How many of you are Primary, Secondary, or University English Literature teachers, or students studying Literature with notions of becoming teachers?
I teach International Baccalaureate English A at a private school in Asia. This year I'm teaching:
Othello
The Great Gatsby
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Fight Club
~15 poems by Edgar Allan Poe
~15 poems by another author (I did Elizabeth Bishop the previous two years but want to pick a new poet)
I'd like to discuss attitudes and ideas toward teaching as well as future aspirations with other teachers. Also, if anyone's interested in what it's like to be an English teacher (or an ESL teacher, as most of my friends are), I'm an open book.
>>7608632
>I teach in Asia
So it's safe to assume you were a mediocre university student that is arguably borderline retarded and had no actual prospects post-grad so you fled to Asia? Nice
>>7608635
Not too far off the mark. The job I have now is legitimate high school teaching, but I don't claim to be a great inspiration to my students or Harold Bloom or anything.
I could go back to the states and teach the same curriculum with slightly less enthusiastic students and much less pay, which is partly why I'm still here.
>>7608635
tfw I would have done this if I were white
...Asian countries being as racist as they are I'd imagine being brown would nullify being American.
>>7608646
It's definitely tougher if you're non-white. Our school librarian is Bahamanian though, and I know a health sciences teacher who's Indian.
But those are credentialed jobs. If you want to get into the "bachelor's and clean criminal record" world of ESL, non-whites pretty much only get rural jobs. The parents want white, young, American or British females to teach their kids. They'll settle for men but that's about as low as they'll go.
I've even heard of Irish people being declined jobs in Korea because of the "drinking nature of their people." Even though Korea is the drinkingest country (non-Eastern European) country on Earth...
>>7608635
Ouch
>>7608635
How would teaching in another country imply that?
>>7608680
The proportion of people who lack a genuine passion for literature in English programs is far higher than, say, nuclear physics.
>>7608632
Why Poe?
>>7610372
First poetry unit, easy way to start. The Raven, Annabel Lee, A Dream Within A Dream... Not too difficult.
