teaching.
Where have you taught, and for how long?
Well, I first taught in Haiti... that was a while ago. A month's volunteering in one of the world's poorest countries as a high school student. It was kinda spooky, as the school we taught in had been destroyed by a storm and we replaced some teachers who had been killed during that storm. In the mornings, we helped rebuild the school buildings, and we taught the kids and the new Haitian teachers (sic) in the afternoon.
No classrooms, no boards, nada. No running water, no electricity, and of course no things like telephone or TV or what have you. Boiled frickin' banana every day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Christ, I remember being blown away by the sheer taste of the orange juice we were served on the plane on the way back to Europe. Anyway, back on topic. After that I taught in France on and off, and then in Hungary. That was exclusively private tutoring, though now in Argentina, I teach for institutes as well.
You can go ahead and say "fuckin" instead of "frickin". We're all adults here. Which place did you like the best, and why?
Tough question. I never really dislike a place, they all have their good and bad sides... I'm pretty happy with Buenos Aires so far, though. The pay is shitty, very shitty, the institutes are fishy, but the city is fun and the lifestyle is loco. But hey - good weather, great food, incredibly hot women, all this with lots of going out, lots of cultural activity (free and good concerts twice a week), the fact that it's very easy to meet people make up for that.
Who have your most venal and incompetent employers been?
Most (indeed, nearly all) my experience has been with private
students, and I don't have any horror stories to tell. The worst, I
think, were my first and only employers in Hungary. I taught French
for those people for about three weeks. They were all angry expats
who hated Hungary and kept telling me that everything was so bad
there. The ambiance in the company was horrible, the organisation was
an utter disaster. They paid me for the three weeks I worked there,
though... nothing too horrible.
What's the quality of life like where you live now?
The quality of life... it all depends on your standards, but I would say it's pretty good. Buenos Aires has its problems, like pollution, some crime outside of Capital Federal (although I've never had the slightest problem myself), little job security (and even less for English teachers), but the good far outweighs the bad: the food is excellent, and generally cheap. You have a wide range of wines coming from the whole country, at very affordable prices, the money you make as an English teacher will allow you to travel reasonably, to have a decent place to live in, to go out often and drink lots, attend cultural events, etc. Buenos Aires has a lot of open and green spaces, and it's easy to get involved in sports and stuff like that.
Where do you come down on the "shagging students" question?
Heheh, one major preoccupation in the ELT world as we do get lots of
attention from female students. Nothing wrong with shagging students
in itself... at least in my book. You just have to decide whether the
potential consequences are worth the shag!
What's your favorite way to kill ten minutes in class?
Have the students talk in pairs about whatever and just walk around
listening to them. Then I correct the most common mistakes and voila.
Well, OK. Most of the time I just sit down at my desk and
pretend I'm awake, and then come up with some random mistakes they
could have made... stuff like that.
Any particularly horrifying moments you'd like to share with us?
In Hungary I once went to a party with one of my private students. It was a birthday party and lots of things happened, but the one thing I remember was going out around three or four am in the Budapest winter and looking for her and one of her friends after they'd gone missing for hours. When we finally found them, they'd both just been brutally gang raped. I seem to have a knack to get myself in pretty ugly situations... ah well.
What are your plans for the future?
Stay for a while in Argentina and then head off to somewhere else in Latin America... maybe Venezuela, or Mexico. I'd like to live in Russia at one point in the future too. I also want to work on a boat for a while. And as a private soldier in some tiny African war. And as a male prostitute. And as a parachutist. You get the drift, I guess.