Muninn has made my Pinyin Tone Tool into something more useful– an OS X dashboard widget!
I’m happy to announce the results of a few hours of tinkering: The Pinyin Tone Widget. This OS X dashboard widget will take a series of Chinese pinyin words with tone numbers appended at the end of each syllable and [...]

I watched Paul Graham’s talk Be Good last week, and I really enjoyed it. It’s always nice to see benevolence rewarded. It’s also had me thinking about my old school and its success– Ron was always completely focussed on what was best for the kids. “If the education is great, the business [...]

Things have been busier than ever at work. I had to meet a new student at 2:00 to help her with a homework assignment that she didn’t understand how to do. From then on, it I was pretty much constantly dealing with parents of students who were originally at Ding’s before the buyout. [...]

I’ve been glossing the Penguin Reader version of White Fang for my students tomorrow. It’s the story of a 3/4 breed wolf/dog who lived around the Mackenzie River. The book’s a bit harder than what my kids have been reading, but it seems pretty accessible to them since it has so many animals [...]

I’m exhausted. Over the last few weeks, my partners and I at the school have been negotiating an offer we received from a competing school, Ding’s English. It’s been far, far more time consuming and draining than I had ever expected. Finally, the initial steps are behind us and I can sleep.

This Chinese mother’s ability to block out her son is nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Related Post: You Can’t Touch this English!

Hackers may have taken it down for a while, but the Taiwan Blog Feed is redesigned and up again!
I have no idea why it was under such a brutal attack. I added any sites which met the criteria of being about Taiwan, teaching English or learning Chinese, and promptly removed anyone who [...]

One of the really great teachers I’ve worked with before has put up what appear to be training videos for new teachers at his school. Ross’s school could be the best 1st and 2nd grade English program in Taiwan.

What a day. I rolled out of bed at 10am, brushed my teeth, and sleepwalked over to Starbucks for a business meeting. It went pretty well.
Then, it was to the school, where I had to so some last minute editing for my Tuesday/Friday class’s first semester exam. For some reason or [...]

For the last several days, I’ve been woken up by an obnoxious blaring sound coming from just outside my window. A “colorful feature” of Taiwanese life is to blame– trucks with loudspeakers that drive around just to get their message out. Back when I lived in Guishan, these trucks were around all the [...]