Brushing your teeth is hardly rocket science, and yet if you read all the available information on this basically simple task in order to do it the best you possibly can, you’d never have time to actually get your brush busy on your ivories. Not just that, but the (all seemingly equally believable) marketing claims for brushes and toothpaste and the ever changing fashions on how you should and shouldn’t move your brush is likely to leave you more confused than helped. There also seems to be no limit to how much you can spend on the latest technology nor any limit to the claims they make for it. You can probably rule out the most outlandish claims, the silliest methods and the very cheapest products, but otherwise there seems to be no way of deciding between one thing and another.
My philosophy, then, is to have a selection of toothbrushes and toothpastes to use a few times each over an average week, in the hope that the strength of one is making up for the weakness of another, whatever they may be. I like to think of it as a kind of controlled randomness that will hopefully make up for a lack of proper thought and planning. I also have a basic electric toothbrush that I use sometimes, but it is no replacement for a bit of elbow grease.
Think there might be a metaphor for TEFL in there somewhere? Do I win some kind of prize for the most unlikely teaching metaphor ever, or can you outdo me? Should I get my head examined for my personal hygiene habits rather than for tying even them to TEFL? Hsve your saybelow:
TEFLtastic 
Do you really have more than one toothbrush? I use the same one until the bristles get curly and thenm buy a new one. I don’t know where that leaves me metaphorically.
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It means that Darren (above) is probably, despite all protests to the contrary, a Headway lover at heart and will teach happily with that until the pages fall out whereas Alex is “eclectic” and uses all the latest copies of books which he gets free from publishers purportedly to “review” them.
I’m off now to tell the marketing team at Macmillan that I want Global toothpaste and a Global toothbrush range.
;-)
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Whoops, someone had noticed the lack of reviews per review copy then…
I’d love to know how Mario Rinvolucri deals with toothcare. I’d probably be too scared to actually try it though
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How very dare you! I can honestly say I have never touched a copy of Headway.
Anyway, does this mean Scott Thornbury never cleans his teeth?
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Surely Scott uses whatever he can find in the bathroom, The A Team style
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“… a kind of controlled randomness.”
Yep, that sounds just about right. TEFL in a nutshell; “controlled” an optional descriptor. ;)
Come to think of it, “a kind of” could be jettisoned too.
Nothing to say on the tooth-brushing metaphor. Lindsay’s comment re: Headway and an “eclectic” approach was pretty funny. Other than…
I’ve always brushed my teeth at work (after lunch, etc.) and my colleagues in Australia and England — should they happen upon me scrubbing away at the ol’ laughin’ gear — always look/looked at me as if I am/were some kind of freak.
When I went to work in Japan, though, I was suddenly surrounded by an army of other teachers who are just as OCD about it as I am! It was such a weird contrast to NOT have people looking at me weirdly when brushing my teeth at work! :)
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