Teaching English: Vision Statement

I have an invaluable and constantly growing treasure trove of multiple high quality, proven English lessons on every area for every level at my finger tips wherever I am in the world. 

Preparing is almost instantaneous.  I just print and photocopy and / or boot up and go... 

As a result, I have plenty of time for a balanced and free life and to continue to invest in my teaching resources and other skills. 

I continually invent, experiment, adapt and grow my teaching skills and materials. 

I am an extremely effective teacher / trainer and make a real difference  to my students' lives.  I build up a network and keep in contact with many of my students. 

I branch out into other forms of training, including coaching and personal development. 

I act as a consultant in teaching and training and earn significant money from my skills, materials and resources.

Exploring and photographing Australia

NSW

• Sydney
• The Blue Mountains
• Capertee Valley
• Kiama
• Forresters Beach 
• Terrigal 
• Port Stephens

Victoria

• Great Ocean Road
• Tasmania
• Melbourne

Queensland

• Northern Queensland

Northern Territory

• Uluru
• Kakadu

Western Australia

• Perth
• Rottnest

Fascinating facts about the Melbourne Cup

This is part of a piece I wrote for my students about The Melbourne Cup to get them in the mood for the race.  We stopped our lesson early and all went to the local pub to watch the race together.  Of course, needless to say, we all had a bit of a punt (I organised the class "sweepstakes") but my horse came second last.  Oh well, gambling and fishing just don't seem to be my thing...

• The Melbourne Cup is Australia's most famous horse race. The race always happens on the first Tuesday of November and it starts at 3 p.m. This is the 150th year that the Melbourne Cup will be run. So, you are here in Australia at a historic moment!

• The Melbourne Cup takes place in (yes, you guessed it!) Melbourne at the Flemington Racecourse. Horses have to be three years or older to take part.

• The Melbourne Cup is known as "The race that stops a nation." That's because just about every person in Australia stops doing whatever they are doing to drink beer or champagne and listen to or watch the race.

• A recent survey calculated that the Melbourne Cup costs the Australian economy over $ 1 billion in lost work. That's because no-one does much work on the afternoon of the race (not even English students) and it’s a public holiday in Victoria. But who cares! It's lots of fun and an excuse for Australians everywhere to have a party.

• Australians love to gamble on any day and especially on the day of the Melbourne Cup. The "sweep" (sweepstakes) is particularly popular where each person puts in some money and they are given a randomly chosen horse. The person with the winning horse wins all the money. Then they get to buy everyone drinks!

• The Melbourne Cup is not really about horse racing at all! It's about having fun and drinking champagne and eating canapés and looking beautiful in the latest fashions. It's one big fashion parade and it's all about being noticed. And often the most popular way to do that is to wear a huge, exotic looking hat.

• Sometimes the fashions at the Melbourne Cup influence what people wear all over Australia and even in other parts of the world. In 1965, everyone remembers when Jean Shrimpton, a model from England, wore a miniskirt. The skirt went just above her knees (shocking in those days!) and caused a worldwide sensation. Soon everyone was wearing them.

• The first Melbourne Cup was run in 1861 and was won by a horse called "Archer." Archer lived in Nowra in New South Wales so he had to walk 800 km's just to get to the start of the race! Seventeen horses took part and the prize was a gold watch and £170 ($ 300).

• In today's race, 24 horses will take part and the prize money is $ 7.7 million and $ 4.5 million of that goes to the winning horse. Even if you come 10th, you get $ 160,000. Over 100,000 people will attend the race.

• The Melbourne Cup is one of the most difficult and challenging races in the world. The race is run over 3,200 metres and it is a handicapped race. This means that the better the horse is, the more weight it has to carry in the race. In the 1890's there was a particularly strong horse called Carbine who won many races. He had to carry a weight of over 66 kg in the Melbourne Cup (that doesn't even include the jockey) and yet he still won the race!

• Only four horses have won the Melbourne Cup twice and only one horse (Makybe Diva in 2003) has won it three times. The distance and the handicap make it very difficult to predict who will win the Melbourne Cup. Any horse can win. Who knows, maybe it will be your horse than wins the race today. Good luck! And if you win, remember to buy your teacher a beer.

Jean Shrimpton in her “shocking” miniskirt that caused a worldwide sensation.  Get a life, people!

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Melbourne Cup at Kaplan 2010

As you can see, there were many different varieties of hats on display...

Thanks Rusty for taking some pics of me...

Priceless moments (2010)

Teaching English

• Working on English lessons
• Exhilaration of pill in lessons
• Working on English maps

Russel's visit

• Especially Wentworth Falls

Movies 

Halloween at School

It was Halloween day at Kaplan on Friday. Some of the staff dressed up as you can see!  I both wrote and found some ghost stories and terrified the hell out of (particularly some) of my students today.  I was worried about one of my tales, thinking it was far too far fetched, but then my 40 year old Russian student suddenly got a crazed look in her eye and insisted that she'd heard the same tale while living in the Czech Republic and she was absolutely, completely positive it had actually happened which created a nice stir in the class and cranked up the eerie atmosphere a notch or too.

Mum, Jo and the kids on their weekend away at Spier Estate

Thanks for the photos, Jo.

Student Site

I've recently created a blogging site for my students.  The aim of the site is to help the class get to know each other (and me) better and to provide some fun writing practice.  I'm very chuffed with the site and it's been very well received by both the students themselves and the school.

You'll notice I have been a bit lazy when it comes to the design of the site.  It looks exactly like this one!  Sometime, I'll give it a spiffy new look.

You can see the student site here.

New studentism

By a French student!

The aim of travel is simple, after 6 months I should speak as Elizabeth II.

Frolicking in the mud at Parati (Brazil)

A few people have asked me recently about the photo with my face covered in mud in the About Me section and how it came about.  Well, below is the answer.  Just play the video and all will be revealed.

Ha, ha, it was a lot of fun!  The video was was taken at Parati in Brazil during my trip to South America. 

Here are some more videos of us playing silly devils - this time in Bolivia.

Lovely Spring morning on the beach

Lizzy, my friend from the park, and I took our respective "children" (Mack and Jem) for a run on Clontarf Beach.  Both Mack and Jem love water and chasing balls and there was plenty of that on offer so they were in heaven.  There were several other dog owners on the beach with a variety of different pooches (including a wonderful bulldog that was full of personality) so it was very social and also entertaining to watch them all frolicking together.  Jem is extremely fast and agile and sometimes lifts right off the ground while in full sprint so I had my camera out trying to capture that moment.

 

And this one Jo, is specially for you!  Sorry it's not quite up to the usual standard !

My most memorable teachers

I wrote this true short piece for students to introduce "used to" and "would" to talk about repeated actions and states in the past.


I used to go to a small school in South Africa for boys only. I went to the same school for twelve years.  I used to love Biology but I didn't use to like Latin.

At first, my favourite teacher was Mr Howard, my Biology teacher.  During the school holidays, he used to travel a lot . When he returned, he would show us amazing photos of animals and plants from his trips.  My love for nature, travel and photography is thanks to him.

When I was older, my favourite teacher was Miss Jones, my Maths Teacher.  She was young and pretty and she used to wear a different coloured ribbon in her hair every day.  Each day before she came into class, we would try to guess the colour of her ribbon.  The whole class had a crush on her. We’d usually behave badly in class but we were like meek puppies when she was around.

My scariest teacher was Mrs Ford. She was always bad tempered and she would sometimes shout at us until our ears hurt.  If you did something wrong, she used to stand behind you and pinch your ear lobe till you begged for mercy.  I remember her well.  I still sometimes see her in my nightmares.

[Note: The final teacher is fictional but is inspired by Mam Suttle who did indeed pinch our ear lobes from behind if we misbehaved!]

Two Childhood Memories

I wrote these two childhood memories for an English class:


I have a couple of very vivid childhood memories. Both are about embarrassing things that happened to me at school.

First of all, let me tell you that my father used to be a dentist.

One day, when I was 6 years old, I was sitting in class listening to my teacher.  She was reading us a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Suddenly Mrs Ford, another teacher who taught the older children, came rushing into our classroom.  She was a big, loud woman who used to shout a lot and pinch our ears and I was very scared of her.  She said in a loud voice, "I want Myburgh!"  Myburgh was my surname. Then she grabbed me by the arm and walked me out of the classroom and down the school corridor. I was terrified.  I didn't know what was going to happen. Maybe I had done something wrong and she was going to pinch my ear!

But she didn't.  She walked me to her classroom and made me stand in front of all the children.  Everyone was looking at me.  I didn’t know where to look so I looked down at my feet.  Then she said, "Myburgh, open your mouth and show them your teeth!"   So I did. What else was I to do?   Then she said  "Students, look at his teeth.  These are the teeth of a dentist's son.   Look how they sparkle and shine!  You too can have teeth like this if you look after them."  Then she said "Thank you Myburgh - you can go back to your class now."   I ran out of the classroom, wishing that my dad was an engineer or a business man or fireman - anything but a dentist.

My second memory happened when I was seven years old.  I had to have an operation on my legs.  I went into hospital and came out with my legs in plaster paris.  I could not walk for 6 weeks and had to move around in a wheel chair.  When I was in class, I could not walk to the toilet.  So I used to pee in a bottle in class. Then, when I was finished, the bottle would be put on the floor beside me.

As soon as the bottle was on the floor, my teacher would start to watch the students carefully.  She was looking for someone who was or had been naughty.  Then she would say "Right, Patrick, you haven't done your homework."  Or "Nicky, you're talking in class."  - "Go to the toilet and empty out the bottle!"  They would come over to me and take the bottle and look at me as if it was all my fault.   So for 6 long weeks, I was the class punishment.

So those are my two vivid memories.  I have many happy memories but these are two memories I wouldn't mind forgetting.  Except that they make good stories at dinner parties.

My Bad Day

I wrote this (true) story for one of my English classes to introduce 3rd conditionals...

A couple of months ago, I had a really bad day.  I was at work teaching when I got a phone call from my housemate, Craig, to say that my dog, Mack, had run away.

Craig had been walking to the station when he realized he had forgotten his mobile phone so he rushed back to the house to get it.  Because he was in a hurry, he left the front gate open by mistake and Mack then ran outside.   Craig ran after Mack.  Mack thought he was being chased and got scared and ran away faster. Craig could not catch him.

I went home as soon as I could to look for Mack.  I drove around in my car around the neighborhood calling his name loudly but he didn't come.  I was terrified I would never see Mack again.  I thought maybe he would get run over - or people would find him and keep him as their pet.

Then after three hours of stress, my phone rang.  It was a lady called Liza who told me she had found a dog called Mack.  Was he my dog?  I was so happy I danced around in the street.  Then I drove to the Liza’s house to get Mack - she lived close by in North Sydney.  I was so relieved and happy to see Mack again.   Mack was happy to see me to and licked my face to say hello.

Liza said that Mack had run onto a busy road and a car nearly hit him.  She was walking past with her mother and saved Mack.  They picked Mack up and took him back to her house.

Liza said she had and her mum had totally fallen in love with Mack.  She said he was the cutest and most friendly little dog she had ever met.  She asked if she could come to my house during the day and take Mack for walks while I was at work.  I said yes, definitely, because Mack often gets very lonely during the day while I am at work.

So now Liza comes and takes Mack for walks everyday and often she takes Mack back to her house and looks after him for the day.  If I want to go to a party in the evening, she looks after Mack for the night.  She has said that if I ever want to go away for the weekend, she will look after Mack too.  Mack is so happy because he loves Liza and he is no longer alone during the day.

So all in all, my bad day turned into a good day!   If Craig hadn’t left the gate open, Mack wouldn’t have run away.  If Mack hadn’t run away, he wouldn’t  have met Liza.   If Liza hadn’t met Mack, Mack would be alone during the day.  If Mack was still alone during the day, I would worry about him.