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.

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.

I thought I’d seen everything in Taiwan’s English cram school market. Recently, I’ve had an experience that shows how naive I (still) am. I can’t really get into any details online, but here’s the gist: A school owner offered to sell her school’s students.
A school’s financial valuation
In general, when an English [...]

One of the great things about teaching EFL is seeing the different responses of each class to the same material. My old Monday/Thursday class finished reading Pocahontas (the 45 page Oxford Bookworms version) a bit back, and they enjoyed it quite a bit. One student had a few difficulties with all the new [...]

I love it when other teachers put up videos of their students. This school is obviously quite a bit different than mine is, but the kids sure are cute.

Here’s the final performance. The costumes sure were involved, but they didn’t have real hammer pants like I’d never admit to having wanted when I [...]

This last week has been the roughest work week for me yet. I’m very pleased with the progress of my students, and the development of my EFL curriculum, but the business side of things has been disastrous. I had thought that I’d be opening two new classes this Monday, but neither opened. [...]

My friend Patrick is looking for teachers for a well-paid position in Taizhong right now. Rather than continue posting an entry for each job opening my friends and associates tell me about, I’ve decided to make a page for EFL jobs in Taiwan. It won’t be an open job board, though. I’ll [...]

The very first Dr. Seuss book I have my students read is Hop on Pop. It’s easy enough in terms of phonics and vocabulary that my students can handle it pretty easily by the time they finish the first book in the Up and Away series of textbooks. Most of my first and [...]

In a jobs that involve a lot of interaction with the public, such as teaching, having employees express political views online can be a liability. On the other hand, many employees would resent having a boss tell them what they can and cannot talk about on their own time.

Is censoring employees’ political views on [...]

Good news today.
A committee of the Legislative Yuan gave initial approval to the proposed new rules to allow foreign employees to take up positions as directors or supervisors of labor unions. The rules, when ratified by the lawmakers, will also permit teachers to organize labor unions.

The China Post: Lawmakers approve new rules to let foreign [...]