Back to school.

Picture Source: atbaker and Animal Photos! Reading Ania Kozicka's excellent guest post on Ken Wilson's blog this morning, the thing that struck a chord with me was not the main topic of her piece, but something she mentioned at the end in her biographical information. "When you see me you may catch me…- writing a script - listening to music- dancing- enjoying the sun – the best source of energy- reading a book- watching the Smurfs – they always make me smile! - sitting with a Spanish grammar book -...

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How I accidentally started my teaching career unplugged.

If you are not familiar with the term 'teaching unplugged', you should read this, Scott Thornbury's excellent article from 2001. I arrived in Brazil in May 2006, and after some time waiting for my work visa, I started looking for teaching work. I was lucky enough to be introduced to Sara Walker (have a look at her CV and you see what I mean by lucky), who kindly made a couple of phone calls to help push me in the right direction. One of those phone calls led to my first contracted teaching job, which I'll write about at some point in the future, and the second, to the boss of a language...

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Time to reflect...

As I have decided to throw myself into the ELT blogosphere, I think it's only right that I begin by telling you a little about who I am and why I started this blog. My name is James Taylor (@theteacherjames on Twitter), and I've been an EFL teacher to adults since 2006, when I went to live in Brasília, Brazil. I taught mainly one to one classes there for two years before moving to Seoul, South Korea, where, after completing the CELTA course, I taught local English school teachers. Teaching is not something I had ever considered as a profession until I found myself in Brazil and...

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