Thursday, December 10, 2009

Cultural Reducator TIm Flowers

Tim Flowers is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher based in the capital city of one of the baltic states. He is 42 years old. His previous job was working for the Post Office (main sorting office - as a superintendent) and this excellent and relevant background has given him a good grasp of the fundamentals of the English language, and the art of teaching it to others.
He hails, as he likes to say, from Northamptonshire in England, a very glamorous part of the world indeed, and so is not at all out of place mingling with the gliterati of the Old Town where he hangs out on a Friday or Saturday night.
He likes beer.

Managed to get through a whole lesson today without once using the textbook. Now, your run of the mill ESL teacher wouldn't be able to do this, mind, but I can wing this as I've been doing it so long, and I managed to get it down to a fine art, with just me talking for an hour and a half about US politics, something I know a lot about, the knowledge from which I know my students are all really keen to benefit
I see myself as a cultural re-educator; for years people in this country were cut off by a system which, whilst sound in its principles (Marx being a really sound person, something I know all about having read the first 11 pages of "Das Kapital" on the trolleybus before proceeding to sound off about it to all and sundry) was deformed in its execution. Trotsky 'now there would have been your man, such a shame they had to shoot him. Anyway as I was saying before I interuptted [sic - ed ](my flow of genius, these people who I teach really know nothing. They're all racist (probably) and they've hardly lived or seen anything of the real world. Well, one or two of them go on regular business trips to North America and the far east, and another just got back from a holiday in the Cayman Islands, but they're just tourists, they've no idea about how it really is for ordinary people. Forgot to set homework, as the students had already packed up and started leaving before I'd finished (we'd only overrun by about 14 minutes), oh well, homework is the Sanatogen of the masses, I don't believe in it (and I don't want to have to mark it either), surely just the honour of having me as their teacher is enough? Now, just for a quick ciggie break before I announce, unsolicited and uninvited, to everyone in the staffroom that that lesson I just taught was 'shit' (it wasn't really) though not because of me (I spent a full 8 minutes preparing it) but because of demotivated, unenthusiastic and lazy students...javascript:void(0)

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