Teach, Taught, Taught
I finally had a good day. My Pre-Int class--the ones who have been complaining about me (a.k.a. The Weekend Wankers [British slang is infusing my own])--seems to have turned around. Every few months each teacher is evaluated by their students and though I didn't get stunning results from them, I did receive a solid level of satisfaction. I guess they see me trying, and perhaps felt bad about having the Director of Studies looming in class during the particularly painful lesson a few weekends ago. Anyway, I needed a boost in confidence since the morale of virtually everyone at work has been in the toilet for the past bit.

Tomorrow night my Business Men will complete Intermediate and I will be shepherding them into the wild world of Upper Intermediate where future present continuous and other beastly points of the English language will be encountered. It is exciting because they are my first students and I am glad to find out where the end of the grammatical rainbow at Posh English leads to. After this level, students are finished, and would only be continuing in exam classes to take TOEFL or TOEIC--which thankfully I don't teach yet.

Indoctrination
I have noticed the textbooks we use are a subtle vehicle for brainwashing. Every textbook that I'm using is peppered with sentences in exercises that guilt students into acknowledging their teachers. Here's a smattering:

• My new English teacher is Simon. He's very funny and nice. We all like him a lot.
• The students all respect and admire their teacher.
• Their teacher's funnier than ours. Our lessons are more interesting than theirs.
• "Do you like your teacher?" "Yes, she's very nice."
  
• (and my personal favorite:) "Do you want to be a teacher when you grow up?" " No. They work very hard but they don't earn a lot." Amen.