Blog Archives

Creating Drama

12/28/2014

Have a look at the score of this game. Would you have stayed until the end? Was the game ever in doubt? Do you think the game was dramatic? For those of you who may in fact be reading this in Asia and have no idea what I am talking about, a lopsided score of 9 to 0 offers very limited entertainment value for the modern fan because there is no drama, no reason to watch the end of the game after about the sixth inning and if we could look at he stands at this stage I assure you most people would have probably left.

On the other hand, if you look at this scene in baseball, it is DRAMATIC. Is the runner going to be safe or not? It is the element of the unknown that creates tension and the reason to stay watching. So what I am going on about you are probably wondering. Well let me tell you.

Was my book, It all Started in Mandalay dramatic enough???? Please read the book and tell me whether you were left wondering whether the "runner" was going to be safe or out, Generally, I hate books where I know the main character is a "bad" guy and you see her or him ruining their life before your eyes. I do have a character like this by the name of Paul in my book and I could not figure out why he was the most popular character according to my hundreds of readers but I think I have now figured it out.

You do not know until the end of the book whether he will kill himself or survive and redeem himself. My readers taught me a lesson in drama and thank you very much!

Wouldn't it be great if all books could come with two or three different endings? If the book is good and it has created tension or drama a number of endings are possible.

I would love to run a contest of some sort and have my readers actually write a different ending which would prove to me that the writing was compelling.

Why don't we do this? After reading the book, which you can buy anywhere, like Friensen Press or Amazon, kobo etc. if you write a different ending and post on this blog, I will send you a book of your choice for your reading pleasure. My reading pleasure will be to read your ending and who knows, if it is compelling I might even use it in the second printing of my book!

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Copy or Create?

12/24/2014

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The longer I live the more I realize I am more and more like my mother. I remember her reading Maeve Binchy's "Evening Class" and telling me how much she enjoyed it. It was the story of a few disparate
characters taking a class together and on their end of the year trip all of the stories become intertwined.

When my mother told me about it, I could not imagine I could be interested in such a book. Now, at least twenty years later, Maeve Binchy is one of my favourite authors. Her simple style, elegant prose and compelling stories just draw you in and force you to read more.

When I wrote my first novel, It All Started in Mandalay, I thought I was Maeve Binchy telling the stories of a few teachers honing their craft far from home in a different country. All of the stories in and of themselves were compelling and I thought, through the birth of an illegitimate baby, that all of their stories would come together as effortlessly as Binchy's.

I now find out, after the book has been published and read by hundreds of readers that it was not so effortless. Writing is a craft and takes a lot of hard work. Creativity is not enough. Weaving stories together takes a great deal of intellectual exercise to make it work. I am just trying to get through Eric Segal's book," the Class," about a Harvard class in the 1950's and what happened to the various characters and I must admit that even though the writing is simple and engaging I am having trouble getting through it and might not be able to finish it. It just takes too much work on the part of the reader ( me) to put all of the pieces together and remain interested enough in reading it! Maybe I should not be so discouraged that I can not come up to Binchy's standard.

Now I just tried writing a children's book the "Mystery of the Missing Polishing Cup" about a small, rolly polly round polishing cup that goes missing in a dentist's office and can't be found anymore making it impossible to clean any teeth. When you read this, if you read my mother's the Mystery of the Missing Chalah by Freda Charles you will notice a lot of similarities to my little story. You can buy her book and my at Amazon. Just look up our names and press the magic button.... and please send me a note how I did. Next time, I will try even harder to reach Maeve Binchy's standard!

Can we never get away from copying???? Do we want to get away from copying???

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The teacher becomes the pupil

12/20/2014

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Mandalay Hills

Becoming a student again!
I am now writing the second edition of my book, It All Started in Mandalay and I decided to put in a lot more dialogue. My readers told me they loved the characters but felt that they would get a deeper understanding if there was more dialogue. Writing the dialogue was easy, but figuring out where to put the quotation marks was another story altogether because it sometimes gets quite complicated.

Instead of getting into the car and going to the library to get a grammar book, I walked over to my bookshelves and pulled a novel off of my shelves to see examples. The first book I saw was called Ungifted by Gordon Korman. It is a terrific book and more importantly had lots of dialogue so I used that as my guide for the mechanics of how to do it.

Now let me tell you the rest of the story...Gordon Korman was my student twenty years ago and now he is my teacher! Isn't it strange that of the hundreds of books I could ave taken off my shelf I picked the book that was my former student's!

The Art of Listening
One of the things I did was use the first edition of my book as a tool for a small class of Asians I teach English speaking and writing to who live in Toronto. We are a small group of six people and every week we read a chapter of my book and comment on it. I use it as an opportunity of teaching syntax and grammar points but what I have discovered is that I am learning so much more than any of my students. They are giving me such insights into my book that I had no idea were even there! I wish I could write as well as they give me credit for, but I will tell you I am learning so much from them about Asian culture that it gives me such a better understanding of the Asian characters in my book.

An author friend of mine, Shaul Ezer who wrote the Nubian Princess told me he used the draft of his first book at a reading club, took all of their criticisms under consideration and rewrote the book as a result. Based on what my EAL class told me, now I think I could add more drama by playing more with one of the characters to make him evil!

If you want to write seriously, many eyes have to read what you say before you finalize your book, which gives the writer perspectives on both your own book and life. Just a terrific exercise where the teacher becomes the student.

The Writing Process
To sum up, I guess what I learned was that writing is a dynamic process and one can't write in isolation. There has to be a synergy to what you write. For example, now I am writing a book about a Jewish partisan in the Polish forest during world war two. I do a lot of writing, but also a lot of listening to the few Holocaust survivors left and their children.

When I went to my email today the library told me I had a book waiting. What do you think this book was? Naturally a book by a survivor called the Hands of War. Is someone trying to tell me that if you want to write well you have to be well read and you have to become a student?

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More Unsexy stuff you have to know

12/15/2014

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Transportation

Now imagine this bus without the snow and 35 degree celsius weather outside. The windows are open and people are hanging out the sides of the bus. That will give you some idea about what taking a bus is like in south east Asia.

If you are in Myanmar, people will be on the roof and hanging out of the doors but if you are in Singapore you better take a sweater because the air conditioning is on so high you can catch pneumonia.

Here are the options getting to school. You can walk if you live near the school, but if you live near the school you will miss out on the nightlife since schools are generally not downtown. You can take a regular bus which is surprisingly cheap but cannot be depended to run on schedule and you might have to transfer a lot. You can ask your school to allow you to ride on the school bus but you will have to get to a drop off point. The third alternative is to take a taxi. If you are in places like Thailand or Vietnam you will be pleasantly surprised at how cheap it is.

In most countries of south east asia you can always take a taxi motorcycle, and if you choose this option I hope your insurance is fully paid up!

Clothing

In the west, teachers dress quite casually but when you are in the east at an international school the owners want you to portray a certain image so men will have to wear ties and dress pants and women generally have to wear a dress or a skirt with no open toed shoes, especially in Thailand where an open toe is a huge sign of disrespect.

Here is the good news. Don't even bother taking any clothes with you. They are so cheap to have made that you will be delighted. If the collars fall off in a few months , just think of the clothes as rentals and keep buying new. Some schools will even give you the material to have your clothes made!

Week-end Fun

Here is the good news. Transportation is so cheap and countries are so close together that you can easily fly from one country to another. The most expensive thing will probably be the visa to get in! Laos is particularly expensive for example. For sure the visa is more expensive than the bus or flight to get there.

Air Asia has ticket counters in all of the malls and tickets very plentiful and cheap to buy. You can also take overnight buses. However, you certainly do not have to go to other countries. For example, if you live in Bangkok you can easily get to Koh Samet which is a few hours from Bangkok and one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. You will discover these hidden gems no matter where you are and you will enjoy these sites immensely.

Koh Samet

Ready to get a job in Asia yet? All schools are hiring now for next September! Just go to the web sites I keep mentioning and good luck. One other thing to remember...things move very slowly in Asia when it comes to making decisions so you may be waiting a long time after the interview before you hear whether or not you go the job. Just hang in there because you probably did!

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The unsexy things you need to know once you accept a job

12/11/2014

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Getting There

If you are going to Asia, you will probably have to fly and depending on where you go in Asia there might not be a direct flight. When you choose your flight I would suggest you look at the wait times between flights. Too little wait like one hour and you may miss your ongoing flight and too much time like ten hours is going to end up either costing you money or sleep since you may have to go to a hotel.

Most schools will pay for your flight but I have a word of advice. You will likely come to the school with very little money and you will have to live for the first month on what you bring, unless you can negotiate with your school for them to pay for your flight up front so that you have some living money. Most schools do not like to do this in case you decide to quit after a few months and they are out the money but if you push hard enough they may give you the money which you will need because you have to get accommodation which will ask for a few months rent in advance and you may like to eat the occasional meal the first month.

If they do not pay for the flight for a few months, you may ask them for an advance against your future pay and most schools are willing to do this.

Banking

You may have debts in your home country which you have to pay off out of your salary. This may sound easy but often it becomes quite complicated for a few reasons. The first one is that you have to open up a bank account and you will not be able to do this on your own in most Asian countries. I guess they are concerned about security so you will have to get he owner of the school to come to the bank with you to vouch for you.

Once you have your bank account, the deposits from the schools will be in local currency which you have to translate into the currency of your home country if you need to wire some money home to pay for any debts. This sounds easy but might provide some challenges since currencies go up and down and different banks give you certain different rates.

Before you leave your home country, visit your local bank where you do your banking and ask them for all of the details they need to accept funds from abroad. All of these things may take a few months before they start to flow smoothly so I would leave some money at home to pay of things like student debt or mortgages knowing that flow of money between two countries will take a few months to flow smoothly.

Accommodation

Most apartments in Asia do not have bathtubs so if you fancy one, you have to ask for it specifically. Depending on how much money you want to spend, you may get other amenities like swimming pools, fancy lobbies and games rooms and so on. I think you should expect to pay about 25% of your salary on accommodation but it can certainly be less if you are willing to "slum it"
There are many shared apartments where there might be three bedrooms and three teachers share these accommodations. You can also get a shared room in a house which is the cheapest way to go.

You will be asked to pay a few months rent in advance on a year lease. Many teachers have told me that they never see this money again, although I have been lucky and have always gotten my money back at the end of the lease.

Make sure you write an escape clause in your lease that allows you to get out of the contract under extenuating circumstances such as a crisis at home where you have to break the lease.
Your biggest expense will likely be things like electricity which you have to factor in when you create your budget. Make sure you find out ahead of time how much money this might be.

You also have to decide how far away from the school you want to be. In large cities like Bangkok, Beijing or Ho Chi MInh City this is a major consideration since you do not want to spend hours fighting traffic every day. If you are in a more rural area then it will not be a major issue and you can live anywhere you please because traffic will be light.

Singapore Botanical Gardens

In the next "installment" I will talk about transportation, clothing, and weekends.

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You could be here!

12/7/2014

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Look out your window...If you are in the western world you may not be able to see out the window for all the snow and ice! Where would you rather be?

Times Education Supplement

Press one of these buttons, find a job, get on a plane and GO!

Beach in Thailand

Singapore

Philippines

Convinced you need to get out of the snow? Need more convincing? How about reading my novel and find out what it is really like to live and work in an international school? Read all about the love affairs, learning how to teach, personal growth and friendship.

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The All Important Interview!

12/4/2014

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Thanks Reg, for your wonderful comments on my novel It All Started in Mandalay. You said you loved the character development and even called me a "sociologist" which I took as a high complement indeed since you are a sociologist!

Please keep your comments coming after you read the book. I am just leading a book club through the book and I love their perspective. They give me such insight into things I never even thought of. I only wish I did this BEFORE I published! Who knew I had such insight????

If you wish, I think we have time to also autograph the book in time for the holidays if you buy it sooner rather than later!!

Steps you must take Before the Interview!

Read school profile

Look especially for mission and vision statements. Make sure you agree with what the school stands for. If you are, ensure that you sprinkle in some examples of your philosophy of education into your answers to satisfy the interviewer that you will be on board and a team player. The more specific you can be the better. The interviewers want to hear specific examples from your teaching practice.

Look at curriculum

If you are teaching in Asia, a lot of the "better"schools have adopted an international curriculum to ensure that their students are on a level playing field with schools across the world. For example, they will adapt the IB or Cambridge program. Some the American AP.

If you are not familiar with the curriculum's they advertise, make sure you get more than a passing knowledge of it before you begin the interview. For example, read the web sites of the Cambridge program if that is what the school is offering. Tell them how you might adapt your own program to the Cambridge model if that is what they are advertising. If you read one of these programs like the IB or whatever and you do not agree with it philosophically, withdraw your application. You will only make yourself very unhappy to go to a school that offers a curriculum you cannot handle intellectually.

Look at the pictures in the newsletters

What extra curricular programs do they run? What is the make up of the school population? Who is doing the coaching? Have you had any experience in running any of these field trips or programs they offer? Can you offer anything to the program? Make sure you tell them in the interview.

Look at Blogs

Foreign teachers at the school tend to write blogs about their experiences. Search the web to find such blogs. They will give you great insight. You can even contact the writer to ask lots of questions. The more homework you do the better you will perform in these behaviour descriptive interviews you will do

Skype

Read the tips I gave you in another blog post. Relax, be honest and listen carefully to what they are asking. Honesty is the key because you will be hired base on what you say and if you say things you don't believe everyone will be unhappy once you start working at the school!

If you do not get the job, don't worry. There are loads of others every day. Check out the web sites I gave you in earlier blogs or even go and volunteer if you can afford it. Check out the volunteer opportunities I highlighted in earlier blogs.

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Creating Drama

Copy or Create?

The teacher becomes the pupil

More Unsexy stuff you have to know

The unsexy things you need to know once you accept a job

You could be here!

The All Important Interview!

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