Dave’s ESL Cafe has helped many new teachers find out about the TEFL profession with informative forums and great resources. I started out in TEFL almost 10 years ago with the help of Dave’s ESL Cafe. I’m one of many who can owe a great new lifestyle thanks to the help given to me by the vibrant community.
We’ve got an interview with one of the biggest movers and shakers in the TEFL World. Nope, it’s not Dave Sperling, but it is one of the core moderators over at Dave’s ESL Cafe, the most popular and most informative TEFL and ESL forum on the net.
Q. How did you get your start moderating on the ESL Cafe Forums?
Mr. Kalgukshi: Before I get into the body of the interview, let me begin by saying that anything I write here is strictly my own opinion and not necessarily Dave’s ESL Café official policy. I should also point out that I am not a “Head Moderator,” as there is no such position on either the International Job Forums or the Korean Job Forums. For purposes of this interview, I am answering your questions from the perspective of moderating on the International Job Forums only.
How did I get started moderating on Dave’s? Well, I had been a very early member of Dave’s ESL Cafe on the forerunner of the present board. When Dave decided to revamp it to its present format in late 2002, he asked for some help with the moderating. I immediately volunteered because I viewed the site as a great resource for TEFL teachers around the world and I wanted to help out in insuring its continued success. I’ve been moderating both the International Job Forums and the Korean Job Forums since that time.
Q. What kind of experience do you have in TEFL teaching?
Mr. Kalgukshi: I’ve taught in the TEFL area for over thirteen years in three nations. The majority of my time has been spent teaching at the university level.
Q. In my opinion, experience in an area seems to be a double-edged sword, it helps you understand the topic, but it also ruins your objectivity. What’s your thoughts on what makes an objective moderator?
Mr. Kalgukshi: I try very hard to stay above the fray. I remain focused on impartiality when it comes to making a decision. I play NO favorites and I treat everyone equally. When any member starts interfering in the civil exchange of information on Dave’s ESL Café, it is highly likely he or she will be hearing from me or another member of the Mod Team. Personally, I have no time for someone who comes to the board only to promote a particular agenda or cause trouble. You have to understand that very few members ever receive a warning from a Moderator. This is because they follow the rules and play the game as it was intended. The very few who do not frequently find their way to other sites. Yes, the Mod Team sometimes “assists” in this process.
Q. What do you see happening in the future with the TEFL profession?
Mr. Kalgukshi: I see it growing remarkably and expanding into areas that we probably can’t even imagine right now. It’s a wonderful profession to be in and especially if you are well qualified. I entered it after having another career. While I enjoyed my previous career very much and am most grateful for the financial security and other benefits I have as a result, I do regret somewhat that I did not discover TEFL teaching when I was younger. Some distinct advantages that I had coming into the profession were that I had completed an Education curriculum (teacher licensing) while at my university and I had earned a graduate degree in Education. These assisted me in no small respect when I entered the world of ESL/EFL. I would encourage anyone to enter the TEFL teaching profession, but I would caution him or her that real success in the profession is often directly dependent upon the level of education one brings to it.
Q. If you could add three resources to ESL Cafe, what would you add?
Mr. Kalgukshi: Good question. I had to give this one some thought and my answers reflect, in part, what I have heard from members. Here they are: 1.) Tech Forum 2.) Spell Check feature 3.) Possibly a blog area or something similar.
Q. If you could offer one piece of advice to new TEFL teachers, what would that be?
Mr. Kalgukshi: Be innovative. Don’t be afraid to try something different. Just because (allegedly) no one has ever done it before does not mean it will not work or help students to learn. Too many teachers I have worked with over the years seem to fall into a rut where they are very comfortable teaching only one way often using only one “tried and true” teaching methodology. Very often this becomes boring even to them. If the teacher is bored, it is highly likely the students are bored, too. Bored students don’t want to learn. They only want to escape. I’ve found that shaking the students up on occasion by “teaching outside the box” works wonders for both the teacher and the students.
Q. What do you like the most about moderating ESL Cafe?
Mr. Kalgukshi: I have been privileged for many years to be able to help the members who require our assistance. There are many different ways this takes place, but it does take place on a continuous basis and it is very vital to what we do as Moderators on Dave’s ESL Café. To the extent that the trolls and flamers come on the board and cause trouble, they interfere with our ability to provide this service and restrict the amount of time we are able to devote to it. While some boards out there seem to welcome, invite, permit or even promote such behavior, Dave’s ESL Café is not one of them. As a result, trolls and flamers are not welcome and we take swift and appropriate action to insure their behavior does not continue. By doing so, we protect our members who follow the rules and are on Dave’s for what the board is intended for and not just to create havoc or insult other members.
Moderating can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a lot of work. I’ve been doing it for many years on two very active boards and know full well the difficulties involved in moderating. At the same time, I owe a lot to the community we have in terms of providing a wealth of information for our members including me, and I work very hard to protect that community from those who would work to harm it.
In closing, I want to point out that I am very proud to be a member of the very experienced and united Mod Team we have on the International Job Forums. For many years now, I have witnessed my fellow Mod Team members work tirelessly and selflessly in their desire to maintain and grow Dave’s ESL Café as the first place to go on the Internet to find a wealth of ESL/EFL teaching information and engage in healthy and civil exchange of that information. Through the combined and consistent efforts of the members of the Mod Team, our nearly fifty-four thousand (and continuously growing) members always know they will be treated and respected as professionals on our site for professionals.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to respond to your questions and I wish you continued success in the years ahead.
Thanks, Mr. Kalgukshi. It’s been a real pleasure having you here to answer our questions. I appreciate your time and hope that we can do this again in the future. Thanks for continually making ESL Cafe a quality resource for teachers.
I also thank Mr. K for taking the time to do this. He is perhaps one of the most maligned figures in the internet TEFL community, for right or wrong. My thoughts on the policies of the ESL Cafe forums are well known, but I appreciate the chance to finally see where Mr. K is coming from.
I have commented on this interview on the ELT World blog: www.elt-world.blogspot.com
I have also drawn attention to this interview on the ELT World forums: www.eltworld.net/forums/viewto......php?t=823
“Through the combined and consistent efforts of the members of the Mod Team, our nearly fifty-four thousand (and continuously growing) members”
What a load of rubbish! Check the membership lists. There are countless pages of “members” who have never posted! There are also the “banned” members, who are still counted in the membership list. Kalqushki “moderates” without a sense of humour, and a Gestapo-like attitude. Any post critical of an advertising School or Organization is quickly deleted. The “newbies” will still flock like sheep to The Greasy Spoon, but older more experienced members of the ESL Teaching Profession prefer far better sites. For example….raoulschinasaloon.com, or eltworld.net. These two sites provide REAL information and assistance to fellow Teachers.
As an ex mod on the Korea forums I can say that Mr.K is difficult to work with and one of the reasons that I quit moderating there.
I’ll echo David…god to hear from Mr. K outside the confines of the Cafe.
I’ll guardedly echo Guy and Dave. Although I’ve had a misunderstanding with Mr K (once only, I think - we never did see eye-to-eye on it), I would not moderate. So many people with worldviews that radically differ from each other colliding and conflicting - I would tire of it too quickly. Moderating, on the whole, is an underappreciated function, so let me throw out a thanks for doing it!
Hmm…typo above. ‘Good’ instead of ‘god’. Mr K isn’t that grand.
I was once a mod there, too. Kal was always fair and not afraid to support his opinion. It’s not a job for everyone. I was happy to get out.
An interesting read- and not just because I have had my clashes with Mr K!
I’ve never corresponded (or clashed) with Mr. Kalqushki and am prepared to accept his declaration of principles at face value but, if the farrago of nonsense and frequent exchanges of vituperative personal abuse that characterise many of the strings on the Russia and CIS forum (the only one in the eslcafe that I regulary read) are representative of contributions to all the forums, I can only say that he’s fighting a losing battle. Quite apart from failing to exclude exhibitionists (for example a current string by a “Pakistani princess”), Mr. K and his colleagues do nothing tangible to prevent a hard core of frequent contributors from obfuscating and distorting issues that started as clear and to the point strings and end up as exchanges of view on entirely unrelated subjects.
A postscript to the above. A few days ago I started a new string in the General Discussion forum of eslcafe.com and gave it the title “Political correctness.” With hindsight, I realise I should have added “in the classroom”, but I think the text made that clear. By last night, there were nine replies, but most of them written by two contributors, and the theme of a teacher’s need to tread carefuly in areas of possible student sensitivities had been buried under a landslide of arguments about political correctness in general, and in terms of the American socio-poliitical scene in particular. This morning, I notice that Mr. Kalgukshi (I apologise to him for earlier misspelling his name, but I wasn’t alone in that) has stepped in and magisterially embargoed further contributions pending “digestion” of the existing information. Mr. K. I agree with you that the discussion had wandered a long way from the context of teaching, but a brief scan through other fairly recent strings throws up several instances of irrelevant soapboxing that seem to have either escaped your unsleeping vigilance or been given the green light by some other monitor who is less devoted to the ‘troll patrol”. The ultimate result is that any hope I had of finding a few grains of wisdom amidst the piles of obscurantist chaff has now disappeared along with the string itself.
Mr K is, pure and simple, a bully in his role as a “moderator.” In private messages, his attempts at threatening or intimidating warnings are hilarious: “You are being watched.” “I’m looking over your shoulder.” “Be very, very careful.”
He has favorites among the membership whom he never warns or criticises or edits. How impartial is that?
Mr. K. has now unlocked my thread, albeit with the dire threat of instant annihilation of any further irrelevant material, and i’ve edited the title to make the thread’s object clearer, so this is just to say that I have no complaint about Mr. Kalgukshi’s monitoring of my submissions (though I still think he hasn’t always shown the same assiduity in scrutinising other posts, one notable example being the “sticky” about phonemes in the General Discussion forum that attracted some personal abuse aimed at the originator of the thread.
Not a particularly insightful interview. Straightforward questions answered in a vague and dreary manner. I had hoped for more.
Dave’s ESL Cafe used to be a place with more humour and sparkling debate. I totally agree with Darrick Jane’s comments about what has happened. Under Mr K it’s become too rigid and I think the power has gone to his head a little. The forums are now dull tepid affairs, with few new ideas or displays of energy being shown. Mr K steps in too often when a little more restraint would allow the senior forum members to resolve the issue themselves. (This happened before his arrival.) Perhaps Mr K should follow his own advice and “be innovative”.
Experienced teachers used to trust Dave’s Cafe for reliable information on bad schools, but it sold out a long time ago.
Alas! It’s me again! And although I said (above) that I have no complaint about Mr. K., he doesn’t feel the same way about me. After he unlocked my thread, I posted a little note asking future contributors to keep the discussion within a teaching related context, because “Big Brother is watching you”. Not a very original joke admittedly, and not very respectful, but I was rather taken aback when I found a pm from Mr. K. warning me that any more cracks like that one and “you soon won’t be with us.” How does that Orwellian threat compare with the pm’s you’ve received hippy dippy and Darrick Jane?
Similar, but I’ve forgotten the exact wording…..then I received a “holiday”..because I continued to re-post a thread that he deleted…so I told him where he could place his Forum, and sent a copy to sperling . Of course, the door was then firmly locked in my face. Now it’s a dismal, boring place, since most of the insightful, humourous posters are elsewhere
Isn’t it sad to see that what was once the pinnacle of EFL on the internet has now become the topic of such disdain among the very group of users that the site was supposedly created for. Even sadder is that it seems that much of these bad feelings come from the moderation of the discussion forums on that site.
Eslcafe has rules and I totally respect the rights of the people associated with that board to decide what they will and won’t accept on their site. My problem with eslcafe is that these same rules of respect for others and fairplay do not seem to apply to the moderators, and Mr.K is without a doubt the biggest problem in this regard.
When you have a forum that enables a moderator to rule by emotion rather than logic then you know that the discussions on that forum will be in trouble. A quick comparison between the type of discussions that are had there today as compared with two years ago really show this. Eslcafe seems to attract a certain type of teacher nowadays and without wanting to sound offensive this has not strengthened the value of that forum.
As may be appareant I am no fan of Mr.K myself and have in fact had my fair share of run-ins with him. I would like to say that he is respectful, objective, honest, and fair, but I can’t as in my opinion he is none of those things. I am sure that Dave Sperling gets lots of complaints about Mr.K and am surprised that Dave has never done anything about this! Oh well, his loss I suppose.
I am genuinely sorry that Mr.K’s minute in the spotlight can’t be met with more positive responses. It would be easy to suggest that we who have posted here are just the embittered few, but in fact I believe that we are actually a group much larger than perhaps even Dave himself realizes.
I tell you who teflnews should have interviewed and that is Kent Kruehoffer (sp?). He was without a doubt the best moderator ever on eslcafe and he gave more back to that forum than all of the current moderators combined. I have no idea why Kent is no longer a mod at eslcafe but whatever the reason it was Daves loss. Kent, wherever you are, good on you mate and you are sorely missed!
This thread is now archived presumably because it was felt the subject had been discussed exhautively. That’s what I thought a few weeks ago, but I was unduly optimistic. Anyone looking back on the correspondence will note that Mr. K. had unlocked my thread with a warning to contributors to stay on topic. They didn’t, in fact the discussion became so esoteric that I wasn’t surprised when, a week later, Mr. K. clamped down again. I sent him a polite pm, agreeing that he had only acted within the rules after giving due warning, but pointing out that one or two people had contributed useful, on-topic posts, and asked him to unlock the thread. He replied, curtly but civilly, that he would allow a couple more days for the message to sink in and then unlock the thread. This he did, and I decided to thank him through the eslcafe pm system, only to find out that I couldn’t log in; every time I tried, I was informed that my password was invalid. I assumed I’d been banished from the site and was mildly annoyed, but became much more aggrieved when e-mails I sent to a couple of other sites came back with the explanation “that e-mail address is banned!”
That can only mean that I’ve been tarred with the hackers’ brush, although I’m of a generation that thinks of a kind of precooked meat that looks and tastes like pink plastic when the word “spam” is mentioned, and doesn’t expect to encounter “trolls” outside the pages of Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and Norse mythology. I wrote to Dave Spurling, who asked for more information but has since taken no action. I have, of course, no proof that the eslcafe is responsible for demonising me, but I see traces of the cloven hoof. Mr. Kalgukshi started this discussion by electing to blow his own trumpet in this forum and I challenge him to come out into the open and reply to me and his other critics.
Kalqukshi won’t reply to this thread. He is a gutless non-entity, hiding behind his ridiculous name. He uses his power simply because he can. Why does a dog lick its balls? Because it can!
Your experience, Larry is typical of the way Kalqushki acts. Sperling won’t intervene! He’s too busy counting his money. He has no interest in what happens in the Forums, beyond how they will affect his cash supply.
Mr K. is a bully and a wanker. Several times he has kicked me off Dave’s, always for the same ‘crime’ of exposing dysfunctional and corrupt schools - but ones which happen to advertise on Dave’s!
He’s an arse-licker and a rat.
The interview told us too little about Mr. K and his mindset though it makes it abundantly clear that he enjoys wholehearted support from Dave and all the mods themselves. How else would the same names pop up as those of moderators over the years?
Moderating is an ungrateful job and it takes an inordinate amount of idealism to accept such a position. Dave’s boards are more open to discussions among members than others that I know of, but the danger comes from dedicated flamers and nutters that seek their own gratification at the expense of others. One area that affords them a huge playing field is the China Off Job discussion forum. It attracts individuals with obvious political agendas or ideological interests that cannot be accommodated together with more mainsream views. Personally I deplore the nationalists that seek an international audience without giving their international respondents a chance at refuting their allegations and theories.
If you want to run an open forum it should not be dominated by people with strictly nationalist attitudes.
Oh dear! Steppenwolf…the ex-Roger…has decided to blether on again!
“Moderating is an ungrateful job”………what exactly do you mean by this, Roger?
“Dave’s boards are more open to discussions among members”…….true, but the idiot Kalqushki doesn’t like this, so he locks and deletes.
“the China Off Job discussion forum.”……I think you will find that this is the OFF TOPIC Forum. Of course, it’s a long time since you have been a member, so you might have forgotten. Why, exactly were you banned?
“If you want to run an open forum it should not be dominated by people with strictly nationalist attitudes.”…..but it is! Sperling and his minions are all USAnians!
Mr. K is the best thing to ever happen to us. I hope he keeps up the good work.
Raoul
Raoul’s China Saloon
http://www.raoulschinasaloon.c.....om
Mr Kalgukshi is a moderator beyond comparison. A finer One is impossible to find anywhere on the World Wide Web. He is non-judgmental and very necessary on a site populated by crackpots and lunatics. He is principled, decent and honest.
All those disillusioned by the ESL Cafe, as I became long ago, are welcome to join the ELT World forums.
http://eltworld.net/forums/
Together with a fabulous group of former ESL Cafe regulars, almost all of whom have been banned* just for signing up to ELT World, are trying to do it the right way, the way the ESL Cafe used to be before Sperling sold his soul for the green stuff.
* after contributing around 50,000 posts.
The Japan forum is dead on the Dave’s ESL Cafe. Many have decided to make ELT World their home.
http://eltworld.net/forums/vie.....m.php?f=35
Along with the repetitive silliness and misinformation that continues on the cafe, the heavy handed moderation by Mr. Kalgukshi and Revenant have made the cafe the place NOT to be.
I have never understood why people would willingly become a moderator on a board such as eslcafe.
Eslcafe is a business pure and simple and good on Dave for starting what is without a doubt a very lucrative business.
What I don’t understand is why someone would want to be a moderator (employee) without seeing any benefits in return.
Other than ego is there some other reason that I am missing?
Interesting. I was also banned from eslcafe, or at least my experience exactly mirrors that of Larry’s - one day, no login.
I *think* one of the likely reasons may be that I was telling some basic truths about EFL in Russia (on the Russia & CIS forum) and pointing out a lot that there are plenty (hundreds) of zero-qualification jobs, that it’s better to gain experience through volunteering or low-paid work than to shell out for Mickey Mouse certificates… while the forum’s main sponsor sells certificates…
That and generally helping people out, introducing them to schools, helping them find work, etc… Oops, eslcafe charges a fortune for job ads…
Now, I had taken part in many a brutal exchange of words, I even got ‘fan mail’ via PM and email thanks to my exchanges of verbal blows with neanderthals that had no place outside a swamp, never mind inside a classroom… but not once was I even warned.
Even after I started my own site for teaching in Russia (VisaRus.co.uk I still remained a loyal contributor to Dave’s and provided valuable, accurate information (ask the many people who came over to Russia, on the basis of info I provided and against the nonsense of the Moscow-based clingers on Dave’s, and thanked me for giving them the encouragement).
I do occasionally ‘pop round the corner’ to Dave’s to see what’s going on, but as almost everyone here says, it’s just incessant bickering, and worse than before. And it’s annoying to see genuine, important questions either ignored or drowned in the flood of $hite that flows into every thread.
I am very proud that I have virtually zero moderating to do on my site’s forum and that is frequented (I use that word somewhat liberally) by people who don’t have their heads irretrievably jammed in their exit holes.
Admittedly, my forum is a fraction the size of most of Dave’s forums, but the bulldust to info ratio is miniscule by comparison.
I wouldn’t swap the quality of my members for the volume of Dave’s for anything, not even for the money it would bring.
Dave’s is a great place to vent bile. That, sadly, is what the forums there have become. No longer very relevant to real-life teaching, The Russian forum, at least, is totally, totally unrepresentative of the EFL teaching community that I know here. I have made close (sometimes very close
personal acquaintances through VisaRus - not something I would risk now with Dave’s members.
It IS reassuring that people are leaving the boards there and moving to sites like eltworld and other country-specific sites. Dave’s has now become little more than an online soapbox for a disgruntled and jilted generation of teachers.
It does no service to what can sometimes be a genuinely respectable profession.
Oops
If it weren’t 4.15 AM I’d have made fewer typos…
Early yesterday a new string found its way onto the Russia and CIS forum of eslcafe.com and was immediately locked. The string was actually transferred lock, stock and barrel from another site (the Moscow expat.ru forum) which may have been the reason for the moderators’ disapproval, but the whole string is there in its entirety to be read, including the names of the contributors. Well, not all the names, one of them has been censored and its place is marked by the cryptic note MOD EDIT. The name that cannot be mentioned is mine. Perhaps I shouldn’t have felt guilty about my Big Brother joke (see my comments passim) because Mr. K. is obviously as determined to turn me into a non-person as Stalin was to erase the memory of most of his former associates 9though i’m happy to say that I’ve never been Mr. K’s associate).
Issue 4 of the ELT World journal is out now.
http://journal.eltworld.net/
At ELT World we respect the views of those posting and use their comments to contribute to the TEFL profession as a whole, rather than treating the forum as a containment area for the members who are regarded as scum and who are merely necessary traffic for raising advertising revenue.
I was one of the biggest (number of posts, not in girth) posters at Dave’s with over 5,000 posts until I got banned one day out of the blue. The only thing I did was join another forum (eltworld) where I complained about the censorship at Dave’s cafe. Now i can say it was a wonderful blessing to get banned as I realize what a waste of time it all was. Thanks K.
The censorship at Dave’s is truly mind boggling. Advertising schools get VIP treatment regardless of how bad they are. Unfortunately newbies don’t know about them since all true information has been deleted by the mods.