A boutique English studio in Taipei, built on 25 years in the classroom.
I started teaching at fourteen
I actually began teaching when I was fourteen.
Education was already part of my family long before that. My parents, Penny and Paul, were educators in Taichung in the late 1980s, where they developed their own approach to literacy and language learning. They later brought that work to Canada and built a language centre serving hundreds of Taiwanese students. I grew up around classrooms, teachers, curriculum, and constant conversations about why some students learn easily while others seem to get stuck. So teaching became more than something I did for work. It became something I spent much of my life trying to understand.
Engineering, then journalism
My own education took me through two very different worlds. I began in Civil Engineering before moving into Journalism and Mass Communication. Looking back, that combination shaped much of the teacher I eventually became. Engineering taught me to look for structure, systems, causes, and relationships. Journalism taught me that understanding something is not enough—you also have to be able to explain it clearly.
Where the work has taken me
Over the years, that work has taken me far beyond the traditional English classroom. I have taught beginning readers learning their first English sounds and teenagers wrestling with increasingly complex writing. I have run homeschool programmes and worked with 共學 co-learning communities in Taiwan's mountains. I have taught more one-to-one students than I could reasonably count, often travelling from one home to another across northern Taipei.
At the National Taiwan Science Education Center, I have designed and taught bilingual science programmes in which students explore ideas such as force, electricity, biology, chemistry, and astronomy through observation and experimentation.
At WEGO, my work has included English programmes, performance-based learning, and larger interdisciplinary experiences connecting students with science, technology, industry, and the world beyond school. I have also worked alongside teachers at FuDe Elementary School on bilingual classroom practice and language development.
My students have not only been children. I have taught at a nursing college, worked with professionals in fields including finance and private equity, and spent time at L&L Interior Design both as a project manager and as an English communication instructor for the company's adults.
What working outside education taught me
Working outside education mattered.
Business has deadlines, clients, constraints, disagreements, and consequences. It reminded me that eventually our students leave school. They will need to explain an idea to someone who disagrees with them, solve problems without an answer key, work with people unlike themselves, recover when something goes wrong, and take responsibility for the quality of their work.
Observe → Name → Explain
Observe → Name → Explain. First, look carefully. Then identify what you are seeing and give it precise language. Finally, explain the relationship, process, or idea in your own words.
I use that same thinking whether a six-year-old is learning how sounds form words, an elementary student is investigating why an object moves, or an adult is preparing to communicate an idea professionally.
The content changes. The underlying act of learning does not.
What I'm careful about
But I am careful about something. Education does not become better simply because we make it newer.
Technology, AI, interactive tools, textbooks, experiments, and beautiful curriculum can all be useful. But none of them replace a knowledgeable teacher, a carefully built foundation, disciplined practice, meaningful conversation, curiosity, or the relationship between a learner and someone who genuinely knows them.
Why I founded a boutique English studio in Taipei
I did not want to build another cram school. I wanted to create a place where strong foundations and genuine curiosity could exist together. A place where students are known, challenged, given room to think, and expected to take increasing ownership of their learning.
Samuel Robert Dulaney
Founder, Do Think Education Co., Ltd.
Registration
杜思教育股份有限公司附設臺北市私立杜思文理技藝短期補習班
立案字號：北市教終字第1083112902號