Editorial

If you haven't taken a look at the latest Think Tank, I strongly recommend it. Chuck Sandy, Marc Helgesen, Curtis Kelly, Dorothy Zemach, Peter Viney and Chris Hunt have all shared some wonderful stories and insights.

It's actually made me reminisce a bit. In my case, I started work in music after leaving university. I was promoting concerts, working with new (and not so new) musicians, and even had a mobile discotheque called the Spanish Inquisition. It was all very successful, so why did I become a language teacher?

Part of the reason was that I had stumbled into music. I found myself on a national committee of student charities in my first year at university being volunteered to organize Bangladesh concerts. The concerts went well, and this, in turn, led me to organize the music for many of the Cambridge May Balls, become the Union Social Director, and then walk into a job in a music agency straight after university. Within a couple of years I had my own company, and we were a doing a lot of exciting things all over the country.

When an electronics company offered me office space in the center of London, I had to make up my mind If I really wanted a career in the music business. I decided I wanted to be as far away from any kind of business as possible, took a TEFL course, gave my business away to friends, and started teaching in Cambridge Language schools

The move to teaching was definitely one of love. At that time I could earn more in one evening as a disc jockey than I could in a whole month as a language school teacher. But I have never regretted the decision. It's a privilege to be a teacher, and to be able to make a contribution to the development of children's education. Ironically, I've ended up using some of the business lessons I learned to further educational causes. Life works in mysterious ways sometimes.

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• Adults
• Barbara's editorial (3)
• David's editorial (27)
• Kids
• Steven's editorial (4)
• Teacher development (1)
• Theron's editorial (4)

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• Teaching and Learning: It's all about the People
• The Balance Between Online Privacy and Online Access
• Pursuing a fluency based methodology
• Pressing Issues in EFL Japan
• The last chance to take the one-day certificate course
• The Connected Teacher
• The difficulties of teacher on the job training (OJT)
• Fluency in EFL
• The regeneration of the language school industry in Japan