Teaching, anything

So after a few years of teaching ESL, and honing my patience, I'm convinced that I can teach almost anything to anyone.  For example, these past couple days I've been in training to be an emergency first aid instructor, along with 4 other people.  The other 4 people are not teachers and I could see them struggling with public speaking and demonstrating something, and how to keep things are organized and simple.  Me, on the other hand, was a bit of a star!  Haha!  Not really at the actual skills, but I had the confidence and that's the most important thing I think. 

Anyway, it's cool to see my ESL teaching skills transfer into other areas. 

And, in case anyone is wondering.  My time on a little tropical island in the Philippines has been going very well.  I live in a little shack and go diving.  And study too of course.  And drink a San Miguel a day in celebration of escaping the land of Hite and Cass. 

Thailand vs. Korea for a newbie ESL teacher

Some more good stuff from Ted.  What's the winner?  Korea.  Check out his post for why.

How much can you earn from teaching abroad?

Another excellent post from Ted.  He lists all the factors to consider like cost of living, medical insurance and taxes.  I've only recently discovered this blog, but have been impressed by the quality of his posts.  Consider adding him to your Google Reader.

It's that time of year again: Evaluations!

Yesterday, my evaluations from the students were up online.  The grand total was 88%.  For the past couple years, I've been stuck in the 87-89% range and can't quite seem to get out of it.  My first couple years teaching at a uni, I made some big mistakes and got scored appropriately.  I learned from the comments the students made, made changes and my scores improved steadily. 

But now?  What to do.  The students really leave no helpful feedback anymore except, "everything was perfect" "fun games" "I love you."  I know that I shouldn't really care, but my uni seems to be obsessed with our evaluations and this seems to be almost the sole way that we get evaluated on our job performance. 

When I go class by class, I see that the top level ones loved me.  Like close to 100% scores.  It's the very low-level ones that are the bane of my existence.  They give me closer to 80%.  Perhaps it's because I try to teach the same material to all my freshman English classes and it's too difficult for the poor classes?  Maybe it's something in my attitude towards them, like I often can't quite believe that they've studied English for 7 years but can't tell me their name or where they're from.  Maybe it shows in my (probably) negative body language towards them?

What are your tips for me readers?