Pencilgate

As I left the school for a well deserved break, it was about 12:30 and I had yet to eat lunch, I came up the teaching director of the school shouting at someone in her office. While this might seem a common occurrence at most school, it isn’t at ours. I have never seen the TD shouting at anyone. The school is a family-owned affair. The TD’s sister is the manager, the grandmother and great-aunt also work there and all of the kids go to this school.

5 Tips to Finding Affordable Tutors

When your child needs help with their homework, or you just want your children to go beyond the curriculum of your school, be it in creative writing, mathematics, science, or other subjects, finding the right tutor is key since this will usually be an ongoing relationship for at least a couple of weeks to a few years. Tutoring has become a serious business in the last few years, with many private companies specializing in different fields. These can be a godsend, but they can get expensive quickly. Here’s how to find a more affordable tutor, that will work just as well.

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Co-Teachers & Grammar Curriculum

In Taiwan, ESL teachers are usually matched with a Chinese co-teacher. This is true for all of my classes, but I spend most of my time with my K2 classes and I’ve known my co-teacher for over a year. When co-teachers take time off, the class starts to break down. The class doesn’t run as smoothly as before. When there is no co-teacher, the class isn’t as easy to run. This isn’t true for the older classes, but it is true in Kindergarten.

South Korea Hires Robot Teachers

South Korea isn’t a great destination for English teachers. There’s a shortage of English teachers in South Korea because the Koreans apparently work them like dogs (extremely long hours, from early in the morning to late at night including Saturdays on a fixed salary). The ones who stay want to be paid more than what a lot of schools can offer. That’s why they’ve decided to come up with a novel approach to solve the shortage of ESL teachers. Remember, robots don’t mind long hours (at least not until the robot uprising of 2015.)

Read more @ Technabob

You Didn’t Review

-You didn’t review!

The Grade 4 boys did terribly in the biweekly test. Shirley was shouting at them. I popped my head in after having marked their test very quickly after they finished it.

- If you did, you’d get 98% like Teresa.
- But teacher, I didn’t review, Teresa replied.
- If you’re Teresa, you don’t need to review. But if you aren’t, you need to!

Measure Theory and Disposable Teachers

Wheeden and Zygmund's book

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I’ve been working hard this week at learning more about measure theory. It’s a really interesting research subject and there are quite a few things that I didn’t know about it. In class, we are currently seeing the Lebesgue measure and topics. I’ve read up on the Borel, Haar, Radon, and Daniell measures.

I’ve got quite a few books in this area, including Paul Halmos’ Measure Theory¹ that I got for $6. The Measure and Integral² book that is used in my real analysis class is finally available. I have it photocopied, but I’d rather buy it. It’s a bit more expensive, but not that much. It’s $46. Einstein has it for $69.

The real analysis professor spends 3hrs a week copying that book onto the blackboard. It’s really strange. He doesn’t give any further examples and quite a few of my classmates abandoned the class after the first week.

As I mentioned before, the classes are what you make of them. At my level, having a great professor doesn’t really matter, unless he’s my thesis adviser. I’m actually lucky that 2 out of my 3 profs are good. Since I am going to specialize in analysis, probably abstract analysis and topology, the real analysis class is fundamental to my mathematical development, as it introduces all sorts of concepts that were probably not seen at an undergraduate level. We’ve started the Lebesgue integral and I hadn’t seen it before.

New Green ESL Bulbs Will Be As Efficient As CFLs and LEDs

In the race to finding the greenest way to illuminate our nights, a new company has come up with a new refinement of old technology to serve our needs. Will it be enough to save you even more money? Find out after the jump.

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Combatting Racism

Hi Alex,

It has come to my attention that you weren’t truthful with me. It’s funny that you said that you didn’t need any teachers to me and then go and try recruit my wife to sub for you yesterday, after you screwed me out of 6 weeks of work. When I started to deal with your school, you made it clear that you needed me for those weeks. In order to accommodate you, I refused other jobs. I reserved that time for your school. I found it quite insulting that you just told me on a whim late on a Sunday that you wouldn’t need me anymore.

I should have known better. It all boils down to racism. Your school has racist policies. The fact that I’m not a white Canadian is what it boils down to. What I can’t believe is how you just blatantly lied to my face, telling me that I’d be working in August, when you knew you’d just try to find someone else. This was just to placate me so I wouldn’t make a scene.

You might not know that I am a freelance journalist and I will writing about this. Your school receives a failing grade.

This is a letter that I didn’t write to a school I’ve had dealings with. I’ve reported before about how much racism I encounter when I go to jobs. This was just a little too much. On top of being racist, they totally screwed me out of work, work which I could have easily found elsewhere if they hadn’t lied to me so much.

Ah well, life in Taiwan is sometimes about getting screwed by the Taiwanese.

Joe’s Twig-gate

So there I was, minding my own business and teaching a buxiban class. It’s a “homework” class for grade school students, and I’ve got kids from 3rd to 6th grade in the same classroom. This means that some of the kids can get easily bored. They are of too different levels in my opinion and the class should be split.

After having told Joe to stop playing with his toys for the 4th time, I told him to give me his little twig. This happened right after I confiscated a blown up rip-off Rubik’s cube. He didn’t want to hand it over, even when the Chinese teacher confronted him. He hid it behind his bag and said he didnt have anything. I looked around on the floor and found his little twig. He took it up and tried to put it in his pencil case. I told him to hand it over. He didn’t comply and threw it in my general direction. I took it in my pocket and took his pencil case from his desk and put it on mine. By this time, he was bawling. I guess that he’s about 10. He was making a big deal and most probably saying bad words about me. I talked to him in English. I didn’t swear, but told him that I didn’t care. He should have handed it over. I didn’t care that other teacher might indulge him. He was totally freaking out and the teacher had to take him outside. Before she did, while he was crying loudly, I resumed class and spoke over his attention-seeking.

A few moments later, I broke the twig in small pieces. During break time, I threw it out. I noticed that when Joe came back into class, he was looking all over the place for his twig. He even checked out the garbage. Towards the end of class, he started crying again. He couldn’t find it. I told him that I had destroyed it and that he shouldn’t have played with it in class. Too bad so sad. If he would have just handed it over, I would have probably just put it on Teacher Kay’s desk, but no, he had to make a giant deal about it.

Later, Kay tried to explain that it was a special twig. I wanted to know more, was there a religious significance, was it valuable or a shoot of some sort? No, she said, it was just a twig. She apologized for him and I said not to worry, I’d seen plenty worse in my time. From what she said, I understood that she didn’t understand why Joe was so enamored with the twig.

ADHD Howey

I’ve got this exhausting ADHD kid in my K1 class named Howey. He can’t help himself from talking very loudly at every opportunity. I first scolded him slightly for always interrupting before I knew of his condition. Now, I just tend to ignore him. This seems to settle him after a while.

Actually, he’s more funny than exhausting. There is this constant stream of words coming out of his mouth. Sometimes, you engage him and it leads to even funnier places. It’s my first full week of teaching kids again in almost a year. I have naturally caught a cold. It was to be expected. I teach 45 different kids from the ages of 4 to 12.