Groom yourself and dress professionally as though you are going to be on TV. At the start, say hello and ask, "Can you hear me?" Talk for under 20 seconds. Model the answer before asking the question in Q&A lessons. Some platforms want no extra words and some platforms want natural English. Find out which is which before you do your demo. Maximize TPR (Total Physical Response). Let students speak target sentences twice. Suppose you have a slide with an ear and 'ear' is a target word. Slowly, circle the ear. Say ear. TPR ear. Now you: ear. TPR say. Ear. When the student says ear and points to their ear a couple of times, give a point. To scaffold from easy to difficult, 1. Model it. That's why we say the answer before we say the question, so we model the answer. Model words in sentences, not in isolation, usually. 2. Together. Do the Q&A or other target language together. Count the words. Beginner students often think syllables are words, so, work on correcting this if you see it. 3. Now you. You say. Still do the TPR action and count the words. 4. Your turn. You say the language without support. Good! Yay! High 5! (Students love high 5 through the camera.) Good transitions between slides A and B raise curiosity for topic B while ending slide A, so, have your notes prepared so you know the topic sequence. For example, if slide B has sentences and slide A introduced words (new vocabulary), then end slide A with "Let's make sentences!"Correct students nicely. For example, suppose the student said "I see a ox." Congratulate the good effort then say, "I see AN ox." TPR absolutely every word and action. Do the activities your host platform puts on the slides. Meet objectives and timing. Example: Target language is "I feel sad."1. Sad. Show a picture of a sad face. Model sadness. Say sad 2 times. 2. Now you. Point to mouth (that's TPR for you say). Sad. Point you, cup ear (TPR for your turn to talk and I listen). Keep doing that until... you say sad alone, twice. Good! 3. Say, I feel sad. TPR point to self, circle heart, cry. Say it again, count 1, 2, 3 and point to mouth. 4. You say. Point you, mouth. Count 1, 2, 3, and cup ear. Do this two to three times until you speak 'I feel sad' alone, twice. 5. If you hear 'I feel sat,' encourage and correct it to 'I feel saD.' You will need to make a self-introduction video. Say your name and welcome parent viewers to the host site. Say your credentials and experience. Do a silly mini lesson such as teaching a blend sound, singing a song and reading a page from a book and asking a comprehension question. Then show you teach Q&A correctly (answer first); embrace the wait and correct a mistake. Fetch full sentences. Then close with a call to action such as "Nice to meet you! See you in class!"Some platforms want you to make rewards you give students. Favourite rewards are stars, fake flowers and food magnets. These are usually 5 rewards in a 25 minute class, with the magnetic rewards visible on your magnetic white board throughout class. Have a bin to pull rewards from (stars of different colors, foods, different flowers) because students love "What will be pulled out next?"You will want to set up your computer in front of a wall, with your magnetic white board on the wall where you can reach it. Have light shining down on you and straight at you so you look good on video. To prepare your lessons, do word by word TPR. Practice the I, We, You order of events. Make sure you see the timestamp on each slide so you get the timing right. Have great transitions prepared, unless your host platform wants silent transitions with no extra words. Keep notes with the lesson code and the student information such as gender and age. Comments about students are things like: likes Batman, princesses, has a nickname. Don't put anything negative in the comments, even if the student speaks the mother language all through class and class is a total frustration. Talk to staff in that case, instead of leaving a comment. Prepare your props by sequencing them in the right order. Make activities look the same on your white board. Wet erase won't smudge on white boards so you can do memory games and rhyming words with changing consonant beginnings. Have a picture of a computer mouse taped to a dry erase marker to show students how to circle with the mouse. Other usful props are a ruler. a fake microphone, animal pictures, food pictures from flyers, a ball globe that you can write on with dry erase markers, a sun, a moon, clocks, some relevant flags, stick puppets with emotions showing, and a way to store it so you can grab what you want quickly. Also, have a puppet. Adjust to your audience. Slow down and never add any extra words for slow students. Ask, A or B, which one (do you like)? Add natural English and chat a bit about personal experiences with advanced students. Ask, What does it remind you of? Where have you seen it before? Make sure you are ready to extend or simplify prepared lessons so you are appropriate to the student's level. Wondering if you will get bookings? Many teachers sign up then don't get booked. Make sure your introductory video and recorded lessons show you are tidy, professional, attentive, you have good posture, you are respectful, genuine, friendly, warm, you build rapport, you give meaningful information, rewards, praise, you speak at a good pace with good word choice, you are level appropriate, you give positive corrections, you meet the objectives, you embrace the wait and you have good lighting. You also have good props. Never be inauthentic. Be happy, have fun. Be 10% happier than your student so you don't overwhelm them. Change your voice when you are repeating vocabulary. Use a silly voice sometimes. Chant, sing. Make repetition fun. Remember that the start of the day is the evening overseas and the children have been in school all day. They haven't played yet and depending on class time, may not have had supper yet. Does your student need alone time to decompress, or recharge personal energy each day? That's the primary symptom of a socially overwhelmed person who needs models and no pressure. Students can feel overwhelmed because of eye contact, fashion, costs, expectations. An overwhelmed student cannot express or parse his or her own inner thoughts and feelings. Whence the need for quiet time alone, but they may not have enough decompression time. So, "Do you like ice cream?" sounds as complex or demanding as "Who should be the president of the USA and why?" This is why it is so important to model the answer before asking the question in Q&A. We prefer human faces to other shapes and we absorb phonics from Motherese. Overwhelmed students need models to imitate, and so they can relax. Advice for New TeachersConfirm you do not need to create a curriculum. ( Making the curriculum is a classic waste of time. As soon as it's done, students change their mind about what they wanted. ) Confirm school authority will ask children to behave well. Confirm you get about $20/hour, not $2/hour. If you are overseas, confirm your visa won't get changed from legal to illegal without your awareness. Do good marketing. Give minimal lesson plans to guide parents well but don't sink all your free time into it. Before you sign up with a platform, do your research. Do they penalize you for technical difficulties? Is early late? (Some schools specify you must be 20 minutes early, so 19 minutes early is late.) Do they want natural English or no extra words?

Teachers need not be sworn to secrecy about classroom methods. If there is a secret about a classroom method, there is probably an improvement available. The issue is almost always student motivation. Some students are internally motivated to learn well. However, some students need extra motivation supplied, and the age-old method we all know is rewards and punishments. How many people remember learning the multiplication table by having a ruler smacked on their fingers for wrong answers? Such punishments were done, although rewards for winning races (to see who completes the multiplication table correctly first) works better at exciting and motivating students. This idea of replacing punishments with calculated rewards works in prisons, too. In classrooms, the teacher says to the most reluctant students, "I'm on your side and I want you to succeed here. Now, we have a task to do. How can I help you complete the task well?" In contrast, the prison speech is more along the lines of, "You failed in your career as a criminal and so now you need a new career. We are giving you free education / job training..." depending on the rehabilitation details offered. This approach is known to encourage and motivate reluctant students - it's so much better than yelling at them or punishing them for their slowness. Regardless of the situation, where there are students learning from teachers or leaders, rewards-based motivation works better than fear of punishment. Also, punishment makes teachers look bad for being too strict. These same methods are at the heart of ethical socioeconomic development because education is the key element to improving job prospects and lifestyles.

Is it we who buy your cake or is it you who provides your cake on your birthday? Who invented the idea of a birthday cake? Why celebrate such a day?The Germans are credited with making cakes and putting candles on it. The Germans also put candles on forest trees during the winter solstice festival... and that became the Christmas tree. The famous birthday song we sing started as "Good Morning to You". As to why we make such a big deal about birthdays: marking the event and showing the light in the dark, the spiritual beliefs of the ancestors point back to Egypt, where the pharaoh's birthday or coronation day was celebrated. Romans, of course, popularized it. What are the best gifts to give on a birthday? Some rely on good quality consumables, so as to avoid adding to the clutter in a household. Some buy something for which a request was made, and some decide to shed light into the future. Some useful English vocabulary is the gifts to the birthday person are called gifts, and the gifts from the birthday person to the guest are called party favours. In some countries, there is more emphasis on party favours than on gifts.Happy birthday to you...And if today is not your birthday, I hope you celebrate today being the best possible today that today can be: make it awesome and have a great day.

Aristotle and the Han: truth without false, good without bad, because we have standards in society, and we keep the peace with the people across the river since they are useful. The western banks have unstable lands, forcing wildebeasts into the waiting crocodiles, so we build reclaimed land to interfere with nature again. The question is: How to have the good without the bad? How to keep the peace among extremists? Improving a slandered reputation by working well is easier. How to implement the standards we know are the genes of civilization? Feed bees and butterflies. We need the Chinese American relations to lead sustainable living, although it is probably China, India and Russia who will be the pragmatic examples first. America won't. America just absolutely refuses, although US DoD disagrees, to view climate change as a threat to national security.

31 May is World No Tobacco Day, thanks to the World Health Organization. If you could ask someone close to you to stop smoking, who would you ask? How would you say it?Tobacco is dangerous. On World No Tobacco Day, the WHO presents special awards to organizations or people who have made great efforts to get people, especially children, to stop smoking. Does winning a prize motivate you to ask your neighbourhood to stop smoking? In 2008 the WHO called for a total ban on tobacco advertising. It said advertising was one of the biggest factors that made people take up smoking.Think about a smoker who is close to you. Was it advertising or peer pressure that made the habit start? Is the gross truth about what tobacco does to lungs enough information to stop the habit? The governments care for the people in their homelands, and care for the international relations. Do you believe governments let people smoke because of revenue gained by taxation? Is it more likely that the governments put a user fee (tax) on unhealthy habits as a negative encouragement to choose healthy habits? In the west, tobacco companies can influence some politicians. However, in some countries, anti-corruption is high on the agenda, and so tobacco, alcohol, and weapons are strongly discouraged or banned. We had a phase in America of cleaning the people's habits and raising our societal standards, called the Prohibition in the 1920s. The phase worked, although there was underground resistance, the result is fewer ways for corruption to hide. What would an economy without tobacco and alcohol look like? Less revenue through taxation, fewer health complications, so, less work for doctors and nurses. More people living into old age. Bad habits are expensive. Maybe governments who care for the people's well-being can donate the tax revenue created by bad habits directly into anti-corruption efforts, improving police effectiveness and hiring more police. In Canada, we recently legalized cannabis. The way it is happening is the legalized form is weak and the strong strains are pushed further underground than they used to be. We have the infrastructure governments usually fund, so, tax revenue from bad habits need not fund what we already amply have. Instead, the causal factors fueling bad habits can be the target of next waves of anti-corruption around the world. I see this as part of globalization in a three-step iterative process:1. anti-corrupt to claim new territory, 2. invest in socioeconomic development and sustainable infrastructure, 3. let environmental sustainability enrich the participating nations. For example, profit from forestation. Reference eslholidaylessons dot com has a calendar among its free lesson topics.

"If I could learn to cook food, I would make roast chicken and roast turkey for Saith every day," said Nirvana. Nirvana mothered the tribe, having jumped past Death one warm February day in Penghu. The entire tribe, including my son, were born on 25 January, or would have been had it been decent then. So January 25th is my children's birthday. I have learned to cook. I make salmon tomato olive stew with fried mushrooms. Inspired by Chinese buns, I wrap foods in puff pastry and bake it in muffin tins, but it is only an approximation with a nostalgic memory. "Nirvana, what would you cook for yourself?" "Liver, chopped in gravy," smiled Nirvana showing a cat's sense of humour. "If you had to volunteer for a year, which cause would you choose?" I would change Heaven and Hell so they become reasonable, and I would ask: if you could start purgatory when you are 35 years old, so you can still do something about it, would you enter purgatory voluntarily while alive? "Sign me up for purgatory while alive," purred Boaz. "I guess if you had to stay with an animal for the rest of your life, it would be with a cat," said a stranger. Civil servants can hear birds' voices announce changes in the atmosphere, and that's valuable information. Fish calm us and entertain cats. Personally, I would adopt two german shepherds if I could. And you? Which animal would you choose to keep you company for the rest of your life?"I would choose a minpin. They're the cat-sized doberman pinschers," said Jachin the jumper. "I like jumping over them and racing with them." If you had to take a vacation at the same place for the rest of your life, where would it be? "No doubt, Chico, Montana. Many of us are from Montana long ago, through the generations of us. Chico has hot springs, horses, lakes for fishing, mountains for climbing, and the cabins have a sauna," said Orion. "I like playing with the fresh fish for fun." "If you had to buy one vehicle and keep it for the rest of your life, what would it be?" asked Orion. A yacht. Of course, I assume you know that had it been decent since the 1970s, as it was supposed to have been, I would have worked until I was a millionnaire and then I would have devoted myself to personal projects. Some people guessed I'd have been the billionnaire I could have been, but I would have quit the rat race. My projects matter to me. I want to finish my work. So, I would choose a yacht for mobile stability. "I'd join you on the yacht and maybe that way could convince you I need help," said Sammy. "I love it when you help me and I feel sad when you catch me lying about how much help I need."""If you could discover a deserted island, what would you like to find on it?" asked Boaz. Life. The plant of eternal life. The benevolent species. The balance of life. The sword of truth. No parasites who aren't part of the life-cycle. "That's Heaven," said a stranger. No, it's Earth, before 1700. "If you could life through one important day in history, which would it be?" asked the stranger. "The day I knew I had a home indoors," purred Serendipity, "and my eyes shone with pure joy. I worked diligently for the tribe, so, all in all, I loathe who parted us and it wasn't mother, it was an economiss we know by the skills. How dare any western adult put destruction of a family on a task list post-Hitler?"I hope it becomes fashionable again to talk about the holocaust seriously, as we were silenced about that during the 1990s. To talk of WWII was too politically incorrect then. If you could be put on a list so your life is changed beyond recognition, what list would you be added to? If I could live one day in history, it would be the day in 1700s when banks did something wrong. Liabilities are never assets. If I could live one day in history, it would be the day the native Micmacs of Nova Scotia became the natives who write words."I would live the day we exported goods instead of youth, in Mesopotamia," said Saith. "If you could erase one day from your past, which would it be, and why?" It wouldn't be in this life. Maybe we have previous lives, maybe not. Suppose there was a prior life, suppose I was murdered for an economic crime I didn't do and I reported to the authorities who were supposed to have been qualified, capable of understanding, decent, and on the side of anti-corruption. Suppose that in my previous 200 lives, I never once had to teach someone how to do his or her job. Then the one day I would erase is that day when a lazy police officer blamed an old woman for letting her purse get stolen, because surely it was because she wore sandals on her feet, same as everyone else, as was the fashion of the era. "I would live and relive the day you adopted me, the day I leapt in the broken window to escape the typhoon and so orphaned myself," said Xiaolong, who taught us all that broken hearts are the slowest wounds to heal. If you could add one awesome, fabulous, wonderful day to your life, what day would it be, what would happen, and why?

In Canada, we are nostalgic for an era in our past, in the 1700s to early 1800s, before pavement. We had snowball fights in the forests while gathering sap for maple syrup. We fished with a line, not a net. We made small towns. Well, maybe Four Bee, Four Boo and Four Baa, the futuristic cities imagined by prolific author Tanith Lee in Drinking Sapphire Wine can give us the inspiration and the hope we need. In Europe, the name is Rothschild. In America, well, the name people know is Rockefeller. Maybe Rockefeller needs to be a Canadian. Maybe that would solve it. So few know the Canadian name is Desmarais.Canadians were the apologetic ones. "Our peaceful neighbours to the North" is our nickname given to us by Americans for many decades. The news reports another injured whale off our B.C. coast. The news reports we're contributing to corruption and we're a haven for laundering money. The news says it straight: whether China and US are friends or foe, it's bad or good for Canada due only to limit infimum and supremum in the world's trade relations. I dream the Canadian police will hold a police conference to ask for help and save face, to get the real help they need. "Blame the innocent victims instead of arresting caught criminals" is absolutely entrenched. So, making friends for good futures... just hope the topic of criminals and what to do about them doesn't come up. It's good though, and that's the key with the Desmarais family: make it good. Actually, Canadians do have a lot to contribute to good solutions. They have good insights, hopes, and cares. So then I dream we all have enough buffers to pretend it's 2003 again when the Canadian Dream was pure and good, without complexities.If we could solve the "How to Help Canadian Police Be More Effective and Not Embarrassed", that would be a big step forward.We weren't raised knowing the name Desmarais. The relationship isn't like the European or American relations with the so-called Canadian aristocracy. The family works, grooms leaders, communicates.

I am grateful to China for safe shelter after 2003. I am grateful to China for writing clear news people can read. I am grateful to China for guarding the Eurasian steps. I am grateful to China for acknowledging Earth is convex. I am grateful to China for care while seeing who was talking about me. I am grateful to China for caring for my future.I am grateful to China for implementing for the real economy. I am grateful to China for great food, company, experiences. I am grateful to China for evaluating worldwide religious war caused by Canadians.I am grateful to China for letting me find safe solutions for Earth. I am grateful to China for disambiguating treason from news.I am grateful to China for communicating hope, faith, belief, compassion for people who feel sad, and for not destroying women's safe shelters as happened in Halifax circa 2003 to 2018.I wish I could have stayed in China in 2017.

Student: Even though we are facing the serious problem of having accelerated the Holocene extinction, we can't put all our budget into this problem.Me: I agree, although environmental extinction is a direct threat to any national continuity, we certainly do need to continue investing in transportation, education, police, and other parts of the wealth redistribution and infrastructure that governments provide. Also, nations are looking to make a profit by producing something. Student: Actually, the countries in the world are competing in various fields.Lost in Translation: - In case you didn't know, you interrupted our agenda by trying to save our lives, and we told you to go away.- We were busy competing in any field when you interrupted us with your call to re-nourish our home environment. - Although we were interrupted by your request to guard Earth, we talked about it for 16 years and decided to ignore you. Student: Space exploration is a particularly important area, because such technology could become a useful weapon.Lost in Translation:- We must have top down control and we must play God and we must colonize, so silence any objections. - We colonized Africa and NA, everybody hates us for having done so, so now we need to continue colonizing because taking it for free at cost to victims is all we know how to do, because we never learned productivity. - We're so lazy we can't invent anything by curiosity or pragmatism here on Earth. For example, we have never heard of porcelain. Student: For example, communication satellites provide location information.Me: So? Communication satellites aren't synonymous with space exploration: "For example, not an example, just saaayy! hehehe." However, Earth needs to keep Earth's hydrogen.Our great communication satellites give us convenient information transfer here on Earth. Our fantastic communication satellites broadcast our location and resources to anyone in space and a supply of living souls is so rare, it's a treasure to hide from space. We can have communication satellites without going to the moon. For example, mining Jupiter could be an awesome idea in that universe that has no consequences.Student: Beyond just making communication satellites, space development makes more development of weapons, but no pragmatic tools, and everyone knows the only reason to have weapons is to show other countries their strength, to make other countries feel scared.Me: The development of development is redundant. Student: Insofar as other countries are keeping to exploration, US also needs to develop further in something I can't specify, so l am convinced that space development is indispensable regardless of the cost.Me: English readers love specific details instead of vague pronouns or other replacements. When writing in English, your reader is always thirsty for details, and never remembers the question to which you are responding, nor the previous sentence. Also, I have to say that I agree with you that U.S. needs to develop in something I can't specify.

I've lived in a few countries, and teaching English in many places shows there are regional patterns in language learning difficulties. "Can we have more for less?" was the difficulty in Taiwan, but it was easy to ignore since there are plenty of happy, delightful, interested students. Taiwan structures work into 12 hours on, 12 hours off in privacy, each of the 5 workdays per week. The students learn verb conjugation logic patterns and talk about methods to achieve peace. I love these people because they are caring, gentle, considerate, and have the ethic that we all should care. Prices are low and clever happiness abounds, and the food is good Chinese food. "Please teach us to debate," was the initial request in Beijing, the government town of swift change. "Help us say our own opinion," this second request is a much easier task. A great context for teaching fallacy rejection at western standards is GRE preparation, and a good context for teaching students to say their own opinion is TOEFL preparation. Beijing and Taipei don't compare. Who can put a price on truth? "Anyone can have any opinion," was the seldom met difficulty in Beijing, rarely making a difference in daily life since there was plenty of work, activities to do, and friends in many neighbourhoods. The rivers were especially interesting places to walk, filled with the sounds of people singing in the early morning. I adopted baby sparrows who had fallen from their nests and who needed a safe place to learn how to fly."We don't need you to teach English in Canada, but we need to ask what some words mean." What is awesome? A sequence, a series, a limit, a bound? We should be richer since we work at level. "Yeah, I've been asking government since the 1990s, where did the money go?" On what domains are self-references valid? You have a great platform, you should run. Which party is yours? The police.So I started teaching English in Korea and Japan. Japanese students need to be reminded to be specific instead of vague. South Korean students need to be reminded to make sense. The Japanese students accept corrections. The South Korean students object, and need. "The future is in English," say my South Korean students, who don't know the CECM to UILO is in Russian and Chinese, too. I wonder what the error pattern and resistance to English issues would be in Vietnam, Singapore. I'm glad I lived in China as it gives me good cultural insight for the region. Some of my favourite gifts from China are the standard of healthy living, friendly communication, wood bookmarks, porcelain, and my lion guards.When I started teaching English in Penghu, it was fun. Students participated in singing songs, computer classes, we laughed our way through fun English reviews, enjoyed activities, dressed up to play silly games and we enjoyed the spectacular fireworks every second night. Where did all the laughter go? Why are we so serious for some individuals who deserve to feel embarrassed, losing the happiness we could have enjoyed?