Following on from my musings on the possible negative effects of all the positivity in the TEFLosphere nowadays, you might well get the impression that everyone but you loves their jobs. That’s better than four or so years ago, when it seemed everyone who had a blog taught through clenched teeth, but is something that is as likely to be as depressing as inspiring if you greet every working day with less than joy. You’ll be glad to hear, then, that love is not a word I use in connection with my job.
To be honest, I can’t imagine loving any job. For one thing, the usual morning routine followed by a trip to the same old workplace is almost enough to get me down on its own. More than that, though, my constant paranoia on whether I’m doing my work well enough or not makes it impossible to experience anything as simple as enjoyment. Being in quick succession someone selling on the street, a door to door salesman, making that aluminium things that Chinese takeaway comes in and messing around in the Macdonald’s freezer- that was the period when working was fun, if only because there was no stress involved. You can see from that list that TEFL is the best job I’ve had in several ways, but it’s still work rather than studying and/ or writing about anything to my heart’s content. Probably more importantly, TEFL forces me to do things I don’t really enjoy but probably do me good, like putting down that book and interacting with people.
So, satisfying and intellectually stimulating- fairly often. Good for me- probably. Like (both in relation to other jobs and in general)- yes. Love- naah, saving that word for more important things!
Thought people would have plenty of answers for that question, but apparently not… Is everyone on holiday already??
Not on holiday yet – just trying to process it all and come up with thoughts. I think I do love my job sometimes, but sometimes I don’t love it at all and there are some aspects of it that I like less than others and that doesn’t change. But I see this as a limitation of work generally rather than something to do with ELT as I don’t think there can be any job that is perfect – well except for those sorts of jobs that are in the realms of the dream world – and inaccessible to us ordinary folk. I know you don’t like it when I go all Marxist on you, but all work in this world has elements of conveyer belt, production line, etc etc and this is true of teaching too.
I think you’re right to save the word “love” for other things, but I would say that I get a great deal of personal pleasure out of teaching and being with my students, out of the research I do, out of being part of a team of teachers etc etc and by being part of a workplace which for me is as important as all the rest. It is a community, and ELT is a larger community so it about relationships and people mostly at the end of the day and trying to make things better.
I have always been a bit overwhelmed by the “I’m so happy in TEFL” phenomenon. For me I don’t think its realistic to be happy in your work all the time unless you are brain dead. What is important is that you try to keep developing and refining what you do and making sure it is up to date (though sometimes that might be more important than other times in your personal development). But putting people in their context (both T’s and S’s) is part of that and we all go through rough times, have bad days, months, years etc etc. I see part of my job as trying to realise this in myself and those around me and offering support where possible.
The bouncy bouncy TEFL person to me exists in a social and educational vacuum and is as plastic and processed as other parts of our “industry” that I don’t really feel relate to my life at all. There are parts of it bordering on hysteria IMHO (when I think back to my CELTA training, there were some right fruitcakes there). I reject it. There you go. And my experience is that no one can keep up that amount of enthusiasm for ever and that kind of really overwhelming and positive positive approach often masks a person who crashes really hard when they fall. Students ultimately appreciate a human face in the classroom, and that doesn’t have to be a human face with no problems. My students have been total sweeties to me this semester as I had terrible morning sickness and had to leave the classroom a number of times. Not being OK all the time is OK. I would say it brought us closer if anything.
And Alex….there is also the stages of life/career that is really worth thinking about. Tessa Woodward did a lovely talk on this at IATEFL this year and its online here. I saw a lot of myself in this talk, and it is interesting to reflect where you are in the cycles she outlines. You can watch it here http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-08/plenary-session-professional-life-cycles-teachers-tessa-woodward
It reminded me of a few other posts you’ve been writing about lately. If you are winging it at the moment, that’s OK. Your winging it is probably shit loads better than some people’s giving it their all. And its enough for now.
Sara
Hi Alex,
I’ve been pondering this question for a bit. At first I wanted to say YES! But then I thought about it a bit more and a bit more and then I came up with this.
As a child and a teenager I loved so many things I loved Emu, Basil Brush, Red Dwarf, Bros, The Fraggles, fruit salad sweets, bubble gum, big slippers with animal faces running in the rain and inumerable other things.
As an adult my list of things that I love has sadly shrunk. Being a grown up (sliding towards the big 40) my list of things that I love is so much smaller than it was when I was a child, teenager and young adult.
I’m going wrong somewhere but that’s another post, back to what I love about teaching.
I love teaching young children because they remind what it’s like to be a child.
I love it when I’m flowing and the class is going well.
I love that feeling you get when you see a student finally gets it.
I love the variety of my job teaching three year olds and then a 63 year old.
I love getting paid to sing nursery rhymes and take part in a sack race at our schools’ sports day.
I love that they pay me to play with my puppet Mickey.
I love that my job means I get to travel.
Now that’s quite a lot of loving but don’t get me wrong there are things I hate about it too!
All loved up,
Leahn
Thanks Leahn, you’ve inspired me to start on “Those little TEFL pleasures”, which was a blog post that was working its way to the front of my brain
Hi Sara
Same excuse as you for my late reply! You’ve given me so much to think about, as ever, that I can’t even now come up with a sensible reaction