Wild goose chase

It has been a particularly difficult summer here in Greece for everyone, rising prices, galloping unemployment and deep salary cuts have made people worried about how they are going to make it through the winter, which contrary to popular myth actually exists in Greece. Hard to believe when you 're on the beach and it is in the high 30s that the temperatures here in the north often are colder than those in the UK.

To make my particular situation even more difficult was the fact that I was burgled in May, which damn near wiped me out financially at the worst possible time of the year for a teacher. So when I got the chance to apply for a job as an IELTS examiner you can imagine how welcome that news was. Despite lack of funds I managed to scrape together the money necessay to travel to Athens for the interview. I travelled through the night by coach in order to save the cost of a hotel room and kept my spending to an absolute minimum.

After a long and stressful interview I returned the same day so spending endless hours stuck in a coach during the course of the day. As you can imagine a 14 hour, 1100km round trip is nobody's idea of a fun day out.

The only problem was that the British Council wanted me to do a five day series of training sessions in Athens, which was just impossible for me financially. As you can imagine spending five days away from home staying in a hotel, eating out and commutting is a major layout even in the best of times, let alone during one of the worse periods of economic crisis in modern Greek history. So I said that it was impossible for me and could I do the training closer to home. Thankfully, the BC assured me that someting could be worked out come September. September came and no word, when I sent off emails I was first told that the person responsible was unavailable, then I was told that the training material were appropriate for groups only and finally, today I received an email saying that is no job anyway.

I am angry that this whole procedure has been a waste of time, energy and money in which I foolishly participated, thinking that I might get a job out of it. I feel that that I have been misled and that an organisation has chosen to treat people with indifference and/or contempt. It's something that I have seen a lot of here in Greece as the economic situation has deteriorated and more and more people chase fewer and fewer positions. Teachers are being seen as just another commodity which can be exploited and discarded at will. An endless stream of other applicants can take their place if they are unhappy with expoitative wages, lack of social insurance or outrageous demands.

Back to teaching

I guess I've taken a break from reporting what has been happening here in Thessaloniki as I need some time and space for myself and do the other necessary stuff in my life so that the bills get paid and there is something in the fridge other than ice cubes and satchets of mustard.

Last week I helped present seminars in how to make and distribute videos on the internet using freely available software tools. As with using the web for teaching English I tried to adhere to two basic principles. The programs and equipment have to be;

1 Free (in the case of programs) or cheap (in the case of equipment) - so this means working with peoples' compact cameras or mobile/cell phones that have video recording capabilities.

2 The programs have to be easy to master.

There is little point wading through complex software that requires state of the art equipment if people do not have access to it afterwards. Instead the message I was trying to get across was that with simple tools and a little bit of knowledge we can capture half decent images that will help promote our message via the internet in ways that text alone cannot.

None of what said was groundbreaking or particularly new however, as with many powerful tools it's the application of existing technologies in new and innovative ways that makes all the difference. A mobile phone, a cheap netbook and use of the myriad of possibilities that social media offers means that we can all contribute something to the debates that surround us in the traditional media.

Greek EFL/ESL in crisis

The school year has started once again here in Greece and once again I am getting back into the swing of things a far as teaching is concerned. I have started lessons with new students and as is often the case I have been appalled by what they have been put through in the name of EFL/ESL.

Case in point being a pair of teens who were forced to get through 10, yes 10 exam practice books as a way of preparing for their B2 level exams. No other material was provided and these poor guys had to wade through hundreds of pages of test items. No wonder they were wary about continuing their foreign language education with me. I quickly assured them they would not be doing anything as dry and soulless as this.

With the growth in number of ESOL examinations recognised by the Greek state the response of the the private language sector (where the bulk of language teaching takes place) is to turn intermediate level classes into little more than exam pratice lessons which do little more than repeat the format of whatever examinations are being taken. There is very little principled teaching of skills, functions, syntax, phonetics or anything else that might effectively help a person attain proficiency in English.

All that matters is that students do an endless list of exercises that may come up in the examinations they are going to take. Of course this scatter gun approach is time consuming, expensive and extremely ineffective. However, by the time that becomes apparent, the frontisteria (Greek private schools), publishing companies and exam providers have all made handsome profits out of hapless parents and robbed students of hundreds, if not thousands of hours of their youth.

Personally, this is a good thing, as cynical as it may seem as the latest generation of parents have come to realise the huge scam being committed and have started to look or alternative teaching opportunities and so come to me looking for something different. On the other hand schools have responded to this crisis by cutting cost and reducing the quality of the education offered even further. Low wages, chronic job insecurity and dubious contracts mean that teaching English in Greece has become a McJob where the youngest and cheapest are favoured and anyone with experience or qualifications are deemed a waste of money.