Education: What constitutes high quality literacy teaching? - by Richard Lloyd Evans - Helium

Here is an article I wrote about literacy training.

Education: What constitutes high quality literacy teaching? - by Richard Lloyd Evans - Helium

New Article on Ecuador Holidays

Here is a link to an article I recently wrote on helium.com

Important holidays celebrated in Ecuador

Yemeni cleric advocates killing US civilians - Yahoo! News

This is the kind of news that makes people want to "Keep America for Americans" - a US born foreign national now a terrorist, using his US developed education to foment murder.

Yemeni cleric advocates killing US civilians - Yahoo! News

The thing is, he probably would have been the same whether he went to the States or not. He just gets so much more notoriety because of the accident of his birth.

Just Sitting Here Watching...

...the world pass by. It is Friday afternoon and school is out. I have a bag full of exams and papers to grade and at home I have two novels beckoning. Tonight I have a gathering of some expats who are celebrating one of them finally getting permission to marry here in Ecuador (a four month process). At home there is a wife and housefull of dogs and cats and who knows what. So I decided for a time out.

So here I am, sitting at a comfortable table at a "Sweet and Coffee" - Ecuador's version of Starbucks. A minute ago John Lennon was doing his "Just Sitting Here Watching..." which is the inspiration for the title to this little post. Right now the opening bars of "Eye of the Tiger" are picking up, and meanwhile I am sipping on a brandy expresso with whipped cream, watching the life of Guayaquil pass by..

Okay, now I remember. THIS IS WHY WE MOVED TO ECUADOR.

Teaching Candidates Aplenty, but the Jobs Are Few - NYTimes.com

Teaching as I am in Ecuador, I have been a bit insulated from the disruption in the job market in the States. The New York Times has an article which is pretty shocking to me:

Teaching Candidates Aplenty, but the Jobs Are Few - NYTimes.com

My wife and I were thinking of ending our overseas time and heading back to the USA since we are getting older and health care is an issue, but now we are thinking we might need to hang on another year or more.

Internet Book Tour

I love this technologically savvy world. i just ran across a cool sight - authors post their book tour events to promote their books, and readers can search for their favorite authors.

Here is the link:  Book Tour

A Little Bit of Texas Goes Everywhere

The local InterAmerican Academy held a fund raiser – Texas Days! There were Ecuadorian bands doing their best Country Rock, greased pig chases, petting zoos and a Texas Barbeque competition.

Normally, Saturday is a day for me – a time for writing, relaxing or whatever I want to let the stress of the week ease away. This Saturday was a different take – Texas Barbeque! Our school – Colegio Americano, cobbled a barbeque team together to compete. At the competition we gave out samples, and sold our homemade pulled pork and ribs along with hamburgers, all with a side of cole slaw. For competition we competed in one category of chicken and another for pork ribs. It made for a very long day. Aside from six weeks of meetings and several practice sessions, we sat up on Friday night, arrived at 7 a.m. to start Saturday morning and were working through 6 p.m. followed by cleanup. Tired puppies were we.

While we were cooking we thought we did well, and were especially confident in our chicken. We thought we had done a good job on the ribs, too, but we also knew there was going to be a lot of good competition in that category. Still, we thought another team would need to come up with some very good ribs to beat us.

In the end Miller’s Grillers (that’s us) took 1^st Place in Chicken and 2^nd Place in Ribs. We were delighted, but the one irksome fact was that the winners of the Rib competition were a team from the English Consulate. A squad of Limey’s won the Texas Barbeque Rib competition in Ecuador? Sacrilege on so many levels!

All had a good time, some important money was raised for InterAmerican Academy, and we managed to bring some trophies home. Of course, in typical Ecuadorian tradition, something had to be a fly in the ointment. Our 1^st Place trophy said we won the award in the “Chiken” category.