| Mach ado about participation Friendliness, hospitality and acceptance make teaching in Brunei a motivating experience, very different to 'back home'What keeps you motivated? Teaching wonderfully polite and co-operative students who respond well to innovation in teaching. I particularly enjoy teaching English literature. Students love adapting famous works to local themes and situations. For example, my class recently made a short movie of Much Ado About Nothing with Bruneian-Malay traditional dress and props combined with traditional Malay music.Best teaching moment Being given a "favourite teacher" award by the parent-teacher organisation at my school. Receiving congratulations from my Bruneian colleagues, students and parents was a wonderful moment for me and an endorsement of the friendliness, hospitality and acceptance that people here show to those from other countries.And worst Whenever I speak Malay. I learned to speak Indonesian in the early 1980s. When I speak to students I sound like an old man frozen in a language time warp.What have you learned? The ability to look at life with optimism and a sincere belief that life should be enjoyed. Most Bruneians have a magnificent sense of fun and love social gatherings. Students work so well together and in my school there is almost no bullying or fighting.Biggest challenge? Many students are second-language speakers, but do many of their exams in English at a native-speaker level. They face lots of difficulty in interpreting unfamiliar vocabulary and situations.What's next? I do plenty of research and publication work outside my teaching and have even begun dabbling in English language shows for radio and television.Top tip? It's so important for teachers in international environments to appreciate the incredible diversity of learning styles and group behaviours that may be encountered and to realise the enormous amount that can be learned from those who do things differently from "back home".Greg Keaney, 50, worked in universities, colleges and schools in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and his native Australia before coming to Brunei 10 years ago. He currently teaches English language and English literature at a secondary school in Bandar Seri Begawan for CfBTTeflBruneiguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Hitler Exhibit Challenges Germans The German Historical Museum in Berlin aims to go where postwar curators have feared to tread, with an exhibition called "Hitler and the Germans." online.wsj.com |
Moscow announces new mayor Sergei Sobyanin, trusted Kremlin aide of Vladimir Putin, given city council rubberstamp to replace sacked Yuri LuzhkovA top Kremlin official dubbed a "faceless bureaucrat" by critics became the mayor of Moscow today, three weeks after his charismatic predecessor, Yuri Luzhkov, was unceremoniously sacked.Moscow's rubberstamp city council confirmed Sergei Sobyanin as the capital's mayor. Last week President Dmitry Medvedev selected Sobyanin – a trusted aide of the prime minister, Vladimir Putin – from a notional shortlist of four candidates.The appointment consolidates the Kremlin's takeover of Moscow and its prodigious resources, and marks the formal end of the Luzhkov era. The pugnacious Luzhkov, who ran Moscow from 1992, was dismissed after apparently growing too powerful and falling out with Russia's ruling Putin-Medvedev duumvirate.Sobyanin, 52, had been the Kremlin chief of staff since 2005, when Putin was president, and stayed with Putin when he became prime minister after steering Medvedev into the presidency in 2008. Born near the town of Khanty-Mansisk, he has spent most of his administrative career in Siberia and the Urals.In a Brezhnev-like speech, delivered in an uninspiring monotone, Sobyanin described his new job as a "great honour and responsibility". He hailed Moscow as one of the world's leading megalopolises: "A great deal of work has been done in Moscow over the past decades. The city has changed for the better."Sobyanin, however, laid into his predecessor's legacy, saying he would look again at the city's budget and development plan. He acknowledged there was "serious corruption" in the housing sector and said he wanted to make life more comfortable for the capital's 10.5 million citizens. He promised to keep social benefits for Moscow's pensioners.Critics were distinctly unimpressed. "He's a faceless bureaucrat. He's part of the Putin system," said Eduard Limonov, an opposition leader, dissident and writer who is frequently detained during anti-Kremlin rallies. "He has no distinctive threads. He's an obeying official. He will be boring and absolutely flat, square. Luzhkov at least was a picturesque guy."Asked why the Kremlin decided to sack Luzhkov, Limonov said: "Luzhkov became too powerful. He accumulated a lot of might, appointing himself to royal, almost feudal power. The other reason was Moscow's wealth. The federal government wanted all this wealth for itself."Others said Sobyanin would have a more progressive attitude on issues such as opposition rallies and gay rights. The European court of human rights today ruled that Luzhkov's repeated ban on gay parades in Moscow was illegal."He [Sobyanin] has to be completely different from the last mayor," a gay rights activist, Nikolai Alekseev, said. "He has no other choice."Asked what he thought of Sobyanin, Alekseev said: "I don't know who he is. I can't say anything about him."Moscow's city Duma confirmed Sobyanin as mayor in a 34-2 vote. (The council's two attending communists opposed, while another didn't turn up.) Deputies from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party dominate the council after last year's elections, which the opposition allege were rigged.Sobyanin was this afternoon inaugurated as mayor in a short ceremony attended by Medvedev, Russia's patriarch Kirill and other Kremlin luminaries.Medvedev told Sobyanin he faced a difficult job but his regional and federal experience made him the right man for the post. Sobyanin's most urgent tasks would be to sort out Moscow's traffic problems and improve its business climate, Medvedev said. "I have no doubt you will work round the clock to deal with Moscow's problems."Putin abolished gubernatorial elections, including those for the Moscow mayor, in 2004. He reappointed Luzhkov to the job in 2007. Moscow is now the only capital in Europe apart from Minsk, in next-door authoritarian Belarus, where citizens do not have a say in who leads their city.Since his sacking, Luzhkov has expressed his support for the return of direct elections and has – not very plausibly – reinvented himself as an opposition figure.Today, though, he made clear he doesn't intend to stand in elections for the federal Duma next year, or in the 2012 presidential poll. Journalists were barred from listening to a lecture delivered by Luzhkov, who has taken a job at a management university.In his speech Luzhkov bitterly attacked United Russia. He resigned from the party in disgust last month after an unprecedented Kremlin-ordered attack on him by Russia's TV channels. "I have always told the [United Russia] party chairman, Boris Gryzlov, that we don't have discussions or debates. We have always obeyed the [Kremlin] administration on everything," he said. "This is a servile party and I quit it."RussiaVladimir PutinDmitry MedvedevLuke Hardingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Argentina ex-leader Kirchner dies Former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, husband of the current leader, has died after suffering a heart attack, hospital officials say. bbc.co.uk |
HDNET’S “GET OUT!” HEADS TO CANADA - Video HDNet's unique and exciting travel program to film its new season with an all-Canadian cast featuring Co-hosts Lana Tailor and Amy Lynn Grover feedproxy.google.com |