The TEFL`s Screw

Robin Usher, Hungary

Robin Usher received a Ph.D in English in 1993 from the University of Hull, England, for research thesis titled 'Jungian Archetypes in the work of [science fiction writer] Robert A. Heinlein'. Article 'Robert A. Heinlein: Theologist?' in the British journal of science fiction Foundation, 1992, (54). Pedagogic article, 'Learning to Study' in the Hungarian Institute for Educational Research's journal Educatio (3) in 1995. `Male And Female He Created Them Both: Beyond The Archetypes` Foundation, 2011(112). Science fiction stories; 'All For Naught Orphan Ufonaut' in Shelter of Daylight, Sam's Dot Publishing 2010, and `Help! I Can`t Breed!` and `Deus Ex Machina` in John Thiel (ed.) Surprising Stories Oort Cloud Publications, VacHume Press, September 2013, # 33. He taught English language in Eurasia, Africa and Arabia. E-mail: robika2001@yahoo.co.uk

Having spent almost twenty years teaching English as a foreign language, which is obviously `the work of the TEFL`, I`m not perturbed at the notion that my footsteps are devilled by employers and students alike. Of late I`ve spent time in Saudi Arabia at the `best University in the Middle East`, according to experts, where the examiners are told not to mark the papers for the English writing exam, but simply to give the examinee a grade for the number of words committed to their respective examination sheet.

Out of a highest mark of five, it`s still possible for the scribbler who writes thirty words or less to receive one and pass. Even though the number of required words is one hundred and fifty. Consequently, only those students who are unable to encompass the task of writing their own name in English, which for many of them fortunately runs into double figures, can fail. But the likelihood is that the teacher will pass them anyway, having understood the intentionality of the marking system in its fulsomeness.

I was with Edjerk Exspurts from the USA, who favoured the International Project Management Association`s red, orange and green `traffic light` system of teacher evaluation, or `GRO` in short. Flown in from places as far distant as the beaches of Copacabana in Brazil`s Rio De Janeiro, speakers on all things TEFL-ish gesticulated ferociously at incomprehensible diagrams and crucial scrawling on projector screens while the TEFL`s crew snored or phoned home to alleviate their distressed minds with dreams of more tranquil planets.

Almost every other day professors and ELT research scientists winged their way to Riyadh to vociferate droningly on the best professional method of inculcating the usage of countable nouns and time words while the TEFL`s crew endeavoured to remain ignorant of what their already overloaded brains quite rightly advised them would be impractical wisdom with students whose preferred mode of English language learning was to spend the entire lesson watching the talent contest Arabian Star. On one occasion the lesson observer appointed by the King Saud University gave our man at the front a written warning for encouraging the students to listen to Western music on the strength of the visibility of a Sony Walkman`s headphones peeking out of the educator`s shirt pocket.

Back at the KSU in the mornings, the TEFL`s crew were required to engage their attention with more professional development seminars in the afternoon. The usage of coloured crayons and colouring books in the teaching of vegetables and fruits; for example. Or the essentials of dress code. All Western teachers were required to wear suits and ties, or the traditional one piece Arabian male garment, which looks like the nightshirt modeled by Wee Willie Winkie in the children`s nursery rhyme. The `thob` comes in a range of white colours and can also double as a dressing gown, which fits in nicely with the lack of adequate bathing facilities provided for the average Westerner, who is likely to have a faulty shower unit blossoming sand rather than a proper bathroom, and so an every wear garment tripling as pyjamas is essential Arabian chic.

Most of the TEFL`s crew are innocent creatures that have never used a dry cleaners, but the secret to Arabia is pay what they ask, which is only one or two Saudi Riyals for a suit jacket`s cleaning, for example, and next day service is assured. Earning 3,000 US $ each month at the KSU, I could afford to wash the whole of Arabia`s laundry every month and still have enough left to buy a Mercedes. Naturally, the mean and evil governments who`d sent the TEFL`s crew to Arabia as a part of their quasi para-military `initiative tests` to see if we could `survive in the desert`, would want us to iron our own shirts as a sign of future abilities in the areas of helicopter or jeep maintenance, and the hotels always thoughtfully provide an ironing board and iron. But only a naïve fool would use them. The hotels actually provide laundry service, but they`re not dry cleaners, so it`s simpler to give all your laundry to the experts, and save yourself the bother of figuring out who has your socks.

Having received a written warning for ownership of a visible Sony Walkman, I expected nothing less than red for my IPMA teaching evaluation, which is fail. This, despite attending the interminable night scenes at the Riyadh hotels where on stage purveyors of the TEFL`s esoteria sought to inveigle my interest in inscrutable methodologies. On the days following my madcap nightly jaunts to hotel pedagogy, I`d be told it was mandatory also to be seated in vast lecture halls auditing seminars on the colour of plums in comparison to grapes, and whether or not it were wise to teach students that grapes could be both plum coloured and green because plums were green before they were plum.

A plethora of workshops abounded in chiaroscuros of fiendish TEFL details for dealing with students needs. From advising them how to book into a hotel using up to the minute HD video role play on hideously expensive smart boards with inbuilt CD consoles, or listening to high definition Scottish and Irish brogues enquiring of Hindustani taxi drivers how much indeeding it would be to take them to the nearest hotel indeeding, and where presumably there`d be a convention for students of the TEFL concerned with how to get an orange out of the teacher rather than give him an apple.

Teachers who attended the nearly nightly hotel gatherings, and the following morning`s seminars and workshops, did so because of the points they needed to accumulate for their success in professional development (PD). The teachings of the TEFL were incidental to the main action, which was points` accumulation. Those teachers who didn`t attend would be red as failed, while those teachers who did stay the marathon course of ennui at the hotels and at the KSU lectures and seminars would be orange if they hadn`t had a successful `lesson observation`, which would make them green.

I received a printed document that said I was orange, but was sacked anyway because of a non-lesson observation or `buzz` in which the `Mutawah`, that is, the Saudi religious policeman and state sponsored terrorist masquerading as a member of the administration`s staff, said he thought I might have been listening to the Sony Walkman he could see poking out of the pocket of my shirt, and which could have had a contaminating effect upon the young ears of students. These looked like fifty year old trainees for the torture chambers and spent most of their time watching Turkish belly dancers on You Tube if I didn`t ask them to do some exercises.

According to the IPMA `traffic light` system of evaluation I would have been `green for go` if I`d had a `lesson observation` rather than an unofficial ad hoc `buzz` that had no actual significance other than to give a religious maniac an opportunity to terrorize a Westerner practicing as a professional TEFL teacher. Obviously the devil didn`t want teaching. Of course, whether I was a professionally teaching TEFL or a teacher of TEFL`s is a largely irrelevant course of speculation. I was TEFL at the KSU and a `red TEFL` according to those who thought I was Sir Matt Busby and claimed to have never seen any snow or been to Munich in 1958.

In the final analysis it`s about non-human and human behavior and activity. In Misery (1990) James Caan was tied to a bed and tortured by a woman, and in The Accused (1988) Jodie Foster was brutally raped. Neither of which would qualify as human behavior and 9/11 was condemned on the basis of its inhuman character, but that`s what the USA`s Hollywood promulgates. In Arabia cities like Riyadh were built on deserts in which water was at a premium because it was the basic prerequisite for life, but the shops close five times each day so that water can`t be had. So why did they build the cities? To deny themselves water? Even during prayer times water is freely available in the desert at oases. But never in the classroom.

At the Al Jizzy Ra Internacionale Ughademy in Riyadh a colleague was sacked for applying the `no water in the classroom` at any time rule. While another teacher was highly valued because he let the students have cake and coffee while they were sitting their diploma exam. In human terms, he was correct. But the dismissed teacher applied the rules. Being raped or having one`s legs broken, as happened with Jodie Foster and James Caan, might serve to illustrate the inhuman to the audience, but 9/11 suggests that inhuman is what viewers are, and that`s what they`re encouraged to be. The treatment of Westerners in Arabia is inhuman because the planetary valence is no longer supportive of the human but favours inhumanity and evil.

When I apply for employment in places where the people are desperate because of their totalitarian governments, I have to give them a curriculum vitae (CV) detailing my life`s history since childhood. They want my passport details, which contains information about where I was born in England and who my closest contacts are in case of emergencies. On several occasions I`ve even been asked for a photocopy of the back page of my passport containing the emergency numbers of close family or associates before I`ve even complete the application form. On my CV are details of all of the schools I went to and the places I have lived in.

Born in the parish of Norton, Malton, North Yorkshire, near York. I lived in the town of Pocklington where I went to primary school, but I attended `junior` school at Moorfield in Bridlington and high school in Withernsea before transferring to South Holderness high school in Hedon, near Kingston Upon Hull. I was at Hull`s College of Higher Education while living in Beverley and Hull University while living in Hull.

Obtaining a Trinity College, London TESOL certificate with European Training and Education, ETC., etc., in Hull before being sent to Hungary five years after the Soviets left, I spent time in Poland`s Lębork at the ASOL grammar school for delinquents while Lech Walesa was being deposed as a political force, and Oktobersky in Bashyourears `wolf`s head` new Republic while the Soviet Union was being replaced by the Russian Federation. Before I left Hull, I was exposed to desperate refugees from Yugoslavia who were `very friendly` as the `teacher trainers` gushed over them. Of course, and they were Christian and Moslem militia used to cutting each others` throats. I was someone to court until my usefulness was at an end.

Empoyees in war zones are notorious for explaining that the students and others that you meet have nothing in their hearts but love for you. Bashkortastan is a volatile mixture of Christians and Moslems, and the necessity for `cultural sensitivity` towards them is inculcated in the TEFL professional like the Bible. Because they`ll kill you if you aren`t polite. And even if you are. I was training male army nurses to communicate in English at the King Abdul Aziz Hospital (KAAH) inside the King Khalid Military City in Saudi Arabia`s Tabuk on 9/11 before the nursing crews were needed for the second Gulf war (2001-12). I received a certificate from the North West Armed Forces Hospital (NWAFH) with a cross marked in the box indicating `excellent` service, and when I returned I was terrorized by a hospital librarian, a Western woman who accused me of looking at pictures of Christina Aguilera on the internet.

In Syria I worked for All-Forit oil company under the gimlet eye of the ubiquitous political poster of dictatorships everywhere. President Bashar Al-Assad`s original family name of `Wahash` means `beast`, which identifies him as at least a candidate for the `beast` of Revelation, and the picture of his face everywhere one looked in Deir Ezzor was a sufficient explanation for the revolutionary fervour that gripped the country after the end of the second Gulf war. I prefer ELT alphabet posters.

I have family and the cavalier attitude that language providers and foreign governments have towards you and yours is life threatening. As a `born in the spirit` Christian since 1994 when I was baptised and publically blessed in a square of Hungary`s second city of Debrecen, it`s traditional to change one`s name in accordance with one`s new perspective, which is useful if you want to hide your family from the TEFL`s screws. Often it`s difficult to see which are the terrorists. Screwing the juice out of the teacher is endemic.

I was at Rustaq College of Applied Sciences in Oman and I had a set of flash cards that I`d been using since I passed my TEFL certificate in 1994. As a part of the project that assisted me in obtaining the teaching qualification, I`d kept it for use with students of all ages and it`s simplicity was its virtue. A simple series of pictures with the phonetic letters for the sounds that went with the pictures on the back of each card. When I left Rustaq I discovered they were missing and wrote to the Australian company who`d contracted me there asking to have them returned and anything else that was mine from the apartment I`d been allocated to live in. A few things arrived, but not the flash cards. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the series of pictures and phonetics on an Umbrage University Press wall chart at Bull Language School in Tripoli, Libya! Obviously, the TEFL`s screw was being turned on these thumbs.

I contracted to work for Linguige Solubilities in London as a `senior teacher` with a remit to teach, hire a secretary, and one or two other teachers, while stocking the shelves of the office in Budapest, Hungary, at Grimoire Staveley`s Investment Cottage, with oodles of books and CDs on teaching business English. After a few months of rising each morning at 6.00 am to begin plowing through the dozens of e-mails sent by my `line manager` in London with detailed instructions on how to comport myself and teach, I spent the day teaching and my lunch hours at the local Libri bookstore.

Because the students at Grimoire could only spare their time in the early mornings or evenings, I was at Grimoire`s from 6. 30 am until 10.00 pm each working day. In the evenings, and at weekends, I advertised for prospective staff but eventually was told by my employers that they hadn`t permission to be a language teaching provider in Hungary. Because they weren`t `certificated` by the Hungarian authorities. They couldn`t have been because their treatment of their `senior teacher` was inhuman. Sending an e-mail asking for the plane ticket to take me back to England, in accordance with the contract, I received no reply. Fortunately, I knew Budapest and could obtain immediate employment elsewhere.

Invited to Kuwait for an interview at Kuwait University with the agreement that I give a sample lesson and that I could stay if the `dummy` was successful, or was it that the `dummy` could stay if he were successful? If not, I would return home with expenses. I declined the offer because I`d accepted a post in Tripoli, Libya, with Glubbles Knowledgeable School. At the end of the first week, I encountered two gunmen in the streets where the revolution to overthrow Gadhaffi had taken place and was told `police tariff`. They wanted my money or my life.

Glubbles Knowledgeable School hadn`t even provided me with a key to the house I shared with the other teachers. I`d declined an invitation to work for 12 months in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, to accept the position in Libya where I`d said I`d teach for four months on a short term contract. When I arrived Glubbles Knowledgeable was on half days because of it had its own `internal examinations` taking place. Normally school began at 8.00 am and finished at 1.00 pm but it was finishing at 10. 45 am each day because of the quizzes. The `probation period` for the accredited ELT professional, who had been treated as a former `convicted criminal` on `probation`, since his release from imprisonment upon receipt of the devil`s (TEFL`s) `tease soul` (TESOL) qualification in 1994 was one month, and Glubbles Knowledgeable School was about to commence a two week holiday. Consequently, `probation` for the old TEFL teacher was stretchable to three weeks, but only if the holiday period was included in the contracted `probationary period` for the criminalized teaching profession.

Glubbles Knowledgeable was in the grievous position of having to find their abducted Western European teaching professional something to do for a week that didn`t jeopardize the academic reputation of the kindergartners` study of MacMillan Science and Maths levels 1, 2 and 3. After deciding one week of half days` teaching was `probation` enough to re-criminalize the old TEFL, Glubbles Knowledgeable let him go at the end of what amounted to an an unproposed `interview` and, doshing me up with 350 GBP, I was put into an umarked car. I thankfully arrived at an airport in the full and certain knowledge that the Arabs were increasing their levels of terrorism towards the TEFL`s crew.

Lesson observations are rather a sore point with the TEFL`s crew. `Unfortunately, this lesson met the requirements required by Bull Language School` is one of my favourites. Burt Squiggles had told my employers that it was a pity I was good enough. Not only Arabians are terrorists to the TEFL`s crew. Shortly afterwards revolutionary fervour and bipartizan war broke out in Tripoli, Libya, where it was `unfortunate` that I was a good teacher, and on February 17th, 2011, freedom was declared. Almost two years later, I left Glubbles Knowledgeable School in Tripoli, Libya, while the more recent Libyan leader, Ali Zeidan, whose inaugural speech contained the promise his government would `… give its utmost best to the nation based on the rule of law, human rights, democracy, rights, and the belief in God, His Prophet and a state based on Islam,` was telling Britons to evacuate themselves from dangerousnesses in Benghazi. Unfortunately, although I`d given my best and honoured the contract, I was 1,050 GBP short of parole.

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