You often hear online spaces for TEFLers such as the teflblogosphere described as being a teachers’ room in cyberspace. Being a male British teacher who has mainly worked in places with lots of other male British teachers, teachers’ room communication for me has mainly been taking the piss out of other people’s football teams, other pointless banter, affectionate insults about each other, colourful insults about the materials and management, and other harmless moaning – all while trying to do the best job we can but without any suspecting that we take our jobs seriously. A lot of the online TEFL communication when I first started blogging had a very similar atmosphere, and that’s still pretty much what I aim at.

There are many things different about our www staff room nowadays, but one huge one is that while we are grouching about the textbooks that we have to use, the DoSs who make us use them, and the teacher trainers who are too busy making us mingle to show us how to do anything better, half of those authors, managers and trainers are standing right next to us in that internet teachers’ room – and others are hiding behind the bookshelves silently listening in! I’m not saying that is necessarily mainly a bad thing as it can lead to some very fruitful (if sometimes somewhat vexed) conversations, but I really hope that when every author is every blogger and reviewer’s colleague (i.e. fellow blogger), that won’t stop us being rude when we really need to be. Or indeed just when we really want to be!