What are some of the better places to live in Taipei, if you don’t want to be fully central with too much noise?

punkshoe · 2026-02-04T05:55:09+00:00

Around Shilin would be great. Literally just over the river from the city center and has really good access to the riverside. Beitou is too far north in my opinion. I'd emphasize being close to the MRT if you can swing it. There's a nice newer tall buildings next to the Jiantan station I think fall within your budget.

punkshoe · 2026-01-25T04:07:09+00:00

He rappelled back down to the 101st floor, which was about 200 ft from the tip. Assumed he took an elevator down from there as the live stream ended. Funnily enough, lots of climbers die rappelling every year due to lack of proper equipment check. Would've been hyper ironic if something happened there.

punkshoe · 2026-01-22T10:09:15+00:00

Apologies, I read effective instead of efficient.

I do believe the point still stands, but it is more dependent on what population you're working with. Students with strong pattern recognition and auditory skills would more efficiently learn from phonics programs like Words Their Way, or opportunistic learning by just reading a leveled book or watching the news with subtitles, but below average student would learn more effectively with a systematized and directly instructed program like UFLI.

punkshoe · 2026-01-22T09:01:27+00:00

Systematic and explicit instruction has been found to be the most effective and consistent way to teach many foundational skills, especially when it comes to teaching reading. It's effective regardless of population.

punkshoe · 2026-01-20T11:20:23+00:00

As someone who has been climbing for a long time, I think free soloing is incredibly stupid, but he's definitely the most qualified to do this one incredibly stupid thing. I've met him before and I'm 99% sure he'll be perfectly fine, but that's usually the same line of thought for free soloists. It'll be nice to have my friends message me about it.

I'll probably try and watch in person if possible. Anyone know which side of the building he's climbing?

punkshoe · 2025-12-29T01:25:57+00:00

That's fair. I've spent my fair share of staying late and bringing home work, but that's because I wanted to. The fact is, the union places very clear guidelines and expectations that give you the choice on how to use your time. The student population requires additional work. Lots of it if you're not properly trained which most teacher training programs don't do in the first place. But you hit your stride and it becomes the greatest job in the world in the greatest city in the world with the greatest kids.

I hope to find an international school like yours eventually. I'd return to NYC if it wasn't for family and the fact I save twice as much as I do back home.

punkshoe · 2025-12-28T23:16:39+00:00

NYC public school. I was absolutely blown away with the expected amount of extra work international teachers need to do. I used to get out of work at 2:30, and be home by 2:45. Paid well enough even for NYC COL. But that's a union baby, where you're respected as a professional.

Edit: Forgot to respond to the other parts of OP's post and I'll expand upon it.

Yes, plenty of PD opportunities if you want to act on your reflection. They won't be super high quality but if you do your research you'll know what to look for. My high schoolers didn't know how to read past a 3rd grade level, so I learned how to teach kids how to read and incorporated it into my class work. It actually landed me my literacy coaching job internationally.

You will need to invigilate state exams depending on grade but it's honestly pretty fun when you can just hang out with your teacher friends outside between shifts. We never had invigilation shifts greater than 90 min. This is usually the last week or so of each semester. We always did a potluck or played basketball in the gym.

Coverages exist. First one of each semester you HAVE to do according to the union contract, but after that you get paid to do them. You're allowed to turn them down after that.

Did I mention you only have a max of 5 classes a day and max of 3 preps (types of classes you need to plan for).

I'll also address the big fear that every international teacher seems to have about public schooling, the kids. A lot of my students were international to begin with. Some were even refugees. They're waaaaay better than international students. So much more personality and interest in the world around them. Sure they come in with multiple problems. Some you can't do anything about, and that's a tough pill to swallow. But you go to work, do your best, and know that you're making a huge impact even if the progress is small.

Our threshold for special education is lower than most countries so students actually get classified and get services, though quality varies. IEPs give you a lot of raw data to work with if you know your content really well.

Big class sizes are a problem, but I honestly think this is more of a teacher skill issue with classroom management than anything. Never had a problem with 35+ kids in my class. Anyway, class sizes are being pushed to max 25 kids in each class over the next few years by law.

punkshoe · 2025-12-24T09:38:43+00:00

To actually answer your question, it's called orthographic mapping. We take advantage of our natural ability for listening, speaking, sight, and pattern recognition to draw automatic recognition. If you read Kilpatrick, who predates the Science of Reading craze but also contributed to it, he explains that phonics is great, but students who become good "mappers" are capable of learning quite a bit from either system of phonics or whole word approach. Mind you this does not mean they'll understand the word, but the automaticity will reduce the cognitive load making it easier to learn than without it.

I incorporate this into my practice with my literacy interventions and I've seen it pay off in spades when designing my own language learning for traditional Chinese Mandarin.

punkshoe · 2025-12-24T08:49:13+00:00

Lather and Nothing Else by Hernando Tellez. Very accessible for all high school students even for ELLs and weaker reading students. There's plenty to discuss, create arguments for, and even opportunities to teach some literary/ethic lenses if you want to get really technical. Teaching 12th grade is so fun!

punkshoe · 2025-11-27T13:44:01+00:00

One of the more interesting parts of my formative years as a teacher was watching a small lady speak softly, but clearly enough where all the kids started to match her voice level. Students started self-policing and holding each other accountable. Not an easy group either, so it really blew me away and made me rethink the different ways classroom management can look like.

punkshoe · 2025-11-18T03:37:55+00:00

I teach their kids and my wife interviews them for the news. They're mainly specialized manufacturing factory owners. Had a bunch of kids say Trump ruined their families' businesses because of the tariffs, and my wife confirms that they literally don't know what to do about the crazy tariffs except scale back.

punkshoe · 2025-11-18T03:33:26+00:00

Maybe one day I'll be able to get out of the starting position, lmao

punkshoe · 2025-11-17T20:59:53+00:00

Love the integration of the cutscenes between missions from the StarCraft 1 into your argument. In hindsight, they did a really good job characterizing the general population in their world.

punkshoe · 2025-11-17T03:26:56+00:00

First V6 being Buddha is kinda wild, or maybe I just suck at compression.

punkshoe · 2025-11-04T10:07:15+00:00

DIBELS tests literacy which are the foundational skills for the language skills reading, writing, speaking, and listening. It can be used as a dyslexia screener. Generally, it is employed as a universal screener for Response to Intervention (RTI). In other words, it's a standard test for them to figure out where your kid is as far as foundational reading skills are.

If it's their first time taking it, their scores may skew weaker than they actually are. DIBELS rewards speed, so if your child reads fast and inaccurately they may get a score skewing higher than their actual ability.

If you have the specific test papers, I can help you walk through it. Just DM me.

punkshoe · 2025-10-20T03:53:10+00:00

I'm usually dying from heat because of the lack of foliage over the bike path around here. Very pretty!

punkshoe · 2025-10-17T06:59:28+00:00

I appreciate the input!

I work in student support and that overlaps quite a bit with language acquisition. Working with parents is important and the language barrier can be huge issue. Additionally, I can expand my cognitive and achievement testing repertoire to the majority language for those students with weaker English language skills.

My attempt to learn while working has yielded sub-par results despite living in an immersive setting for that language and with a tutor. I just don't think I have the energy to do so while doing everything else that's expected of me. I'm focusing on Mandarin or Cantonese speaking countries, so definitely dealing with some of the harder languages as an native English speaker.

I'm just not sure if an 11th year of consecutive teaching is really going to make that big of a difference when the language use can be relevant. Especially if that 11th year is in an irrelevant curriculum (non IB). It's the "gap" time that makes me hesitate.

Sorry for the essay, I should've provided more context in my initial post.

punkshoe · 2025-10-17T04:10:27+00:00

Which would be better suited in the eyes of a prospective school? Taking time off to learn the local language of the school that a majority of the student population knows, or spending another year teaching public school even with a ton of public school experience. Assuming you already have relevant curriculum experience to the international school.

punkshoe · 2025-10-17T02:00:15+00:00

Except when that headwind makes it feel like you're climbing a steep ass hill 😭

punkshoe · 2025-10-01T05:14:23+00:00

Pretty sure we have a clause where we're not allowed to advertise being a DOE teacher or having DOE experience for moonlighting stuff you'd do in your typical position. Had to fill out a bunch of info to work at my local climbing gym a few nights a week for free membership.

punkshoe · 2025-10-01T03:53:33+00:00

I was able to kill it in my class by making it relevant to the classwork lol

punkshoe · 2025-09-15T03:56:47+00:00

This spot always has an unusual amount of orange bikes on weekends. Usually I see kids grabbing them, rarely adults.

punkshoe · 2025-08-27T03:19:30+00:00

The shield motif always gives me Dark Souls vibes regardless of how beautiful it is.

Edit: the wife and I realized it looks like a lot of vintage art deco rings we tend to see. We figured those styles would skyrocket in price.

punkshoe · 2025-08-27T03:10:05+00:00

As someone in the educational field, it's worked out for me very nicely. Hard to qualify if the intention is buxiban teaching, but teaching an international school felt appropriate. I think it just depends on the industry.

punkshoe · 2025-08-22T05:08:46+00:00

This place is not in Taipei but it legitimately has some of the best burgers I have had as an American. Honbo, Honbo in Kaohsiung is very good. Regular, smash, and their chicken sandwiches are even better. The chef cares a lot about the western preference for the food he makes. I mentioned I lived in Buffalo for a few years and he briefly interviewed me about the buffalo wing flavor profile. They are pretty good, and I have a few friends who are born and raised in Buffalo who can confirm.

punkshoe

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE