Category: education

  • Cram School Teaching Vs Public School Teaching in Taiwan

    I have worked at both of these kinds of schools in the last few years, and this is what I think about them. For those of you who aren’t aware, these are the two main kinds of schools that you can get hired to as a foreign ESL teacher in Taiwan. I will be talking…

  • English Accents As Viewed By Young Taiwanese ESL Learners

    -So which teachers are Canadian? asks Student A. -T. Range, T. K, and T. R., answers Student E. -How about T. Br? -He’s American, as is T. J., I interject. -How about T. Be? -He’s from England. -What’s the difference between them all? -It’s the way that they all say “out”. Canadians will say it…

  • 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…

  • First Week of the Fall Term 2011 – Mathematics Graduate School

    It’s the second week of school, but with a bank holiday last Monday (09/12/11), graduate school started up slowly. It will take until next week until everyone is finally registered to all of their classes. It took me a while to do so as well, because they changed up the system from a program that…

  • Living in Taiwan 5 Years Later

    Many people ask me if I love Taiwan. I don’t. However, there are good and bad things about living in Asia. First and foremost, we paid off all of our debts. Both my wife and I went back to school fulltime and continued working fulltime, something that wasn’t possible in the US/Canada. We’ve since amassed…

  • The Value of College @ The New Yorker

    Good article in the New Yorker about education and what it means to society. If college is a 4-year IQ test, then what’s grad school, especially in abstract disciplines like pure mathematics? I wonder. I fully appreciate being a graduate student in math. It makes your brain work in funny ways, and I like it.…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • Pukers & Medicine

    This week, I’ve had two students puke their guts out. Both were from the K3 class, and not my own students. They both puked during snack time. If there’s one thing that I don’t deal with, it’s puke, pee, and poo. I let others take care of that. I don’t like seeing puke because it…

  • Temper Tantrum Aaron

    The problem with kids that are spoiled rotten is that they can be a handful when they come to Kindergarten. I’ve got a kid like that in my K2 class and he throws temper tantrums almost every day. He’s learned that this is the way that he gets what he wants and uses this with…