I’ve never been a fan of secrets. I hate it when they’re kept from me, and I hate keeping them. In this case, though, I’ve had no choice.

I didn’t go on any trips today. I didn’t do anything special. Nothing exciting happened at work. In short, it was an ordinary day that would be easy to forget. But somehow, it was wonderful. I woke up around 11AM to my alarm clock playing a song I like. [...]

Summer is here, and business is booming at First Step. More students have signed up for my first and second grade classes than I can teach, and fifty more are on a waiting list for our normal classes. Nearly every day, more students and parents are visiting or asking about our school. [...]

I finally have some video from my classes I can put up here, thanks to Patrick. Here is a clip from an oral spelling drill. This isn’t rote memorization. None of the words I ask the students to spell have been previously taught; they have to use phonics rules to figure out [...]

One of the most frustrating things about living in Taiwan (or anywhere as a minority) is all of the racism one sees. One of my good friends when I first showed up, was a black guy. He graduated from a school pretty much equivalent to mine, had good grades, and a degree [...]

Last Saturday, Patrick, a teacher at a middle school in Táizhōng visited my school. He has some influence on his school’s curriculum and wanted to investigate a hardcore bŭxíbān to see if there was anything we do that he could adapt for use at his school. I was both impressed and amazed that [...]

Recently, one of Michael Turton’s (see my links on the right) friends from Taizhong emailed me and asked me for input on curriculum design for a private middle school’s English program. I answered his questions as best I could, and tried to tell him a bit about different activities I’ve found useful. It [...]

Well, I just did the 說明會 for my new class on Friday. It will be my fourth class, but since two of my classes are 90 minutes a day M-F, it will put me at full time. It also means that as of tomorrow, my class-load will be considered “full-time”. That has [...]

One thing that’s distinctive about my school, compared to other HFRBs is that we use “points”. At most elite bŭxíbāns, there is far too little positive feedback. To deal with this problem, my boss borrowed the idea of giving kids points from the Big Chains. We don’t do them like they do, [...]

Back when I was working at Modawei, they wrote up this little summary about me. That way potential clients could learn something about me before seeing me in action. They framed it nicely on the wall, and then put it up on a snazzy (over-snazzy, one might say), website. I’ll get [...]