Dave has over 20 years experience teaching English and got his teaching start by teaching in person in Taiwan.

When he received his certificate to teach English as a second language, he looked for a place that was warm and had a completely different culture and environment than his home country of Canada.

He was deciding between South Korea or Taiwan and realized that the winters were much calmer in Taiwan than South Korea.

He spent most of this teaching years there, earning his permanent residency. However, he was still looking for something warmer and decided to move to Thailand where he hopes to retire to in the future. Currently, he shares his time between Canada with his family and Thailand.

Dave decided to switch to online English teaching to be able to spend more time with his parents and siblings back in Canada. However, his love of English teaching made him determined to continue helping students achieve their English language goals.

Currently, he still works with students around the world and is looking forward to meeting new English language learners!

At the beginning of his English teaching career, it was about the first 2 months of teaching in Taiwan, Dave worked with different school aged kids. At this particular moment, he was working with Kindergarten kids and during the day, he watched as one child was getting berated by a Chinese assistant teacher.

Because Dave didn’t speak Chinese, the schools in Taiwan suppled a Chinese assistant to help coordinate the class if necessary. This is common for English teachers abroad in Asia.

This Chinese assistant was yelling at the child because the child’s painting/artwork was messy. The poor boy was almost in tears. Even after 24 years later, Dave still remembers the boy’s English name because he shares the same name as Dave’s brother, Richard. At the end of class, Dave pulled Richard aside and asked him what his painting was. Once the boy showed the artwork, Dave made sure to tell him how beautiful and wonderful it was. By the time the boy left for home, he was smiling and made sure to give Dave a big hug.

Dave continued his teaching as normal. He didn’t really reflect on the moment because, to Dave, he was doing the right thing, he was comforting a young child and encouraging him.

However, it didn’t go unnoticed. About 1 to 2 weeks later, he had a monthly training session for the new teachers at the school. There were about 50 teachers in this session. At the end of the training, the boss made a special announcement and started describing this event without giving Dave’s name.

To Dave, it was obvious who the boss was talking about. Dave recounts that he put his head down a little embarrassed for a few reasons. One, because he believed what he did was normal and what teachers should do. And two, he had no idea that that situation was witnessed in some way.

In classrooms in Taiwan, there are cameras and microphones and the boss clearly watched the footage and heard what transpired. At the end of the story, the boss pointed to Dave and had everyone applaud him.

This story left a lasting impact on Dave because he realized that comforting and encouraging students to grow and achieve wasn’t necessarily done by every teacher. Since then, he has been determined to promote confidence in every student in their English language journey and that each student should leave the class feeling happy, content, and proud of their own growth.

My Open Passport Language School welcomes a diverse set of teachers to the team!