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Nov 16, 2024

Reading Books Like Scrolling Facebook

An effective reading method by applying social media scrolling habits to discovering knowledge.

Nov 14, 2024

Where to Actually Meet Local People Abroad

Studying abroad surrounded by other international students? Two places work better than networking events: small local charities, and Toastmasters.

Oct 21, 2024

Four Things Paddleboarding Taught Me

Fall in on purpose early. Take the wave head-on or let it push you, never side-on. Some days holding your position is the whole achievement.

Sep 25, 2024

School Did Not Fail to Be Useful, It Failed to Teach You to Apply It

"Everything at school is theory, how much of it applies to real life?" The theory is fine. What is missing is any lesson designed around using it.

Sep 5, 2024

Escape Velocity in Learning English

A plane burns most of its fuel getting off the runway. Past a certain speed it flies. Language learning has the same point, and reaching it is the real goal.

Aug 9, 2024

Lesson Arc Library For Adult Learners

Aug 5, 2024

Feedback Loop Blueprint For Busy Classrooms

Aug 1, 2024

Placement To Progress: The First 14 Days

Jun 22, 2024

If I Could Rewind High School to Become an English Teacher

A year-by-year plan to build English proficiency, stack experience, and save money before stepping into TESOL.

Jun 21, 2024

Stop Guessing Your Customer’s Gender

A small story from Toronto that reminded me to switch to gender-neutral greetings so every customer feels respected.

Jun 19, 2024

Comparison Kills Joy

A gentle reminder: social media makes us prone to FOMO, but happiness lies in living fully in our own lives.

Apr 3, 2024

Living in England Will Not Teach You English

You can spend a month in London without speaking a word of English and get by perfectly well. Whether you improve depends on your attitude, not your postcode.

Mar 22, 2024

Eight Ways to Unfreeze Your Writing

Stop pressing backspace. Write the body before the introduction. Read model answers, but never one on your own question. Small rules that get words moving.

Mar 18, 2024

Notes From a Course on Managing Team Conflict

Five tensions that show up in every team, a four-step way through them, and the questions the course left unanswered about culture and small everyday disagreements.

Mar 15, 2024

Transforming a Traditional Auction House with Digital Strategy

How a 200-year-old auction house pivoted to digital during COVID-reimagining the entire customer journey, not just building a website.

Mar 10, 2024

The Grammar Book That Answers Everything, and Who It Is Actually For

Betty Azar never planned to teach English. A question she could not answer in 1965 turned into the grammar reference teachers have leaned on for over forty years.

Feb 27, 2024

A Passport Is Not a Teaching Qualification

Paying triple for a foreign face made sense twenty years ago, when authentic English was scarce. In 2024 it mostly wastes your money and sidelines excellent Vietnamese teachers.

Feb 24, 2024

Three Things You Need to Learn English

If you learned Vietnamese, your brain is already good enough. What is left is having a reason to keep going and someone to filter the noise for you.

Feb 20, 2024

Migrating to Auctionet: When Platform Choice Makes or Breaks Your Business

Case study: Tea led an end-to-end Auctionet migration, redesigning processes, compliance, and shipping so an international house listed 1,000+ lots in the first month.

Jan 10, 2024

Building a Cloud-Based Art Submission System That Actually Works

How Tea rebuilt ARTification UK's art submission workflow with Google Workspace automations, saving hours and safeguarding £10k of artwork.

Nov 28, 2023

Building and Scaling an Online IELTS Learning Platform During COVID

How a weekend sprint turned an in-person IELTS tutoring business into a fully automated online learning platform.

Oct 23, 2023

The Years You Spend Waiting to Start

People worry the class started too long ago and they will never catch up. Look back a few years later and the real outcome is that they never started at all.

Oct 11, 2023

Why We Send the Argument Out Before the Lesson Starts

Is a £110,000 dress restoration worth it? Learners get the question the night before, so class time goes on discussion rather than on warming up.

Sep 19, 2023

How One Student Moved Her IELTS Writing From 5 to 6.5

Writing is the hardest IELTS band to move. Five months of writing, submitting and rereading her own corrections got her there, and she ended up hooked on it.