I've really enjoyed getting into the' teaching business'. The best thing about it is getting out and about around the city and meeting new people from a range of different sectors. I try to focus my classes (which are all with intermediate and advanced speakers) on 'real-world' or 'real-time' issues affecting their businesses or in the lives they lead outside work with a focus on building vocabulary, colloquialisms and idiom (vital to a business discussion given how rich the English language is in them) and grammar where necessary. Not all classes go well: it can be an effort to stimulate discussion. So I've also got a new respect for teachers, you need to be a performer in each and every class. You can't sit at the back and not lead. It’s a different kind of discipline from the skills needed in most office based jobs, and it can be great for instant-hit rewards when you see a student learning something new, or with two pages of new vocab in their hands and a new favourite English language word. That’s a good feeling to leave a class with.
Whilst researching the Monarchy for a class tomorrow I happened to chance upon this video of King George VI marrying the late Queen Mother in the 1920s. Fascinating: the journey through London, the shaky cards explaining the action, the Queen Mum emerging from her “modest home on Bruton street” and the visible excitement of the huge crowds. It’s a great look at a Britain that has changed hugely in the past 80 years: look at the streets, the clothes, the importance of ceremony and respect. Fascinating!
The Britain I left behind is changing even as I write with riots in Parliament Square during the votes in Parliament on tuition fees. I wonder if it will, when I return, ever feel like ‘home’ again or if I will be forever an ex-pat, condemned to an eternity of making bitter comments on the Daily Mail website (which I currently do subversively: agitating for a return to the lash regardless of the article - they always get published).
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