The Sage on The Stage

Quick note: Welcome back to this blog - it's been a while. As part of my New Year's Promises to myself, I'm spending February writing at least a thousand words a day, in order to kick my butt back into writing. Each piece can be on any topic and in any style, and I may or may not choose to share them, depending on quality and/or capacity to embarrass myself. Anyway, here goes:

So why did I become a teacher of English as a Foreign Language?


Good question. Well, no, it isn’t really - I think the how I became a teacher is perhaps of more interest. And, in fact, I’ve never really talked much about it, because it’s a situation that probably evolved in some ways. I mean, I thought I knew why I wanted to teach English at first, but many years of being one have knocked that nonsense out of me. Well, at least I hope it has. The reason of why I teach still eluded me, however, for many years. By this, I mean the underlying drive that made me keep going up in front of a class, year after year. But that will be somewhere towards the end of this little article, so if you want to ruin the whole story and jump straight to the end, be my guest. As for me, well, I’ve already done this the long way round, so a bit of a recap won’t harm.


You have to picture me, brimming with frustration, ire and tension, some time in early 1993. I was working at the time in a call centre, selling car number plates. It was not what you would call fun: Having someone ask, for the umpteenth time in a day, ‘Do you have anything that spells FUCK?’ Is enough to drain the smile from even the cheeriest face. I was in a little circle of habits and work and going nowhere. I’d also had a bust up with a friend, my Grandfather had died a few months before, and I didn’t know where to head with my life.


And that’s when, at 11.00 that Wednesday, I saw the advert.


Bored of the same old routine?, it said. (I was)

Want to travel to different countries? (I do, I do!)

Become a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language! (Intriguing…)

Earn money in a foreign country!! (OK, now you have TWO exclamation marks)

Earn your way AROUND THE WORLD!!! (Oh MY - THREE exclamation marks! And !!)


Well, I was hooked at the exclamation marks, if I’m honest. I allowed myself to daydream about travelling through some sunkissed far off land, and then, very much unlike my usual self, I actually did something about it and found out more information. This led to me ditching my job, enrolling on a TEFL Certificate course (Which I later discovered to have little value or cachet outside of a few places, even though it was actually a well-planned programme of study) and, eventually, to a job in Izmir, Turkey.


I’d become a teacher! How the hell did that happen?


And perhaps surprisingly, I turned out to be rather good at it. OK, so my first lesson saw me hiding in fear in the toilet for half an hour before I went into the room, but nobody died, least of all me. I met people who became good friends, and with whom I am still in contact more than quarter of a century later. I largely enjoyed my first year of teaching, despite having absolutely bugger all money because we were all so poorly paid and inflation in Turkey at the time was ridiculous (in that first year, the pound went from being worth 19,000 lira to being worth 48,000 lira in ten months). But it was fun, and I felt, for a while at least, that I had a purpose.


So, at that point, why did I think I had become a teacher?

This next bit’s ridiculous. Before I headed out on my travels, I created this pompous idea in my head that it was for a Noble Purpose - that of generously bestowing the gift of English on a grateful world. Yes, yes. I can feel your grimace from here.


Fortunately, this absurd notion was swiftly demolished by reality - the reality of students’ different needs and motivations, but also because it became obvious that a lot of English language teaching has more than the whiff of a scam about it. That, and the vast numbers of people being churned out of TEFL mills at the time clearly didn’t have a clue as to why they were doing it, either. And I also had a lot of time spare to do stuff I enjoyed, namely climbing mountains, getting drunk, occasionally getting stoned and having sex. And smoking. God, the smoking.


So, why was I teaching? A year went by, then I moved up to Istanbul, and I kept on teaching - and getting better and better at it. Largely, I enjoyed what I was doing, but there was always some component missing, something I couldn’t put my finger on. Students enjoyed my classes, I enjoyed explaining English to them and helping them improve. I even became Director of Studies for one of the largest private language schools in Istanbul. But all the time, there was something gently prodding me in the background. I largely ignored it by, quite frankly, drinking industrial quantities of booze, smoking like a factory chimney, having a fair bit of sex and joining in regular bong parties, just like everyone else. These teachers came in recognisable types. I saw the Missionaries - the ones who, like my earlier self, believed they were somehow enlightened beings bestowing the gift of language; There were the Runaways - people always on the move, always trying to escape themselves, but always finding their own shadow rising up to meet them; The Romantics, who saw themselves as carefree bohemians, but who almost always gradually morphed into the hardbitten, sullen Cynics, suffering through their day and growling over a pint; and then there were the mad, the depressed, the melancholy, and suicidal, those with severe mental health problems who were just another form of runaway. And, in the middle, somehow, there were those who, for whatever reason, became the Professional and vocational, which, amazingly, I seemed to become myself.


So, for a time, I was a serious teacher, and this continued when I returned to the UK. I was a team leader. I gave presentations and conferences and workshops. I had earnest discussions about Weighty TEFL stuff. So perhaps this was why I’d become a TEFL teacher? I was good at the job, I was conscientious at it, I could walk into a classroom and have anyone eating out of my hand in minutes. I was a teacher….because I was a teacher. That’s it.


Except no. The thing is, despite doing more training and enjoying the academic rigour of that, I felt hollow a lot of the time in class. It felt as if I was pulling the same old rabbits out of the same old hats, again and again. I was still, however, extremely good at what I did - it’s just that I was bored.


And at that time, things started to go all sorts of different fruit shaped, let alone pears. I’m talking kiwi fruit. Bananas. MUSHY STRAWBERRY. My marriage collapsed - for reasons which, I perceive now, very much have a link to other things in my life, I entered a period of extreme stress (mitigated by a relationship that should have bloomed), then the atmosphere of my workplace becoming slowly, increasingly toxic, which led to my becoming redundant, then breaking up the relationship and finally, me on the metaphorical and literal floor at the beginning of 2016. I had no job: I had bills to pay: I, once again, was casting my eye around for escape.


Why had I become a teacher?

I had plenty of time to ponder that to myself, but the answer didn’t reveal itself fully until September of that year. That’s when I wandered into the doors of Progress Theatre for an audition.

OK, so why there? Why an audition? What was going on? Well, the thought had begun to plague me of never having followed up on acting as a career after university - a sense of intense regret, as it happens. So,over a few months, I began to wonder whether or not I could act. And at the same time, almost by happenstance, I began to carve out something resembling the start of a career in voiceover work. So, I was acting with my voice - what about on stage?


And I got cast. In two plays, as it turned out. In five separate roles. And, as I went onto the stage for the first time in almost thirty years, a strange, familiar and rather welcome sensation crept over me.


That’s why I became a teacher - I enjoyed standing in front of a load of people and entertaining them! And, admittedly, making a bit of a tit of myself.


And it made sense - my teaching style had always been what’s sometimes called The Sage On The Stage, albeit backed up by formidable pedagogical skills and knowledge, but that was OK. And it also made me realise something else too - when, all those years ago, I saw that advert, I was also a Runaway - and I wanted to run away to the circus. In teaching, I inadvertently entered the Big Top.


Strange to say, but I became a teacher because I hadn’t become an actor - and yet I became a teacher precisely because I was an actor. It’s taken a long time to see this strange, Möbius Strip-like quality of my life.