Grace Davis

Euan (00:00)
Welcome to I Talk English Abroad. And I don't know if you believe in nominative determinism, but it's a phenomenon in English where someone's name lends themselves to something that's gonna happen later on, or lends themselves well to the name of a business. And so it's no surprise to me that, you know, meeting Grace Davis, the name English with Grace is a completely both profound and appropriate name. So Grace, thanks so much for coming on to our podcast. It's really, really great to speak to you.

Grace Davis (00:26)
Yes, I am so excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me, and thank you for that lovely introduction.

Euan (00:31)
Well, no, listeners will agree. If they don't know you already, your story is a really interesting one because you have your own language school and we'll talk about that in great detail. But your story isn't just about teaching English. You're a bilingual teacher and you've done some postgraduate study in sort of a Spanish teaching context and an English teaching context. So just to sort of clear things up, let's take it right from the start. Did you grow up in a multilingual environment and where did your love of English and Spanish language come from?

because obviously it's something that you're passionate about.

Grace Davis (01:03)
Yeah, that's a great question. So I grew up in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, a very small town in the Midwest, about 8,000 people. And I was not in a multilingual environment, but we did have the opportunity to study Spanish or French at the high school level. And actually in the US, it's required, if you're going to university, you have to have at least two years of a foreign language. So I started with Spanish and I enjoyed it, but my…

love for it and passion took off, I think, in college when I was able to study abroad and I started meeting people who spoke Spanish and traveled to Spain and Ecuador. And that's when I, that was my junior year of college. And so when I came back from that experience, I decided to switch my degree. My major was history and I switched it to completely in Spanish just because I loved learning about cultures, learning about the world, traveling.

So the typical, I was bit by the travel bug.

Euan (02:03)
No, I mean, that first of all, that's great because that's going to apply to what a lot of people are going are going through who listen to this podcast, you know, that is troubles a big motivation. And it's also very interesting because you grew up as you mentioned there in a part of the part of the US where, you know, Spanish isn't necessarily as widely spoken as say, you know, Florida or Texas or California or something like that. So that's really interesting. There's a lot of very robust academic study that states just very advantageous learning in other languages in general, like for cognitive function.

Grace Davis (02:10)
Mm-hmm.

Euan (02:33)
for memory, for all this amazing stuff. So, but your route is kind of a little different. So as far as learning how to teach English, do you think advanced knowledge and experience in learning Spanish helped you to develop and refine your English teaching technique? Do you think one formed the other or was it just a sort of, were the two very mutual in your mind?

Grace Davis (02:52)
Yeah, so I love discussing this with other language teachers as well. During my graduate studies, we all had to learn another language and not because you have to be able to speak the language of your students, especially in the English language world. A lot of my students are from all over the world. I can't speak every language, but I do think it helped me in the sense that especially at the beginner level, I know how hard it is and I

have been in situations where I'm using my hands to communicate. So I developed that empathy and understanding of what my students were going through. So I absolutely recommend if you are teaching another language that you do try to learn another language. But I wouldn't say that you have you have to do that, if that makes sense. And I always wanted to be a teacher. So then that was just a natural. Like I said, I wanted to teach history.

So then when I fell in love with Spanish and how much it helped me learn another language through travel, I chose to be a language teacher and it all just kind of fell into place.

Euan (03:58)
And so tell me a little bit more about that study at Iowa State. As you say, you changed from history to Spanish language teacher education, if that's right. Now, how much did that specific undergraduate study help you in terms of both languages? Was a lot of it transferable or was it, it may sound like a really silly question, but how different are approaches across?

Grace Davis (04:03)
Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm.

Euan (04:26)
languages. Is there a lot in common between Spanish teaching and English teaching other than obviously, you know, the vocabulary?

Grace Davis (04:32)
Yeah, so I'm trying to limit my response time. I feel like I could talk about this forever. But to go back, my first two years studying Spanish, well, I had already studied a little bit in high school, but that was a lot of memorization and verb conjugation. And I didn't really get into that love of the language until I was using it and speaking with local people. But my first two years at college, I remember I didn't really…

Euan (04:36)
Hahaha.

Grace Davis (05:02)
I wasn't obsessed with Spanish yet. I didn't really enjoy the flashcards and the memorization. And that was not necessarily a fault of my professors, but the way that I had learned to learn another language and getting out of my own habits of how you learn a language. And then when I went to Spain and had the opportunity to study abroad my junior year, this program was through Iowa State University. We went to Casares, Spain. And…

That's really when everything took off. And that's also when I realized, oh, I don't learn a language by reading a textbook or by memorizing flashcards. You learn a language by getting stuck in a situation at the bus station, where you really need to make sure that you're getting to the right destination and buying the right ticket and how much something costs. And no one speaks English, so you're thrown into that situation and truly using the language.

And then my Spanish skills started to improve a lot and I chose to move to Spain because I saw how much I grew just in one semester. So then I went to Ecuador and then went to Spain for two years and taught English. So let me back up though. Did I answer your question? Was there something I missed?

Euan (06:11)
Yes, well, I mean, in terms of, you know, when you eventually became a teacher, we will talk a wee bit more about the travel experiences. But when you got to being a teacher, or at least like on a sort of volunteer level or like as part of your course, that kind of thing, did you find that it was it was a very, very different in terms of how you taught method methodologically? If that makes sense.

Grace Davis (06:20)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, no, it does. Uh, and I am interested in this as well and talk a lot about this in my current position as a navigator, which we'll get into later, but I think that, especially in the U S we teach English language learners differently and almost in the way that we, I think we should be teaching languages, whereas Spanish, French, German, the languages I had experiences with, we are teaching them as, um, a content area rather than a skill.

And I think it's important to teach it as a skill that you can use and improve rather than, here's a vocabulary list to memorize. So, yes, definitely different approaches, but I think that they should be the same approach where you're using the language to practice the content area.

Euan (07:01)
Right.

I completely agree because I studied German at school to like a decent level and as soon as we all finished our exams It almost like it completely left my head and so like I've got all this kind of education in German But like if I got stuck in Berlin I would have no idea what's going on. I could tell them that I went swimming three times a week But like I couldn't tell them I can tell them anything that wasn't in a speaking exam So talk to me about the kind of early years of your of your teaching. So let's

Grace Davis (07:27)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Euan (07:51)
Actually, let's pick up a little bit on Ecuador and on your experiences in Spain. Was there a sort of moment when you thought like, okay, I'm definitely in the right place here, I'm doing what I should be? Or was it kind of a nervous experience? Tell us what the kind of early teaching experiences were like.

Grace Davis (08:06)
Yeah, a lot of trial and error. Um, but I, especially in Ecuador, I was doing my student teaching by that point. And I absolutely loved, um, in Ecuador though, I need to, I need to make one comment. I was still trying to become a Spanish teacher. So I was actually teaching the way we teach English literature in the U S I was teaching the students in Ecuador. Spanish literature, and we were reading books and going about it that way.

Euan (08:09)
Mm-hmm. Heh heh.

Grace Davis (08:36)
but I didn't have a doubt that I wanted to pursue Spanish and continue to let the Spanish language be a part of my career, however that looked. And then, like I mentioned, once I graduated, I found a program called Auxiliaris de Conversación, which is a Spanish language assistant through the Spanish government. You just have to have a bachelor's degree. It can be in any content area, and then they have native English speakers in the classes.

That experience was when I truly started to fall in love with English language learners. And I came back to the US and started my first Spanish job. I was teaching sixth grade Spanish, but then also got into the English, we say ESL, English as a second language, but now we're changing that because most people speak more than just two languages. And I fell in love with.

Euan (09:26)
Mm-hmm.

Grace Davis (09:27)
the English language learners, especially the immigrant and refugee population in the US. And I didn't have a doubt in my mind that was what I wanted to pursue for a master's degree and go that route.

Euan (09:37)
Mm hmm. That's brilliant. And so you talk about refugees and asylum seekers and that kind of thing. What were your experiences teaching? Was that within the sort of public education system or was that as a volunteer? How did that work? Sorry for springing out on you. I just had to pick up on that.

Grace Davis (09:53)
No, no, that's great. Uh, yes. So I was in public school. I was at Robbinsdale area schools in Minnesota and I was teaching sixth grade Spanish, but then I was part-time. I was actually 0.1 FTE for people who know what that means. I moved for a job that was basically three hours a week. And then just because there was such a high need for subbing, um, I basically fell into those English language classes and I was my first year, third and fifth grade.

And at that school, I had a lot of students from Somalia. Minnesota actually has a high population of refugees from Somalia. And that was the first experience I had where my students didn't speak the same language. Like I could speak Spanish and Spain and try to get by if they couldn't understand me, but I don't speak Somali. So I was truly learning how to teach English language. And my second year, I also had, I think,

Somalia, Ethiopia, Mexico, students from there. And so that was my first experience at the elementary level, teaching English language learners.

Euan (11:00)
That's so powerful because it's not just English skills that you teach refugees and asylum seekers. There's so much more to it. We've written on the Teflorg a lot about volunteering with vulnerable groups, including asylum seekers. And you really are like, you know, it's about, it's not just about introducing yourself and taking part in school classes, but it's about, you know, making sure that you're registered at a school, that your local…

local doctor, like all these sort of resources you need very basic language and it's such a powerful thing. So what were the kind of specific challenges when it came to teaching across two different languages? Because I'm really interested in that spell of your career in and around Minnesota. Like was there any were there any moments where you sort of you were kind of having a sort of battle in your head of like am I thinking in English? Am I thinking in Spanish? Like was there anything like that or was it was it easy to kind of like switch off and go into certain kind of modes? Because I don't know what that's like so.

Grace Davis (11:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, so actually I'm really glad you asked this question as well because I think that was when I truly noticed I was teaching at the same time. I would teach Spanish for an hour and then pop over to the elementary school. And I noticed my the biggest thing I noticed that I was doing wasn't that it was hard to switch from one language to another. It was how differently I was teaching Spanish compared to how I was teaching English. And that was just strictly because I grew up thinking, OK, this is how we teach languages.

Euan (12:14)
Right, okay.

Grace Davis (12:21)
And I was teaching my Spanish, like the students who were learning Spanish, I was teaching them the way that I had learned and using the textbook. And I was in my first year teaching. So I was truly just trying to get by, which I'm sure a lot of people could relate to if they're teachers. But then when I would shift over to my English language learners, like you said, I was more concerned with, okay, how can I help you adapt to life here? And what do you need to learn right now in order to have fun on the playground?

What do you need to learn to make connections at school? What do you need to learn so that, you know, you can help your parents if they need help at the grocery store. And so that was when I truly started to shift my, the way I believed we should teach languages because you're supposed to do full immersion, but I definitely, you know, due to other obstacles in public schools, I wasn't teaching fully in Spanish when I was teaching Spanish, like I was in English.

Euan (13:22)
And just finally, and again, I'm sorry to put you on the spot with this a little bit, because to let people peek behind the curtain, I do have a list of questions. Sometimes something so interesting comes up that I have to sort of poke at it again. But for those sort of international audience who aren't really that familiar with the American public school system, what kind of challenges are there? Because obviously, like any school system in any country, I imagine it can be a bit of a lottery in terms of funding, in terms of which areas.

Grace Davis (13:25)
See you.

Please do.

Mm-hmm.

Euan (13:51)
have better resource than that kind of thing. I mean, is that off the mark? Are those kind of pressing issues or sort of what's it like?

Grace Davis (13:52)
No.

Yeah. I was going to say I can speak from my experience and I realized after I got out of public schools, I realized how much I truly loved. I love teaching. I just don't like everything else that comes with. Okay. How do I word this in a delicate way? All the other stuff that comes with teaching in public schools. And some people are good at it. Some and I am not. But specifically that first year I was

Euan (14:16)
Yeah.

Grace Davis (14:27)
really just trying to keep my head above water with classroom management. And I didn't feel like I was taught how to handle large, you know, numbers of students. And so then that was the biggest part of my job. I wasn't able to teach as much Spanish as I wanted to because I was having such a hard time with the classroom management piece. But yes, depending on public or private, funding is an issue. I'm sure depending on what news channels you've seen,

were definitely my experience. And then when I got into the English language world, yeah, it was just different because I wasn't navigating the system.

Euan (15:10)
So in terms of the kind of background that you had before we kind of got to the stage of your career that we're now going to cover after a little break, you obviously, as we've discussed, had a very sort of different route to a lot of the kind of TESOL teachers that we speak to, but how would you sort of summarize your kind of your learning experience and how it's

shaped you as a teacher now, right? Are you grateful for the sort of the path that you took? Because it is a very individual path.

Grace Davis (15:39)
Oh yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I look back and just feel like it was, you know, nice little stepping stones that plopped into place. I didn't really have to think about it, but I just was following one thing after another and really focused on what I loved about it rather than what was difficult. So I'm going to go all the way back to, like I said, I was a history teacher. I knew I liked working with people. I knew I liked teaching and I was just passionate about history and polysci.

Um, so then I started those and then added the Spanish because it's a competitive position, a history teacher. So I added the Spanish to have that on my resume, but then I noticed, oh, I really enjoy these classes and I like learning about other cultures. And then that sent me into study abroad. And then that completely changed my whole trajectory. Uh, because then I wanted to do anything I could to get back to a Spanish speaking country and meet the locals and travel.

And so then that sent me to Ecuador and then back to Spain. And then that highlighted my love for the English language learners, as well as my time in Minnesota. And then in Minnesota, that sent me to my grad studies, which I know we're going to talk about my current job and how I started English with grace and all of that. But just, I wanted to give you that little timeline because, um, yeah, it feels very unique to me. I don't.

Euan (16:54)
Thanks for watching!

Grace Davis (17:03)
know a lot of people who followed that exact path, but I just kept following what I loved and what I was passionate about.

Euan (17:12)
Well, I mean, we often say in these podcasts that there's a thread that kind of keeps everything, everything sort of kind of neatly packaged together, even though like you've had such a singular kind of journey and you've done so many, there's so many different kinds of steps that fall into place. There's always a thread.

Now, after your masters that you touched on earlier at Monterey, which made me Google search the Monterey that I thought was in Mexico, where there was a whole different set of questions. So thankfully I double checked that. But after that masters and after the teaching experience that you had in Minnesota that we went over, I was wondering, you have a job just now and the job title is bilingual transition navigator. I

I'm going to be honest with you, Grace, I don't know what that means. So can you tell us? Because we're always interested in seeing where, you know, where Tefl can end up and what kind of jobs there are. So what does that job involve?

Grace Davis (17:56)
Hehehe

Yes, absolutely. And I'm happy to answer that question. Anytime I tell people my title, I have to explain what I do. So you're not alone there, but as a bilingual transition navigator, I'm located now in South Lake Tahoe, California, and I actually work for a very unique program we're an education consortium called Advance, and my role is kind of a blend of advising, counseling, navigating resources.

specifically for the Spanish speaking population in Tahoe. There are two of us who are bilingual. We work with the Spanish speakers in this town and then the other two navigators work with English speakers. But the whole point of a navigator, if you come to me, we set a goal and you tell me what goal you're working on. That can be, I wanna get a better job. I want to get a job. I'm trying to move to this country. I need help with immigration.

Most of my clients come to me because they're learning English. That's the first stepping stone in the United States. So I meet with them one-on-one and then we're focused on personalized pathways and holistic case management. So everybody has their own barriers. Everybody has their own, like you heard my unique path into my career. So I'm helping them navigate any barriers that come up and I'm helping connect them to resources.

in the town or whatever they need in order to achieve that goal. Because a lot of times, the thing keeping a student from being in an English classroom and learning English is not that they don't want to be there or that they're not motivated. It's that they're working two jobs and they have three kids and they just moved to this country and they need help with, you know, the things we mentioned earlier, like getting their health care set up or…

figuring out, finding a place to live. So I'm helping navigate that.

Euan (19:52)
Yeah.

That is absolutely amazing. Yeah, I've never heard of a job like that before, but that makes so much sense. There's got to be so many people who are going to need something like that. So anyone who is listening, who is wondering about what they can do with a Tefl certification, I'm going to suggest that that's one thing. But that takes so much empathy and understanding where people are coming from, both in a literal and metaphorical sense. So I have to ask, based on that, that goes well beyond kind of

Grace Davis (20:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Euan (20:22)
There are so many great teacher skills that are transferable in all sorts of industries, but how do you think you develop the skills in terms of empathy and in terms of social understanding and in terms of just all the sort of extracurricular things that make you ideal for a job like that? What kind of experiences do you think ready someone to be a bilingual transition navigator?

Grace Davis (20:45)
Yes, so I'm going to steal my words from my boss, my current boss, who I owe my entire job to. His name is Frank Gerdeman and he actually started this program, this advance, and he says all the time that you can't teach empathy. So he hires based on your ability to be empathetic and then the skills will come. He can teach you the skills. But I would say that the empathy

came from, and being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes truly came from teaching abroad, traveling, working with immigrants and refugees who are learning another language. I know what it feels like to learn another language and be in another country that you know nothing about. So that all truly came from my experiences in Spain and Ecuador. And then another thing I want to mention

Yes, I'm glad you said this. Teachers are so equipped with so many skills. And so I felt like I left the teaching world. I mean, I'm still connected to it because I have English with Grace. And obviously it's, it's intertwined in my current job. But I remember one of my friends left the teaching field and she said, yeah, my job gave, my, my boss gave me some tasks to complete and I said, okay, I'm done. And it was noon on Monday. And he said that was supposed to take you till Friday.

Euan (21:45)
Mm-hmm.

Grace Davis (22:08)
So like multitasking efficiency, you know, we don't take bathroom breaks until you actually have a break. Like there's a lot of skills you get from being a teacher. So I wanna highlight that for all the teachers out there. But yeah, I, again, this job popped up. Do we have time? Can I share the story for this? Because it's related to TESOL. So I was studying for my master's in TESOL and.

Euan (22:27)
Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

Grace Davis (22:36)
I was very busy with my grad studies, but they needed volunteers for the Cateasal Conference, which is the California Cateasal Conference. And I was placed in my current boss's Zoom room in 2021 as his Zoom moderator. And he got into the conference and presented on Advanced, the place I work at now. And he was presenting on how they teach English language learners. They use a program called NGen, which I'm happy to elaborate on later, because I love NGen.

you know, teaching English, but through what the student is currently doing or studying or wants to study and using English language skills to navigate that. And so then I immediately emailed him and I said, I'm fascinated by your, your program. I'm fascinated by the way you teach English. It's completely intertwined with my Spanish skills and my teaching background. Do you do internships? Um, and he said, no, at first we've never done one, but then let's talk and.

Euan (23:13)
Okay.

Grace Davis (23:35)
The rest is history. Yeah, it was a cool story.

Euan (23:35)
Oh cool. That's amazing. I love that and there's so much to enjoy about that. Honestly, I'm genuinely at a loss for words because we've done five series of this podcast and I've never heard of that specific role coming up. It's amazing. I will scramble for more questions about that later on. But in the meantime, can you tell us about your main…

Grace Davis (23:52)
Yeah.

Euan (24:00)
You mean hustled, if you like. Tell us about English with, for those who don't know, tell us about English with Grace and what that's all.

Grace Davis (24:07)
Yes, absolutely. So English with Grace is my own English language. Um, I think you called it a school, but platform or, uh, I teach on zoom and another platform called VUV, but it is my own English language company. I started my own LLC back in 2021. Um, and I teach like this morning, I taught, uh, students in China. Um, I've also started to taught students in California.

And I teach the intermediate and advanced level of speaking conversation skills, as well as confidence building. It's all about communicating in English. Most of my students say, I can read, I can write, but I cannot speak English. And that's their last thing they're working on. So it's all focused on English conversation and confidence building.

Euan (25:03)
that. So we've spoken already about your kind of journey up to this point but let's talk about this specific moment. When did you decide it was time to build your own online language platform from the ground up? Because that's no small undertaking, that's a lot of work. So when did that kind of, when did that moment sort of crystallize for you in the sense of like I've got to do this now?

Grace Davis (25:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So through my internship at advanced, my boss said, hey, there's this program called BuildEd that I want you to, you know, just try it out, see if our clients would like it. And I have to mention this because another one of my mentors, Mark Greenberg at BuildEd, his company is called BuildEd. He helps people start their own businesses, learn about value in the workforce and, you know, different.

the gig economy and different paths. We're no longer working a job from the age of 25 until retirement. People do a lot of different things and jump around. And so I was placed into these workshops basically, and I was already teaching for fun these classes and they weren't, at the moment, they weren't called English with Grace. I forget what they were called, but two of my friends from grad school, they are from China and they said, we want you to be the teacher and we'll help you facilitate.

So I was already doing it for fun at grad school in my free time. So you know I loved it if I was taking time out of my grad studies to teach these classes. And when I got into the Build Ed workshop, I talked about these classes I was teaching and how much I loved it. And that if I could do anything, this is what I would want to do. And so then Mark said, I think you've got something and you should just take the leap. And so I did. And he helped me through Build Ed.

Euan (26:20)
Oh, cool. Yeah.

Yes.

Grace Davis (26:48)
He helped me start my business and I kind of referred to him for any questions on, you know, starting an LLC and opening a business bank account and building a website. So it kind of felt like it fell into my lap. And when that happens, I'm like, maybe I should follow this. And I did. And it's been my fun side gig ever since.

Euan (27:04)
That's it.

That's amazing. I mean, the fact that you had an infrastructure to help you out, but also it was so self-directed. That's so cool. And your passion for the whole process really comes across. And so, you know, even the most passionate person will face challenges when they start their own kind of their own LLC in your case. What were those initial challenges? For anyone who's listening and thinking, maybe I want to go my own way in terms of business, what challenges did you face and how did you overcome them? And I know that sounds like a job interview question, but it also works here.

Grace Davis (27:13)
Yeah.

No, no, it's great. And we're not in a job interview, so I'll just be completely honest. I freaked out. Like initially, there was a lot of moments I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? This just feels like a lot of added stress. And I don't know. I felt like I was doing it kind of, you know, blindly. But I remember one day, Mark said to me, one of my mentors, he was like, okay, you seem a little stressed out.

Euan (27:42)
I'm sorry.

Grace Davis (28:05)
And I just want you to start thinking of this not as a business, but as a venture. So yes, it started out like this, but it might morph and change and just go with that. Um, and so I really let go of what I thought it was going to look like. And then I like to mention that point because then right after that, I started the podcast. I was like, Oh, well, maybe I should have fun and start a podcast. And then that kind of became this added thing for my students. And.

Euan (28:10)
Mm.

Mmm, yes.

Grace Davis (28:33)
now so many more people, including people who aren't learning English, follow my podcast and really enjoy it. But yeah, those initial challenges, I would say, they were all fear based and just kind of being worried about what are people going to think of this? I am not equipped. I don't have a master's in business, but it all just kind of, yeah, as the challenges arose, you just kind of tackle them one at a time.

Euan (28:39)
Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Grace Davis (29:02)
And especially teachers, like I already mentioned, you're equipped, you can do it. And I think most people regret not starting it sooner, is what I've heard.

Euan (29:12)
Okay. Yeah,

Grace Davis (29:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, amazing. So I, and this was another reason that I, Mark encouraged me to start English with Grace as well because I already had, you know, a group that I was teaching weekly. And so the true challenge was a couple months after I started it, my two friends who originally created these classes, they decided that it was no longer something they wanted to do. So I was going to be truly on my own. And at that time, that's how I was getting my students.

One of them is an influencer and she did all the marketing, Teresa, if you're listening, and she would send the students. So I didn't have to do anything like that, any marketing or recruiting. And so it was, but it was pretty quickly after I started English with Grace, like three months, I think I had to take the leap and go out on my own. And I had a few students who wanted to stick with it. And then it was basically just get.

those couple of students and really do a good job, and they refer, and then they will talk about you and say, oh, I had this English teacher. I also had a lot of connections from grad school who would say, hey, I know you're doing this, and refer students to me. But I think it was about a year after I started, and this is the moment you were referring to, where it was not from any connection, it was strictly from social media, one of my platforms in China,

A few students just came through because of the social media and they were able to get my assistant's number, she lives in China, and they joined the classes just completely randomly. And it was such a rewarding feeling because it just kind of felt like, obviously there was a lot of work behind it, but it didn't feel like it leading up to that moment. It kind of just felt like the small stepping stones. And then that was when I…

I had that moment of, oh wow, I'm really doing this. I had no idea who this person was or how they're connected to anybody that I knew in the past or from grad school.

Euan (31:18)
Hehehe

That's so cool for two reasons because it just shows you how, and the initial part of your business and building clients, it just shows you how powerful word of mouth is and how powerful doing a good job is because people will talk about it, but also shows you how effective marketing can be at an international level. There's so much there. Teachers are going to learn from this. Well, if they don't learn from this, they're missing out.

Grace Davis (31:36)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Euan (31:49)
So your website, English with Grace, there's a really good bit in the about section that I particularly liked. And you did sort of refer to it earlier, saying that you don't use textbooks to teach English. So let's put textbook writers out of business then. Describe your approach to teaching to me, because you talked about a little bit before about kind of, was it NGen and stuff like that. What's your kind of ethos?

Grace Davis (31:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yes, okay, not trying to put anybody out of a job, but that was a very funny transition. Yes, so textbooks, I just think that language is a skill that we should be using. And I don't use textbooks because I create, I create all my own PowerPoint, I follow PowerPoint, but I create all of my own discussion questions and my whole goal.

is to an objective for each lesson is to get students speaking. And so I really try to make the discussion questions one relatable so that the students have something to build off of so it has something to do with them and their life. And then two, the goal is to get you to talk. So like this happy Lunar New Year if anybody celebrates, but this week one of my lessons was on the Lunar New Year. A lot of my students are Chinese so easily they can talk about.

the Lunar New Year and their experiences with it and their traditions. So I would ask a question about, you know, share your favorite memory from the Lunar New Year in order to practice the past tense. So instead of teaching, this is the past tense, here's the grammar, this is the rule, it's truly getting them to use the past tense rather than explicitly teaching it. And so I think another program that, yes, you just mentioned, I teach for

E-N-G-E-N, NGEN. And they, yeah, they're also focused on, Katie Brown, if anybody needs to learn more about NGEN, please follow Katie Brown, she's brilliant. And she is the founder of NGEN. And they focus on using, well, helping immigrants and refugees learn English. But then it's through, like if I am a nurse, I am learning.

Euan (33:43)
Thank you for clarifying that.

Grace Davis (34:07)
nursing content and everything I need to know to become a nurse, but using English. Or if I am an aircraft maintenance, if I want to work aircraft maintenance, I'm learning everything about aircraft maintenance in English rather than teaching English like through a textbook where it's, okay, let's memorize these ten foods and practice the present perfect or

the future tense. So it's much more practical and truly using the skill of English.

Euan (34:42)
And without, you know, obviously I was quite aggressive to text bookmakers there and for that I do apologize. But I'm just wondering if that approach, does that come from kind of your own attitudes towards teaching kind of that existed before you got into the industry or is it based on kind of experiences you've had when you've had to teach in ways that you didn't think were necessarily optimal, where there was a bit of sort of friction between what you believed and what was being kind of practiced?

Where did that approach come from? Was it maybe a combination of both or, I'm just sort of, yeah, I'm wondering where that came from.

Grace Davis (35:13)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So a mix, like kind of a combination. I think I mentioned that friction I felt when I was teaching Spanish in Minnesota versus how I was teaching my English language learners. And I noticed that I was teaching Spanish the way that I was taught Spanish. And then my English language learners, I was teaching them the way that I learned Spanish. And so I really started to notice that my first few years of teaching

But no, I would not say most of my experience, especially in high school, it was through textbook and through learning the grammar and memorizing every tense and then going in and repeating it and then forgetting it right after, like you mentioned your German test. And so I think in grad school, that's when we really started, I had a really great experience at grad school and the way that the Middlebury Institute at Monterey, the way that they,

taught languages and how they believe languages should be learned through that and then my own experiences learning a language. I have continued to change how I think languages should be taught and I'm not saying that I don't sometimes fall back on that old, you know, it's really hard to you know, to, how do I want to say this? It's hard to kind of overcome how you know, thought you should teach or how you were taught.

But it's just constant. And sometimes it's just easier if you're in a, I'm not faulting any teacher who falls back on a textbook because you know, it's a hard job. And you know, today you just need to use the textbook, but I really do believe that we should ditch the textbook and focus on content-based instruction, which I think you're getting into next.

Euan (36:49)
Yeah.

Well, yeah, I see transitions. We're learning from each other here. No, I should just say you're putting this in much more polite framing than I am. And I'm worried it's coming across like, say something sensational, Grace. Say something horrible, but there's a lot of people. No, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that you should do that. So can you, I mean, you kind of went over it a little bit with us, but can you give us some kind of practical examples of what content-based instruction would be? Because that's kind of your methodology.

Grace Davis (37:20)
No. I know, I know, I know.

Yeah, absolutely. And so this, I would say, content-based instruction, some people call it CBI, really came about during my grad studies. But this is where you're using your language skills through exploration of what you're studying. So like I mentioned with NGen, if I want to become a nurse, I'm studying all the content that I would also study as an English speaker, but using the language I'm learning to study that content. So for example, if I want to

Even I like to use yoga as an example. So if I love yoga and I want to learn Spanish, I could go to a yoga class in Spanish and learn all of that vocabulary. So that's content-based instruction. Rather than teaching the language like a content area, you're using the content area with the language combined. Another example would be like for a science lesson, you can have students.

explore a science concept, but they're using the language that they're learning to explain the experiment and explain what they've studied. So I think that we're seeing a lot more of this in dual enrollment or dual language schools, multilingual education. It's truly using your language skills to study something else.

Euan (38:54)
amazing. I think the advantages to that are pretty self-evident. I mean the example of yoga is a really good one and also reminds me that I skipped yoga on Monday and I wondered why I felt so sore but that's my own thing and I'm working on it. So let's talk about the kind of clients that you work with typically. I mean and again if we can sort of get into examples of you know let's say hypothetically you've got a client who wants to work in computing. I mean they might learn some of the English around

computers and that kind of language. Is it as simple as that? Or are there those kind of specific examples? Or do people often just come to you and say like, I am starting from scratch here pretty much. Or what's a typical client? Or is there such a thing?

Grace Davis (39:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, now you're giving me a chance to highlight another huge issue in the United States. We have people coming from all over the world with bachelor's, master's degrees in their own countries who are brilliant. And we're treating them like they're elementary students who don't know anything just because they don't speak English yet. And so again, NGIN, I'm going to kind of do two different ones here because all of my careers are kind of meshed

Euan (39:43)
Uh huh. Okay.

Grace Davis (40:07)
through advance, the education consortium that I work at, as a navigator, I help my clients get into NGIN. And we've also had English with Grace classes. I've taught English with Grace through the consortium as well. But if they came to me and they said, I have a degree from, let's say, Ecuador, and I work with computers or I'm a programmer, or whatever the job is.

I would then plug them into NGIN and show them all of the content on that platform that they can study. And then they're using English to build up those skills as well. While we're also working on transferring their degrees or their credits, that's another part of being a navigator. My colleague Claudia, she does the high school completion and credit transfer and stuff.

Euan (40:59)
Right. Uh-huh.

Grace Davis (41:01)
And so that's really how that works. And then I'm also able to connect them through English with Grace. If they want to, you know, listen to my podcast or follow my social media platforms, it's kind of a big, um, mix of everything. And then, um, at English with grace, I have a smaller population of students that I'm working with, so it's really easy for me to take my navigation skills and ask my students, okay, what do you do? Why are you learning English? What do you want to work on? Um, and I.

Euan (41:27)
Uh huh.

Grace Davis (41:30)
I really do try to incorporate that into all of my classes, especially my small group, because it's just easy to make it what they want to learn. So it's kind of two separate things at the moment. But did that answer your question about?

Euan (41:44)
No, that absolutely does answer my question, Grace. Thank you.

So you referred to your podcast there before. And well, I mean, the simple question is, tell us about your podcast.

Grace Davis (41:56)
Yeah, I would love to. So like I mentioned a little bit earlier, the podcast came about maybe eight months after I started English with Grace. And it is focused on, it's just me speaking with my guests in English, but I try to, like earlier I said, take the leap or jump off the cliff. If somebody says something like that or uses an idiom or expression, I'll have them finish their thought and go back and then explain what does that mean.

And I really try to highlight different cultures, different backgrounds, different accents, which we're doing on this podcast, and using English conversation for my students to listen to the topics that we discuss in my conversation classes. So a lot of the podcasts are the same title as a class I teach, like the Lunar New Year. I interviewed somebody about the Lunar New Year, and then my students…

Euan (42:32)
Mmm.

Grace Davis (42:52)
are usually asked pretty similar discussion questions. So they can have that extra content to listen to and hear what a native or fluent speaker would say to the questions that they're being asked in class. But yeah, it's one of my hobbies. I just started it for fun. A few people had told me that I should be in podcasting. I have a voice for podcasting. So I was like, well, I'll try it. And I have a really good friend who helped me out with the editing and stuff like that. So it was another thing that I just kind of followed.

Euan (43:02)
Mm-hmm.

Grace Davis (43:22)
Ha ha ha.

Euan (43:23)
I love that and nobody told me I had a voice for podcasting yet here we are. But so I'm wondering about you know you built the you built English with Grace it's a really impressive business you've got that podcast you've got a really good social media presence that you've built up over time as well. So I'm just sort of wondering about you sort of from a personal perspective what were the surprising challenges that you faced along the way building these things up and what shocked you most in terms of skills you never knew you had?

Grace Davis (43:51)
Yeah. So especially with podcast editing, that is one that I can't really speak to because I have a great friend who helps me with that. So she does all my editing for me. But I think that one thing I noticed about podcasting, I thought it was going to take a lot of, you know, oh, what if I say something incorrectly and we have to edit that out? But really,

Once you get into the flow of it and you've practiced a couple of times, there's not a lot of editing that goes on. And because I'm teaching English, I try not to edit out errors or ums or pauses because that's part of language. So that part was really interesting to me because I thought it was going to take a lot more time than it does. Um, and then, Oh, there was one other thing. Can you repeat the question? Um,

Euan (44:38)
Yeah sure, I'm actually going to take this opportunity to… I didn't realise the cat was in this room, so I'm just going to let him out. Um, sorry.

Grace Davis (44:44)
Okay, okay, that's perfect.

Euan (44:47)
There you go son.

Sorry about that. I don't know if you heard him. I kind of, I was trying to sort of keep my composure because you're answering a question but I just heard him go like, like in the background I was just like, what? Yeah, so, okay. So we'll use the first half of the answer. And so, of course. Yeah, yeah.

Grace Davis (44:55)
Hehe

That's okay.

Okay, I just wanted to elaborate a little bit. So if you can give, you know, we don't even need to hear me say, can you repeat the question? I can just, I wanted to add one more thing about what you asked.

Euan (45:12)
That's good, yeah. And so what shocked you most in terms of skills you never knew that you had?

Grace Davis (45:19)
Okay. Yes. So I didn't realize that I was, I mean, people have told me this before, but just conversation in general, asking questions on the fly, which you're good at asking as well, and just letting the conversation kind of flow. It doesn't really even feel, I thought I would feel a lot more nervous. And there are some episodes where I do feel like that, but it's just really easy to sit down, have a conversation, listen and respond.

So if you're also interested in podcasting, I encourage you to take the leap as well, because again, the worst case scenario is that it just doesn't work and you tried it. So same thing with starting a business, starting a podcast. I say do it and you tried.

Euan (46:03)
Absolutely. And you did sort of reference this earlier and it's a really good answer. You maybe can have answered this already because you talked about the infrastructure that you had, the help that you had in terms of like a program to help you start your business. But what would you say to someone who feels like you that they had a particular teaching approach and they've got the work ethic that you have that could justify starting a business? Because you talked about when you sort of knew it was the right time, but what advice would you give to someone who's maybe…

Grace Davis (46:23)
Mm-hmm.

Euan (46:30)
kind of on the brink and is thinking about it, but they don't maybe think that they have all the skills that you know, that you need to do it.

Grace Davis (46:37)
Yeah, you do. Especially if you have a good work ethic and you're hardworking and you're passionate about what you're doing, you are absolutely qualified to start your own business. And I would say, like I mentioned earlier, don't wait, just, just try it. And if you don't like it, you don't, nobody's telling you, okay, you have to do this business forever. You can, you can choose to, to stop. Um, but I also would recommend, you know, finding.

Euan (46:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Grace Davis (47:04)
authors, other podcasters that you enjoy listening to. I find inspiration from a lot of those things as well. But yeah, my biggest piece of advice is if you don't think, I heard this one time and I forget who said this, but when you don't think you're ready, you are. And so that's when you have that thought like, oh, I can't do this, I'm not ready. That's actually when you're supposed to go. And you will never be fully ready, so.

Euan (47:23)
Right.

I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, that's yeah, that's really profound. So on a sort of different level in terms of kind of… That was shite, sorry, let me start again. So what would you say to young teachers who maybe they don't have the same entrepreneurial spirit that you have, but they're determined to teach their way? You know, you have a very distinct and very, you know, kind of

Grace Davis (47:33)
That's my advice.

Euan (48:02)
well-researched, well-studied, well-practiced approach to teaching that you can talk about really clearly. And there are other teachers, I'm sure, out there who feel that they have a way that should be the most prevalent way to teach, or they've got a way that they want to experiment with, and I think people would be keen to do it. What would you say to those teachers who maybe don't want to start a business, but they want to find a community of teachers, or they want to sort of forge their own path in some other way?

Grace Davis (48:28)
Mm-hmm. So I would recommend, especially it's 2024, social media is just so huge right now. Get on Teacher Talk, TikTok for teachers. There are so many people who are now called, I think they're calling themselves teacherpreneurs. Have you heard that?

Euan (48:46)
Yes, I have heard that once, yeah.

Grace Davis (48:47)
Okay, so teacher, teacherpreneurs who are just, you know, okay, I love teaching. I think I'm, I can go this route and do it on my own. And they just started. And I think that you don't need to think big scale. This was another thing that one of my mentors told me, focus local. Like if you want to just go post a thing in the public library that says I'm offering classes. I saw one of my friends do this. He was just getting his TEFL certificate.

He didn't have it yet though, but he wanted the practice and the experience. And he said, I'm offering these classes for free right now or for a really low price. And then like I mentioned earlier, once you get one and do a really good job, this is also what my boss at the education consortium did. He's like, get one, do a really good job and the rest will come. So I really recommend getting comfortable. They say this all the time, don't they? Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable and experimenting and letting yourself fail.

is really a big part of it. But if you're passionate about something and you are good at it, then you're right in the sweet spot and you should follow that no matter what it is or what you're teaching. So that would be my recommendation.

Euan (49:58)
Brilliant answer. And so actually, that makes me feel more confident about asking this one, because towards the end of the podcast, I sort of get a little bit kind of, it's almost as though I age over the process of writing the questions, and I get quite wistful and not melancholic, but kind of philosophical. So here's the sort of here's the here's the big the big question of the podcast. What has teaching given you beyond a career?

Grace Davis (50:21)
Oh, wow. Okay. First of all, I have to mention what you just shared in podcasting, especially. I'm like, can we just cut the first half of the podcast and wait till we're flowing? Because by the end of the podcast, I'm like, oh, here we go. Now I'm whipping out quotes. I can answer any question. I I'm being more myself, I feel like. So I agree with that completely. What has teaching given me apart from a career? OK. Yeah, it's.

Euan (50:30)
Ha ha!

Grace Davis (50:50)
I, every time I teach, I feel so fulfilled and just, um, like I learned so much because I'm teaching English language learners as well. That's a specific part of it. I'm learning so much about the world, about different cultures, about myself. And a lot of times I feel like I teach these classes and it feels like something I would do like, you know, get together and have a coffee with friends. And so for me, it's, it's become such a big part of not just, you know, getting

getting paid to do it, but something I would do for free. And so, yeah, I don't know. It's given me, why is this the hardest question for me to answer? It's, yeah, given me a hobby, given me a passion, and giving me something that I will absolutely teach for the rest of my life, whether that be yoga, English, Spanish, it's something that I can see myself doing forever, so yeah, a lifelong career and passion.

Euan (51:29)
Because it's deep, it's a deep, it's a deep one.

I couldn't ask for a better answer than that. So just finally, because people are going to want to know more about you after this podcast, I certainly hope that you'll get a really great response to this. Where can people find you? Where can people find English with Grace on the internet?

Grace Davis (52:05)
Yeah. So first of all, if you're interested in the podcast, which like I mentioned, you don't necessarily have to be an English language learner. If you want to hear more about my experiences and learn from my students and connections. My podcast is on most major platforms, Apple podcast, Spotify, I think Google, and it's called English with Grace. And then I'm also on most social media platforms. So Instagram, English with Grace.

And TikTok as well. And then my website is englishwithgrace.org if you're interested in learning more about my classes and what I do.

Euan (52:45)
That's amazing. And sorry, I hope you can't hear that in the background. There's an ice cream van that's just parked pretty much outside my apartment and is now singing. It's got a sweet chime on. And there's no innocent reason why in February anyone would want anything from an ice cream van. So I apologize for that. But I'll cut that out of the podcast. Don't worry.

Grace Davis (53:02)
I can hear it and I'm glad I can hear it. I love it. I think people want to hear the cat. They want to hear the ice cream truck. It's great.

Euan (53:06)
Maybe they do, I don't know. In any case, Grace, it's been fantastic speaking to you. Thank you so much for your time on the podcast. People should absolutely follow those links and find out more.

Grace Davis (53:22)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I truly enjoyed this.