Last week, I encountered a dilemma of the sort that I’m really not qualified to deal with… and yet I had to. A new virus has been all over the news in Taiwan. To me, it doesn’t seem like much more than a particularly nasty flu, but a few children have already died [...]

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 [...]

Yesterday was 中秋節, one of the three major Chinese holidays. Just like the other major Chinese holidays, the main focus is eating. This one is particularly good, since you’re supposed to barbecue. It’s kind of like the 4th of July in the US, except that you get to barbecue anytime you want, [...]

Three of my 1st and 2nd graders are ready to move to my evening classes. Here’s one of their spelling drills. They haven’t memorized these words; it’s all based on phonics. I’m not used to having so few students, and the video is a bit sluggish. I’m happy that I was able to [...]

This is insanity. I had eight hours of class yesterday. While that may not sound like so much to some, for a teacher at least, it’s a lot. While I’m in class, I’m basically at the front of the room, pacing back and forth like bull, shouting out directions and whipping my [...]

Things have been busy again. I’ve been helping Poagao migrate his site to Wordpress. It’s been much more difficult helping him migrate than anybody else I’ve helped. Since Google updated Blogger, all the old migration tools are broken. The fact that Poagao’s Journal is six years old, is a Byzantine mix [...]

My second grade class just finished book three of Up and Away yesterday. It’s the last book of the series they’ll do, since they’ll be third graders and switching to the normal buxiban classes soon. In my normal classes, we really don’t play games much. With 30 students per class, they just [...]

One thing I’ve noticed about the more successful bŭxíbān owners I’ve worked with is a certainty that kids need their schools or else they’ll be ruined for life. I can understand how the idea that people who don’t learn English will never be anything more than garbage truck drivers would motivate a school owner [...]

Tonight was a frustrating night at work. It was my new class. Most of the class is pretty good, but there are four students who make it particularly trying. One is a girl called Wendy who never does as much homework as she’s supposed to do. She’s the only girl I’ve [...]

I teach students English from the absolute basics. During the first class, the kids learn how to say, “hello”, “hi”, “how are you”, “I’m fine”, “good-bye”, and the names and sounds of the following letters: A, B, C, D, and T. They also learn “everybody”, “boys”, “girls”, “stand up” and “sit down” as [...]