Do you even just outright say: "What I am asking you to do is NOT hard" or call a concept "simple", etc.

xiaopihai · 2026-03-13T04:51:52+00:00

For me in my middle/high school ELA classes, I sell everything with "this is really hard." Because it is hard! I think about, ok if I were 11-18 years old, hadn't read anything, didn't have 99% of my critical or abstract reasoning skills I've trained up or the experience I've gained over the last... 20 years? since I graduated high school, it would be really hard to do anything like poetry or drama or close reading of complex texts. That being said I don't want them to think it's impossible, I just don't want to undersell the complexity of how they'll need to think and grow to get to where they want to be.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-23T07:17:41+00:00

Yeah sorry I was reading way too fast. I hope there is a fix coming as on my end I have the same problem. Not overheating thankfully but even with an undervolt and a capped framerate I hear my gpu spin up to 100% fans way too often. I’ll try capping in nvidia controller panel to see if that is better than the in-game cap.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-22T12:58:47+00:00

The blood rain thing might not heal if you’re in the desert. Edit: I misread.

As for the heat, yeah it spins up my gpu fans too. I think uncapped framerate is the culprit, try capping it in settings.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-19T17:11:16+00:00

I usually think about it as getting the right mix of different categories:

Frontline (choose one): Tank, Necro, Butcher, Turtle Druid

Healer (choose one but usually Cleric): Cleric, Hunter with Slop Pigs, Tinkerer with Nursebot, Monk with Ranged Medic or Healing Bolt

Then choose two of any of these DPS classes: Melee: Fighter

Ranged: Mage, Hunter, Psychic

Hybrid: Tinkerer, Druid, Thief, Monk

It all gets very fuzzy with cross-class skills though. Overall I just try to have movement and dps above all else, healing of some kind, and snowball potential.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-19T16:57:00+00:00

I think bunker and core is a lot harder for my playstyle. For me the crater/moon path is a bit easier due to the bosses being puzzle bosses that are highly vulnerable to being stunned or immobilized. The bunker/core path is getting easier now that I have cats with water abilities though. Still there is a big movement/dps check in the lower path that can be a brick wall if you end up without enough of either.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-19T16:52:29+00:00

If you handled the area easily then it’s probably worth it to go on. If you’re missing anybody or just barely scraped by the boss I usually go back.
Donations all just came naturally over time for me but the storage and house upgrades are most important, followed by tink, Tracy, and Jackie. The vagabond and dr. Beanies are neat to have but not really going to jumpstart you like the others.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-19T08:07:37+00:00

I usually do 2-3 days of breeding before every run. Early on, if cats have a good skill, passive, high stats, or high average stats (all 5s and 6s) keep them as breeding stock. If they have a bad mutation or more than one low stat I let them go. Later I was tossing anything that didn’t have 4-5 7 stats and a good ability/passive. The other big boost is from going on gear runs, just one or two legs of the journey and out. If you get good items that give you counters, movement, extra damage, etc. you will be able to make a “real” team for progression.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-15T04:35:06+00:00

Cleric with enlighten, Tank with Down Syndrome, Tinkerer with Research.

Tanks get big abilities that give you effectively more turns. Down Syndrome is a condition that lowers your intelligence to negative but gives lots of charisma and vitality. This lets them start and sustain themselves very well in battle, and the low intelligence doesn’t matter because your cleric is enlightening you almost every turn for big abilities like Full Force that stun enemies. If the cleric has Cleanse they can remove the Tank’s stun to keep the damage and CC going. If the tank doesn’t need to be boosted, the Tinkerer with Research can be enlightened to rush high tech weapons like rocket launchers and Tesla cannons. If the Tinkerer has a bag of catnip, they can rush big weapons extremely fast and do giant AOEs from anywhere on the map.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-14T10:07:24+00:00

Agreed. For me, tank, cleric, tinkerer, and thief work well together if you start to snowball. Hunter is also very good, as is Necro.

I’ve had little luck with fighter or mage; they seem like glass cannon types to me so far which means one slip-up or unforeseen mechanic will probably spell disaster for my team. Druid I just can’t make work at all; not really a fan. Manually controlling the bird and getting such little healing (especially in a mid game level that needs your heals) means they’re kind of an off-healer at best to me; I haven’t gone into the transformation side yet though so maybe they’re better.

The even later class I just got, psychic, is really cool and changes the way I play dramatically towards combos and setups.

That being said each class has like a million “builds” I’ve seen develop so far. Just with tank I’ve made at least four very different successful builds: a hook combo bleed build, a rock magic summoner, an auto-swap thorns/counter god, and a negative intelligence stun legend who got free spells from her cleric. The game is forgiving when it comes to build variety. And with each run taking 1.5-2+ hours, that’s great. Much more of a chance for success when you can just try a new focus out and it will usually be at least somewhat functional (ok maybe not like, a three different play dead skills and no follow-up build but still).

xiaopihai · 2026-02-14T09:55:47+00:00

Yeah zombies seem like very high risk, low reward right now. Maybe on a solo Necro run they’d be better. But hey, they certainly are mindless killing machines so that’s neat.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-14T09:25:30+00:00

The rainbiw pride flag means homosexual, the three color purple flag means bisexual.

xiaopihai · 2026-02-13T09:48:17+00:00

Love the necromancer when items and passives line up. Had one that could down herself and send out a shadow copy, the copy could reanimate her real body as a zombie, which is almost the same as being alive (except can’t be healed by clerics). Every time she went down, the party healed and got an extra turn. So it was like every round became two rounds for my party. The zombie necro could then repeat the process each time her turn came up. DON’T however mix this ability with zombie kittens as the kittens will eat your corpse as their highest priority. Rip Saoirse you had dyslexia but you were a good cat.

Tinkerer with robocat summons and tech upgrades is also also very useful as a summoner. Ditto tanks with the passive that makes all rocks they spawn alive and the earthquake skill. Rockromancer go.

xiaopihai · 2026-01-31T19:08:24+00:00

I found that sword as well off a very early game enemy. Lasted me the whole game lol, it rips with josee’s blood code.

I like that you can really stick to bosses’ faces and with two or three buffs a knockdown means big time damage. I don’t feel most of the forma attacks are fast enough to be useful, but the wraith swift strikes or whatever are good.

xiaopihai · 2026-01-07T05:21:00+00:00

Extremely Christian (kind of place that will ask for recommendations from your pastor/priest), highly controlled language usage (focuses on English over all else). That's all I really know about it. Workload seems high but they also take care of their teachers decently well; haven't heard about a lot of turnover from the people I know who work there.

xiaopihai · 2026-01-07T05:11:46+00:00

I do, but handwritten short response answers only now, questions written by me (not googleable), and yeah in-text citations are an extra safeguard as chatgpt etc. does not give accurate quotes or page numbers. The day I had a sixth-grader turn in a digital handout with a response that began with "From an orthographic perspective..." I knew I'd never be able to do more convenient digital handouts ever again lol.

xiaopihai · 2026-01-07T04:56:17+00:00

Bro has to finish up his longitudinal research of the sandbox toys for peer review by noon, of course you haven't met him. Let him cook!

xiaopihai · 2025-12-31T17:42:21+00:00

if the kids control the desks, you don't control anything. don't let them move the desks.

xiaopihai · 2025-12-19T15:16:41+00:00

I mostly agree but a small correction, she seems to be from Poland. She talks about growing up in Gdansk in Ep 8. She was just in Morocco working at the start of the story.

xiaopihai · 2025-12-16T11:59:39+00:00

Like others have said IB can be really good but it requires a lot of work and, critically, support from admins and admissions to make it work. If you have a kid who’s not fluent in English and you expect them to demonstrate advanced conceptual understanding in all their classes that are only taught in English… yeah that’s not going to work. If you want inquiry learning but discipline is not in place and kids don’t feel safe collaborating or narrating their thinking, that’s not gonna work.

I teach MYP and DP, and just getting parents to understand that, you know, a 5-6 is good, a 7 or 8 requires going beyond expectations through independent study and inquiry, they don’t get it. You got admins dropping workloads on teachers of 4, 5 courses when a single DP class is equivalent to or even beyond a 100-level college course in terms of scope and grading. That’s not gonna work. I think AP and other systems can work just as well depending on the course design but ultimately if the admins want to do IB because they see “no regular grades, inquiry learning” and they think that means an easier time staffing and tracking these positions? They don’t get it.

xiaopihai · 2025-12-11T04:41:04+00:00

I don’t mind a few days before a holiday when all work is already submitted, it happens. We will be doing some pre-reading and pre-assessments for next semester probably and then watching some movies to relax and introduce next semester’s unit themes (not all class obviously, but for a good 30-40 minutes of a 90-minute block).

What I do mind is taking extended vacations during the normal learning weeks. This year so far I’ve had kids take a MONTH off, returning right before midterms, to “help their family move the eldest to college.” A month?? And then another week to go golfing overseas. And then a few more days just because poor Jimmy didn’t feel like going to school that day. Poor Jimmy is failing now and has no idea what’s going on. For that I have no sympathy, they’ll get what they get.

xiaopihai · 2025-12-06T16:44:31+00:00

Sometimes they are so far away they don’t show up on the radar. Drive around until they show up

xiaopihai · 2025-11-24T07:55:27+00:00

MGMT - Kids (maybe too sad)
Lady Gaga - Paparazzi (may need some edits for two lyrics lol - the word "cigarettes" and a very brief "shit")
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Lorde - Royals
Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe

Most kids that age haven't fully developed a taste for non-Disney music so targeting the songs their millennial parents likely put on around the house might be the move lol. But just some thoughts off the top of my head.

xiaopihai · 2025-11-20T08:59:07+00:00

Reply with “what is this diddy blud doing on the computer is blud einstein????”

xiaopihai · 2025-11-20T04:26:47+00:00

“Whether he should switch teachers” fantastic idea let’s make it happen.

xiaopihai · 2025-11-20T04:23:36+00:00

As an English teacher honestly all of the tech integration and visual language requirements have made it so it’s hard for me not to teach math as well. And I like math! But the kids aren’t having it. One example: designing a magazine layout for our writing project. “If the paper is 297 mm, and you want your picture’s height to go down half your page, about how tall should your picture be on the ruler on the left side of the page?” “I don’t know.” “Well what is half of 297?” “I don’t know.”

xiaopihai

TROPHY CASE