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 [...]

When I first started teaching in Taiwan, I wasn’t very strict at all. All of the prior teaching I had done had been in college back at home. I was used to treating students like reasonable adults, some of whom were older than I was. Needless to say, that doesn’t work [...]

One new thing I have to do for my first and second grader classes is to make some point cards. I give points to all of my students. I don’t give them any physical item, though. I just tell them when I give or take points, and I post their rankings on [...]

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, [...]