Well I have got myself a CERT (TEFL) and a COES (TESOL) moved to Turkey and got a job as an English teacher in a school.

And I feel a fraud. After 25 years plus as an Manufacturing Engineer I just don't feel like a teacher.

For the past couple of weeks I have been going in to the school every morning to prepare for the coming year. Luckily the kids don't start back until the 24th, after Bayram, the Turkish holiday.

At the school they have kids who come in over the summer for extra help with their lessons. Quite a lot come in to improve their English. Like the small boy who came in to  read the short story and then talk to me about it.

Now I have been told that the thing I must do is to have the kids take to me. If they like me and I engage with them, everything will be OK. So I am being particularly jolly and a laugh a minute with this kid.

I did not choose the story he was reading. It's about an OAP in France who gets car jacked. A gunmen jumps into his car but the old lad driving manages to get away by crashing through the gates of a police station getting shot in the hand for his troubles.  

Anyway the small boy reads and understands the story and we talk about it.

“What would you do if you were attacked by a gunman?” I asked him and hold my hand to his head in the time honoured shape of an imaginary gun. “Do as I say or I’ll kill you!” I say in a kind of shouted whisper.

As I’m doing it I realise I am in a staff room full of teachers to whom it looks like I am threatening my first real pupil with mock execution.

Well that's good start.