Mar 19, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: get (back) in the swing of things I hate goodbyes. Always have done, and always will do. I’ve certainly never understood where there’s a good in goodbye, that’s for sure. Still, just as you need sad to understand what happy is, cold to understand hot, and so on, so I have come to accept the wisdom laid out in one my favourite-ever […]
Mar 16, 2017 Opinions, The state of our profession Teaching in troubled times: Trump, tackling tensions and resting easy! We live in troubled times. We’re living through an age in which immigrants are routinely scapegoated and blamed for all of society’s ills and the religious practices of millions of people are regularly conflated with the murderous impulses of a tiny handful, while the blood on our own hands, our occupations and human rights abuses […]
Mar 14, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: hair of the dog For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to see the world. It’s been one of my burnings ambitions since I was maybe 15 and 16. I guess that the first time the travel bug bit me was when I read On The Road by Jack Kerouac, and found myself hypnotised by his […]
Mar 12, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: forewarned is forearmed I’ve spent the last few days working with some wonderful Russian teachers in the city of Saratov, which is on the mighty Volga River, about 850 kilometres south-east of Moscow. The day before I was due to fly out last week, I exchanged a flurry of emails with Tatyana, who had been instrumental in organising […]
Mar 9, 2017 Chunks, Phrase of the day Phrase of the day: damn with faint praise I was chatting to a friend of mine the other day about the school he’s recently started working at. I asked him how it was going there and then tried hard to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing as his answer became less and less enthusiastic with every single sentence he added […]
