Seth Knight

Euan (00:02)
So I'm delighted to say today I'm joined by Seth Knight who, and I'm not trying to show any bias, but who has written one of the most intriguing student stories that I think we've ever got at the Teflorg and not to put too much pressure on you, but I'm assuming this is going to be a really good episode. So with all that pressure, how you doing Seth?

Seth (00:19)
I'm doing okay now, thank you. The pressure has been put. I feel it.

Euan (00:21)
Hahaha.

Well, I mean, no, I am very, very demanding podcast host. I'm sorry. You're going to learn that over the next hour or so. But Seth, before we and the listeners really get to a better picture of how you've ended up teaching English and what you've done with your career, you said in your student story, and this was a line I really loved, my life has been a series of explorations in various fields. And it's quite a simple sentiment, but it's articulated really well. So tell me, when you were growing up, what did you want to be?

Seth (00:52)
lot of things as probably part of the interesting but difficult parts of my life. I know that my mom has saved like from kindergarten this you know writing about what you want to be when you're really little and I wanted to be a principal because I had a principal of the school because we had a really cool principal. It's always changed even with university I changed several

classic and medieval studies, and then French, and then music, and it's always been kind of the difficulty. So I didn't have a particular, well, music, definitely always, I mean, music is a really, really guiding thing for most of my decisions that I make, but I never had a specific idea, I guess, maybe once I got into university and had to begin thinking about jobs, but.

throughout and ballet when I was dancing, I wanted to be a dancer, but I never had, like some people know what they wanna do. I never really had that.

Euan (01:56)
That's, I mean, that is a running theme in this podcast series as well, because, you know, a lot of people come to teaching sort of mid-career or at various times. So that's something that's kind of happened with you and we will explore that. But you've explored various fields, the various fields that you mentioned, but there's a kind of fearlessness that we'll get into a bit more later on. But I wanted to ask so that we get a kind of a better sense of you as a podcast guest. And I wanted to ask about where you grew up.

Did you grow up somewhere where all sorts of careers felt possible and you got a lot of artistic license to find yourself? Or were you kicking against traditions and kicking against the idea that you had to be a part of a mould? What was that environment like for you?

Seth (02:40)
Well, I'm from the United States. I'm from Ohio, which is Midwest and kind of, I mean, I guess, for me, it's, I don't know, like a sort of typical American experience, I guess. And I'm from a very, very small town. The town where I, where my house, where my parents, you know, live, has 600 people. So…

I mean, we have, it's like a little sort of community next to a larger town. But like my parents, I grew up on a peach farm. So, I mean, like in the countryside. But, you know, my mom was a French and Spanish teacher and she worked in the suburbs of a big city. I mean, it wasn't that I had this like terribly removed childhood where I was like, you know, running through the fields with nothing to do or anything. I mean, my parents.

I mean, I started studying dance and music, piano at five and dance at 10. And I was in the city, Cleveland, Ohio, which is a major city quite often. So in terms of opportunities, this is also something, this is an interesting question because I never really thought about that. But I guess my parents, when I expressed the desire to do something, they tried to see if we could find a way to do it. In fact, I remember with dance, I was in,

I was 10 when I started dancing and I remember going to my mom and dad and saying I either wanted to do gymnastics or dance because I didn't know if dance would be around where I lived. In the end, it was. And I think honestly, in terms of the way my body's built, it's better for dancing than for gymnastics. But yeah, so I was usually, you know, they supported me to help me try and find the things that I liked and it always worked.

worked out well for me, I guess.

Euan (04:35)
No, that's great. I wasn't trying to sort of reduce kind of your life experience into like the plot of Footloose I wasn't trying to do that just to be 100% clear I realized after that asking a question I was just thinking why am I thinking about Kevin Bacon? But no, that is interesting. I think that informs a lot later on and you've touched on being a ballet dancer You're actually a professional ballet dancer. You also earned a degree in music as you mentioned earlier specifically working with pipe organ and

Seth (04:41)
Hahaha

I'm sorry.

Euan (05:00)
In terms of what we kind of talk about here on this podcast, we talk about different kinds of teaching, we talk about the experiences that lead to why a teacher is a certain way. Do you think the ability to perform and understand art so much to such an extent, do you think that helps you later on in terms of what you do now?

Seth (05:16)
Um, I do because, you know, especially with, well, with both music and with dance, especially maybe more with dance, um, the, like the discipline of doing something every day and needing to take a very long time to, to arrive at the point of being able to do something well, um, I.

Yeah, I mean, these are also things that I haven't thought about before, but you know, like I began piano when I was five, so by the time I was 10, I was already fairly good. It's five years of life, you know, and then when I was 15, it was 10, you know, and now I'm 40. So that's literally my whole life I've been playing the piano. So like, and with dancing, I don't dance so much now because it's too difficult on the body, but you know, I did those things for a long time and the growth is really slow.

but also the discipline to continue is real and sometimes difficult and sometimes, you know, the ups and downs of not wanting to go, not wanting to do things. So I think probably as it, well, I mean, you can see how easily this lines up with language learning and language acquisition. Like, you know, when people say, you know, I wanna be fluent next month and I say, okay, well, good luck, you know, but.

So I think maybe I, with myself, in how I would approach my students, but also how I encourage people to learn, like, you know, this whole thing's a process that is never ending. I mean, you and I still learn new words in English. Right? I mean, we do. But so, yeah, so I would say, I guess from that point of view, that I take those, that idea of…

Euan (06:55)
Every day. Yeah.

Seth (07:05)
I don't want to say discipline because I'm not a very disciplined person in many ways, but just the idea of like consistent, you know, maintaining schedules and doing things and putting in effort and noticing the slow but steady growth and then trying to apply that to myself and my students. Yeah, I think that probably helped. I've never thought of this in my teaching before. Yes.

Euan (07:31)
Well, no, it's kind of early motto of the podcast was there's always a thread. There's always a thread. So so we're trying to connect the dots a little bit. But the next part of your life is fascinating. And I'm going to ask you some questions based on this, that I'm never going to get the chance to ask another guest. Most likely like it's. And I say that with the utmost respect, you trained in seminary to be a priest for all of three years and.

Seth (07:37)
I'm sorry.

Yeah.

I'm out.

Euan (07:57)
99% of us, I mean maybe there are some priests listening, if there are get in touch, if you're a member of clergy, any denomination get in touch, I would like to hear from you. But 99% of us are never going to know what that's like. So I have to ask this, and it's okay if you don't want to expand on this further, but I think when people imagine what it's like to go to the seminary, they imagine the calling that people have, that people talk about. How far are people from reality in that case? Is that a thing that happens? And when you spoke to other training priests, was that a thing that happened to them as well?

Seth (08:05)
Thank you.

Um, so the idea of, of calling or vocation is what it's usually called. I'm Catholic. So this was all done in a Catholic setting, but I, um, it's really big and complicated, you know, that's a huge, they're probably entire podcasts and based just on that idea, but, and I think, you know, talking with some of the, well, they were my brothers when I was in seminary. Um,

About those ideas, because those are stories that are very motivating when you're in seminary. Everyone has a different story and I think they're all valid. And some people, I think for me, the way I would define calling was that when I was, you know, like 11 and 12, I was always quite involved with church. I was playing the piano and the organ at mass from the time I was very little. I had a lot of people at church saying, oh, you'd make a good priest. And then of course, priests tell you, oh, that's a sign that you have a calling. And like

You know, some of that seems, I mean, it's a nice idea when you're young, it's just to encourage you to look at it. For me, I think it was, I always liked the idea. So, you know, I think vocation comes also into just the idea of desire, your desires, but not just like, you know, I want an ice cream, but like, because we're talking about, yeah. But, you know, like even within the…

Euan (09:49)
Hehehe

Seth (09:53)
getting married and having kids is also considered a vocation. So, you know, on a religious level, a spiritual, like, and a specifically Catholic level, these are all seen as ways that you are becoming yourself. So, you know, having a desire and then trying to understand, do I become more myself if I do this thing? But we do that all the time, even when we make, when we decide to be a

A friend with someone, we have, you know, I mean, maybe we don't realize, or maybe sometimes we go too fast and decide to be a friend and then we realize, oh, this wasn't the right person. Even for just a friendship, you know, we realize maybe this isn't the right thing. So that's kind of what many people, how I think many people experience it is more like many situations over the years, which lead to finally wanting…

to do something and or to take the step to go into seminary. I was 30 when I started, so I was considered a late vocation. I was gonna go right out of high school, but my parents encouraged me to go to university first. And even priests were saying, the world the way the world is today, go to university. And I did, I got my degree in music, but always stayed close, as an organist.

Euan (10:56)
Fair enough, yeah.

Seth (11:15)
you're gonna work in a church, you're gonna play the organ. That's where do you find the organs in churches? So it was always quite, I always had, was involved in that church life. And when I went, when I finally decided to go, it was, I think I got to a point at 30 where I realized like, if I don't do this, I will start to be too old in the sense that it takes a long time. And also we become more rigid in

As people, you know? And so, I think vocation though gets felt by different people. Some people do have, I mean, I remember one guy at seminary who he said he had like regular dreams where he was a priest in his dreams. And of course, like now some people are gonna say, oh, this is like God revealing. I don't tend to go that way. I mean, I believe in God, but like.

I think more it was this person's desires and maybe his, you know, his, his inner self showing him things. And this obviously can go in a million different ways, however you want to interpret these things. But, but it was something that meant a lot to him. He's a priest now, he lives in Brazil. He's an excellent priest. He's a really, he's a good friend of mine still, but like, you know, so it's, I think it's mostly just desires, but some people, yes, did have various sort of things that they saw as being very direct calls.

For me, it was more a process and then just sort of an affirmation of me feeling more and more comfortable as I was making the decisions to go further and further. And ultimately then at a certain point, because I left, when I realized I was not becoming, I was moving away from myself, but that was a very difficult decision to make as well.

Euan (12:56)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, I can only imagine and actually I kind of related to quite a lot of what you were saying because excuse me, I could actually relate to a lot of what you were saying because when I was 11 12 I was an altar server and you know people would say like oh you'd make a good priest and all this kind of stuff and obviously I never did You know, we're here now, but like so For people who don't experience seminary or don't experience the kind of religious education which leads to you being a clergy in whatever religion

Seth (13:25)
Yes.

Euan (13:35)
What's that environment like? Because I think people probably imagine it to be very quiet and studious But I know for a fact that it's not always like that could actually be quite a sort of boisterous kind of environment like What's what's it like for listeners who have no real idea about that world?

Seth (13:50)
Well, that's also gonna depend on the community you're joining, you know, because within the church even, and these are things that in movies get totally, this is where all of our ideas come from. And so sometimes when I watch movies where they're at somebody, I'm like, no, that's not, you know. But, you know, so like I was in a missionary community, which also kind of.

Now later in life, I'm like missionary community and now I live in another country. I went to China. So the thread as you were speaking of, it was already there. But so like I was in a missionary community. Missionaries within the Catholic Church anyways are usually known to be the, I don't know what word to use. Like I don't wanna say that the rule breakers. I mean, they were, but these are people who already are choosing.

to leave their culture, to go to another culture. So there's a level of just openness that other people might not have, which is fine, but a priest who feels like they wanna stay in their own home, you know, general area to be a priest is gonna have a different frame of mind than someone who specifically is wanting to go to another country. So I was with people already, most of the priests, well, all of the priests that when I was in seminary that I was living with.

because I lived in a house of this community, had been for many, many years missionaries in all over the world, and were extraordinarily normal people in the sense, which is another thing, like in movies and things, we see so often priests or religious portrayed as, I don't know, strange or like holy or pious or weird. And…

Euan (15:31)
very pious.

Seth (15:36)
They can be all of those things, but we see these very stereotype sort of ideas, which usually it's because they need to be for the sake of the movie, but they're just, they're normal people. And I think, but then they also, if we go back to that little idea of vocation again, these are men who found themselves and feeling like the person they're meant to be in that role as a priest, as a missionary priest.

Euan (15:38)
Yeah.

Seth (16:06)
happy because they were doing what they wanted to be doing. So they were very comfortable with themselves. And I think that authenticity is infectious in a way. Um, Oh, you're all these questions are just making me look at myself. I'm like, wow, I'm going to have to go journal or something for days.

Euan (16:27)
some things are kind of

A wee bit obvious in the sense that you opted against becoming a priest and became a Tefl teacher. That shouldn't be a shock to anyone who's listening to the podcast because it's called I taught English abroad, you were guest on it. But what was that time in your life like? Because leaving the seminary and deciding to do something else, it's not like quitting an office job. It's not like booking a plane and going to the next place. There's kind of a lot going on there. So how did that time in your life, how did it feel looking back on it?

Seth (16:55)
Well, you're probably touching on like, perhaps like one of the most pivotal moments of my life because I mean, Leaving seminary was huge. Probably one of the, yeah, I mean, yeah, one of the biggest decisions I've ever made. I mean, entering was big, but then leaving was also really, and also very painful on the inside. You know, there was a lot of stuff I had to work through, but…

When I left, so I left, I was living in Italy, that's where I had my training, and then came back to the States. And I remember the first, you know, so I came back kind of in a haze almost, and then the first morning I woke up at a weird time, you know, because of the time change. And I woke up really early and I remember really clearly, like the first thing I did when I woke up is I was like thinking like,

what am I gonna do? And already it was in my mind to not be in the United States. I don't know why. But like, and then my mom and dad, you know, they woke up and they found me, whatever. We were having breakfast. And one of the first things my dad said to me, you know, after me leaving seminary, coming home, he said, so where are you going now? And I was like, okay, my parents already know, like this is, they don't expect me to stay here. So,

I think the reason I looked originally at teaching English was because I love music, I had worked as a musician, but I felt like, and I still feel in a way like I had already done that. And to go back to it, I still love music, I still do things with music in my life now, but to just go back to that, to do exactly what I was doing before I went to seminary somehow felt like going backwards in my development as a person or something.

And so I had always had a desire to live in another country for a long time, but even a long time from the point of view of like, you know, like years, like a really long time, not just, I was in Italy just for one year. And, you know, so I really wanted to go somewhere for a long, long time. And seminary, a nice aspect of having been in seminary was that, you know, you have these,

poverty, you have certain rules you live by. So I didn't have anything. I didn't have a car. I didn't have a lot of stuff. I didn't have a lot of the things that attach you to a place, which make it hard just to go somewhere. So I kind of recognized like, if I want to do this, this is the perfect time, especially at that point, I think I was 33. So I was like, this is never going to happen to me again, that I'll be in a position where I can just go. So…

Yeah, so I did a Tefl certification and off I went. But even some of that just was sort of, there was a moment for a while after seminary where I was sort of, I don't wanna say wandering, but the life in seminary and the life of, is very structured for you, which is really nice when you're there. And to leave that,

it was a little alarming. I don't think I realized it at the time either. I don't think, even now it's eight years later, I still think there are things that I didn't work through like leaving. Because then I went to China, like six months later I was in China. So like, you know, I mean, there were really fast changes, things that probably I should be, you should be talking to people about, like, you know.

therapists, but I wasn't. I mean, I probably could have gotten more help with some of it, but I mean, I was talking with friends and things, but big changes in a short amount of time, so pretty big things.

Euan (20:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, so you had your first experiences of teaching, if I'm right and if I read your story correctly, which I hope I have because I've proofread it a bunch of times, but you got your first kind of experiences of teaching English as a foreign language when you were doing missionary work as part of your life in seminary. So can you tell us what that experience was like and where you went to do that?

Seth (21:17)
Yeah, so when, as I said, I was in a missionary community. So one summer as sort of, you know, an experience of, of what that would be like. I was sent to Bangladesh for three months. And what was really cool about it was, you know, well, Bangladesh already. It's not, you know, it's not a tourist destination. It's, it's one of the poorest countries in the world. And so like, you know, already to go there.

beautiful place. I mean, it was really wonderful for me. But, you know, I wasn't there on vacation at all. I lived with some priests from the community in this little town in like the rice flats of Bangladesh, you know, a place that I don't even I've tried, I can't even find it on maps. I don't know how to find it. I don't know where it is. You know, I was north of Dhaka, but I don't know where.

And, but they had a school there and I taught in the school, but not, I mean, taught, I taught the teachers. I actually was teaching the teachers English, who were teaching English to the kids. And what was fun is when I got there, I didn't know I was going to be doing that. So I just knew I was going to Bangladesh for a while and like, they were going to have me do something. And once I got there…

every morning for like, I don't remember, 20 minutes or half an hour or something, I would meet with the teachers and we would just do a little lesson. And I mean, I think it's the common experience of most English speakers that we don't know what it means when we talk about present perfect and things until we're English teachers. So I had these questions coming to me, active voice, passive voice. I'm like, I have no idea what these things mean at the time. I know very well now, but…

you know, focusing on things that I was just like, I don't even know what this means. And even at that point, I was not thinking, oh, I'm gonna be an English teacher. They gave me these books and I was in the evenings, was preparing little lessons, you know, about how do we use present perfect and, you know, future perfect or whatever, but mostly just doing it as that experience. And I was teaching the children during the day, they would put me in the class with some of the kids, but just mostly just being there.

playing games with the kids, talking to them and things. So it was a wonderful experience, but it was definitely like fly by the seat of your pants. I had no idea, even my own language, I didn't know what I was talking about. I just knew that what I was saying was correct because I'm an English speaker, but I had no idea how to teach those things to people, but they had fun, we had a good time. Yeah.

Euan (24:04)
I mean honestly… well that's the main thing. I couldn't. I mean I know I work in this industry but I can't tell you a whole lot about grammar rules. I can vouch for that. So you talked a little bit about the kind of… you could say culture shock in a sense because you left ceremony… I'll do that again. So you've… I know it's editing, the magic of editing. You'll not remember any of this. So…

Seth (24:12)
Thanks.

Thanks for watching!

Euan (24:31)
You talked a little bit about the kind of culture shock of coming back to the States, sort of figuring out what you're going to do. And as you also said, you kind of barely gave yourself time before experiencing culture shock again, potentially. You went to China and in your own words, I wanted to go somewhere completely different for my culture. So talk us through your initial experiences in China. What was it like? And what also, what was it kind of like coming to the conclusion of I'm going to be an English teacher and now I'm in China, but this is my life now. What was that kind of like? I know that's a huge question, but like…

I don't know of another way to ask it.

Seth (25:05)
No, so when I finally got my certification and you know now it was time to apply, I, this is still a desire of mine is to learn a language that uses a completely different writing system than ours and not like Greek or Cyrillic but like Chinese, like totally different. And I never…

I don't know, like even between China and Japan, I still am more interested in Japan, but I think with China the job came. I worked with Disney. My first job was with a company called Disney, well, a part of Disney, Disney English, that was, I think the idea of going abroad

especially I knew that it would be very, very different, especially because I had gone to Bangladesh. Also, I had been in Brazil. I had been in some different countries and realized the world is not the same everywhere. I think sometimes we think that it is, but it's not. And so I picked Disney because I knew this is a major company in the world and…

Euan (26:09)
Natalie.

Seth (26:19)
I'll be safe with it, I guess. Because you also read horror stories about people who sign contracts and then end up in some horrible place and they don't get paid or whatever. I thought with Disney, that can't happen. If I don't like it, I'll find a different job. And in the end, I liked it. But they had a really good onboarding system that gave me sort of a structure of friends when I arrived.

even on a cultural level, we had some little cultural lessons, like all these things made the onboarding with them very fun, even excursions a little bit to get us out to do stuff and meet people. So going to China was great, and also again coming out of seminary, all of a sudden I was like…

I was going to say I felt I was I was free, but I did. It's not that I didn't feel free in seminary, just a different, a different type of thing. I felt very free in seminary as well. But. But being also in such a different culture where, you know, I obviously am not Asian when you look at me, I'm not an Asian person. And so, you know, there's a freedom also to just you're so out, you know, even visibly, you don't belong.

Euan (27:15)
and shit.

Mm-hmm.

Seth (27:38)
And the Chinese are kind, right? So it's not that there's anything wrong in that, but you start to realize like, it doesn't matter how you act because you're already, you're different. And so I had wild haircuts because I thought, my students already think I'm crazy no matter what I look like. So why not just cut my hair strange? Or like even a lot of the, I had some of the wildest clothes I've ever bought in my life.

Because I was buying the things I liked that in America or even in Europe, I might be like, oh, people will because here people look at me and I'm I fit in. Right. I look European. I look American. So they think I'm crazy no matter what I do. So why not just be myself? I like that really wild, crazy sweater. I'm going to buy it. And I have some even still I have some clothes left over from there that I even when I wear them now, because I still have them, people like.

Euan (28:26)
Yeah.

Seth (28:37)
What is that? It's from China. And they, oh, okay, it was from that time of your life. Yeah, but it's me. Like, so even again, as like talking about the idea of being myself and finding myself, there was an aspect of that even going into China. Leaving seminary was big, but then when I went to China, I was still aware of authenticity, trying to make sure that I was thinking about my decision. Oh, this thread, it's true.

Euan (29:05)
I know.

Seth (29:06)
I've never seen the thread before! You're doing more for me than I'm doing for you. Wow.

Euan (29:12)
It's totally free of charge as well, unless… So when you worked for Disney English, and actually you picked up on something I was going to… I thought I'd made a very, very clever observation saying that I was going to do a whole thing about Disney is a non to the US, and it's about home comforts and a recognizable brand and all that kind of stuff. But you did that for me. But you learned teaching methods.

when you were working for Disney English that you said inspired you greatly and it's still something that you kind of rely on now. Can you tell us about that?

Seth (29:47)
Yeah, well, Disney English is for children and really small children, like little children who practically don't speak Chinese yet, and so they couldn't read it. You know, it was very interesting because we were, yeah, I was, I mean, little, like most of my students were four and five years old, so really, really little kids and really fun. But very, it was Disney. I mean, come on, it was great fun. And so…

The method that we used was very much based on multiple intelligences, which I have to be honest, like it's, I would say it's very formative to me because of that experience, but it's not like I'm reading all the time about it now. I probably should. But, you know, every lesson we had made use of all of the different intelligences. So we had writing activities, we had songs, we had

intelligences. And, you know, Disney also being a company when you think about their goals with little children to let little children, you know, live their dreams and be who they want to be and become who they want. That's authenticity again. So like, so they, I don't know, that really stuck with me, especially when I had some really powerful experiences there with little kids who, we even use sign language with the kids. So like, like actual ASL, we learned basic words to talk to them.

I had some little kids who were still too little and too shy to talk to me, but they would sign to me. I would talk to them with sign language. A little Chinese kid talking to me with American sign language, like it was wild. You know, I was like, this is so like I might talk to them and say, you know, how are you? And they would answer me with sign language. It was really interesting. A really good program, to be honest. I'm like total Disney, like drank the Kool-Aid on board. I am like.

But what I saw, some of the things in that company were really, especially I was amazed by some of the things that it was a very well-made program. So, but the multiple intelligences became even now, I mean, I still try maybe not, maybe more now just sort of intuitively, just because it's part of what I do. But if I recognize that a student of mine is, you know, an engineer.

I, engineers are always interesting to teach because they're, you know, they like their systems or they're a lawyer. So recognizing how is it that this person is going to want to come towards English to learn? And, you know, if someone's an artist, they're obviously a bit more creative with how they want to talk or learn. So it's something that still influences me, because also I think that it's looking for the person and who the person is and how they want to express themselves. Yeah.

Euan (32:38)
Yeah, and so just to kind of bookend your experience in China, you spent three years there And where else did you teach beyond? Disney English and what were those teaching experiences like? How are the jobs different because you did a few different things and I think those kind of experiences would be really useful to our listeners who kind of want to take up different jobs in China

Seth (32:58)
Yeah, the first my first contract was with Disney English, so teaching little kids and that would be in what like we might call a language center. So like after those little kids were finishing school, they were finding they were coming to our school to Disney English. And, you know, so I was working mostly like in the evenings. And I think that's probably a typical, especially in China, I think in a lot of countries, a typical experience for most English teachers is you're teaching people after they finish.

whatever it is they're doing all day, be it school or a job, which was fine. I mean, something to consider with that though, with that type of experience is it does, like I really wanted to integrate into China. And it's when you work only in the evening, it's hard. I didn't, it was hard to meet Chinese people because so-

I was very, I was with my, so I was in still a very Western bubble living in China. And which is something the longer I was there, the more it bothered me. It was one of the reasons I left actually. It just, it was hard for me to integrate and I, yeah. But after that I went to, I worked for a very short while in a bilingual like English-Chinese

middle and high school, a private school. And I was actually hired there to be the music teacher and the dance teacher, which seemed like super perfect to me. And then this is why earlier when I talked about like horrible contracts, it was not a good situation. I was, I didn't stay the whole year. It was actually, I left very quickly because I was very rapidly teaching everything because

Euan (34:29)
Cool.

Mm-hmm.

Seth (34:52)
people were leaving, people were changing. So these are things, a warning to people considering this, like once you're there, it can be difficult to get out of things. Like you have to do a lot of work. You have to be careful because there are, this school, a lot of teachers were leaving because they were like me. They kind of got signed into this thing. It paid very, very well, especially for China, not only for China. It paid very, very well.

So you get kind of like, ooh, excited by the money. I'm teaching music, I'm teaching dance. This is exactly what I wanna do. But then once I got there, I wasn't teaching music or dance. I was being thrown into other classrooms to do things I didn't know how to do. Like science. Science, I'm a musician. You know? But, you know, so they're just, they're really things to be careful about. But…

Euan (35:38)
Yeah, I'm the same.

Seth (35:44)
I worked that for just a very short while. I started the school year and then left and then went to another big company, which is EF, which in China is enormous. And I had a very nice experience with them as well. I did a contract with them in a different city, but really enjoyed. And that's when I started teaching adults. And I recognized for me, that's really where I feel the best. With little, like baby kids, I love them and I love adults.

Middle school and high school, not my thing. I just I don't do well with that. Everyone has their niche. Find your niche, stick in your niche. But like, adolescents, I don't have the patience. I don't want to. Yeah. Anyways. But then. It's it can be for me, it just it wasn't it wasn't my place. And my final year in China, I worked in a state, the Chinese university, a state university.

Euan (36:27)
No, I remember.

Seth (36:42)
And of the three jobs, I think, well, Disney was definitely the most formative. It was my first real teaching position and I learned so much from it. The one I liked the most was in this university in a city called Meizhou in the south of China, a small city, but I think that's why I liked it because I had students who had never seen foreign people before, which was really cool.

They'd seen them on TV, of course, but I was the first living… You know, and China is not… It's a very modern nation and things, but it's so huge and there's so many people that you can still have those experiences. It was really nice. I was far away from Beijing and Shanghai, these massive cities that are just so international. I was in a very real Chinese city. There were 11 foreign people in the city, and I know that because we all taught at the university.

Euan (37:38)
Wow, 11.

Seth (37:39)
And like that was it. And because of the way that government regulations are in China, the city wasn't allowed to have foreign employees unless they worked at the university. So the 11 of us, that was it. And not a tourist city. So like that was a really beautiful year for me because I was with the students a lot because I lived on campus. I had housing on campus. And…

In the evenings I would meet my students, they'd take me out to eat, we'd go out and get food even on campus, there was a little food street. It was what I was looking for, I think, in China. But if I had gone there the first year, I don't think I would have lasted because it was culturally very, very different. My first two years I lived in really big cities near Shanghai where I had McDonald's and I had some of these.

comforts that you want in that other city. It was, yeah, real China, which was wonderful, but difficult to live in. If I had started there, but after a few years I was okay.

Euan (38:53)
Yeah, I've always had this theory that like there's the Um, there's a bit of balance in the world Like when you live somewhere awful for a bit your next your next place is going to be really good If you have a bad job, the next job is going to be good. I don't know I just I've always believed there's a bit of I don't know what you call that.

Seth (39:06)
I like this idea.

Euan (39:09)
So you left China and then you came to Italy, two nations who claimed to have invented pasta. And that's an argument that will leave for other people, but it's true. What was the pool of Italy? Did it feel familiar having trained for the priesthood in Milan? Was it that kind of sort of still foreign culture, but one that you felt comfortable with?

Seth (39:28)
Yeah, that was exactly it. I, when I was in seminary, I loved Italy. When I was in high school, I did the, a year exchange and I had lived in France. Um, and, uh, you know, I'm from the United States. My mother though is from Quebec, the French part of Canada. So like, I have this connection with French. So I did this year in France when I was 16, which was an important thing for me as well. But, um, when I went, yeah, I just, I didn't expect.

to love Italy that much, the language, the food, the culture. I guess, you know, if we wanna talk about everyone having their favorite place, just Italy, and Italy's beautiful, my goodness. Of course, now I live here, I have a job, like, you know, I'm seeing the insides of the country. You know, when you go on vacation, you just see the pretty stuff. When you live somewhere, then you, you know, I'm starting to, having to learn about…

you know, politics and taxes and all these things. And that's a different side of things that, you know, that's just, I guess, you know, being an adult, all these things you have to deal with. But I loved Italy. And so, yeah, when I left China and went back to the United States, I had already planned to come here. So when I went back to the United States,

I actually came here first to study a little bit. So I came here and was studying at a school in Milan. So, and all of that was arranged even before I arrived. So I didn't come here to teach initially, but yeah, I just liked it. And I thought also always getting older through this whole process, of course, I moved here I think when I was 36, it would have been. So.

starting to think like maybe I should be sort of picking a final destination kind of thing. And I've always loved Europe with all the things I'd studied with music and dance and everything, like which you know all of these art forms that are from here more so than the United States or sort of have their beginnings here. Yeah it seemed like a good a good fit anyway.

And I like it. And even the church, Catholic Church, Pope, all this, it all kind of fit into Italy. So yeah.

Euan (41:40)
That makes perfect sense and again the thread, the eternal thread. You've taught in Italy's public school system before you moved on to the next chapter of your career, which we'll cover in some depth. But what were your observations of the Italian public school system? And I ask this because we have a lot of aspiring teachers getting their qualifications to do the Teflon work who want to work in Italy. How easy was it getting a job there and what was the experience like overall?

Seth (42:07)
When it comes to teaching here, there are these language schools just like in China. So there's our language institutes which have different requirements. But to teach, I taught in the school system, like four Italian schools. But I taught in, they also have two different sort of divisions. There are the state schools which have higher standards to teach. And I don't have, you know, like…

official teaching credential. I didn't study that at university. I have TEFL certificates and experience. To just go directly into a school, you probably can't. It would be difficult if you aren't specifically certified to be a teacher. And even the process of getting a job in a school is quite difficult here. There's some sort of like…

lottery system, not lottery, but there's like a list and it's kind of like you're at the bottom of the list and you move up and when you get to the top, you're, they actually say you're called to be put into a role. It's very different than how my country works. So you have people waiting for years to be to teach. And then, so I worked in a private school, so I don't like charter school, I don't know what you would call it, but you know, so they're, they're following the curriculum of the country because they have to.

But in terms of teaching and things, they're able, it's a little looser, but they're also viewed as not always, depends on the school, of course, but they're often seen as not being as good in terms of what, of the teaching quality as the state schools. So like, of course it depends, you know, I mean, it depends if some, there's also super rich kid private schools with the best teachers, you know, but.

I, the school, what I found, cause I taught in a few different schools, I found culturally, I found it very difficult to work in Italy, in the public school, in the school system because of, and this is something I hadn't really recognized, but even the country you're from, there's a school culture, you know, like the way the expectation that the teachers have for students and that students have for the teacher, all of these things. And

Like I remember one day doing a test and everyone was cheating. Everyone was cheating. And I was just taking tests left and right. You're cheating, you're cheating. You can't do this, you fail. Because in the United States, that's what happens. If you talk to someone during a test, the teacher takes your paper and you fail. And these kids, I mean, just blatantly in front of me cheating. And I went home to some of my friends and I was like, oh, my gosh, like this school is crazy. And my friends, adults now who went through the Italian system were like…

Euan (44:41)
Yeah.

Seth (44:58)
Well, yeah, I mean, that's what you, everyone knows that's what you do. And I was like, what? So like the expectation that like, that's what kids do. I'm not trying to say that, you know, Italy is full of cheaters, they're not, but like there's just the expectation of like camaraderie between your classmates, like you help each other out, which is weird to me. I'm like, it's a test, you can't do it. But, and this, for me, what felt like just out of control classrooms,

Euan (45:09)
Yeah.

Seth (45:25)
I also was coming from China where I had classes of 300 kids with no one talking. And then because the respect for the teacher is enormous, you know, to in Italy, just not being able to control a classroom, which is something that, you know, I mean, classroom management is like fundamental skill that I felt like I had none of. But even then, when I taught adults and the longer I've been here, Italians love to talk.

And so it's even high school kids wanna talk. And so to get them to be quiet, to get Italians to be quiet. And I say this lovingly because I'm not leaving this country and I love it here. Italians wanna talk all the time. They love to be social. So sometimes even in school, when you're like, students, stop, they won't. But culturally, that was very hard for me because I took that as like a disrespect towards me, the teacher, but that's not.

how my students saw it. It's just kids being kids in Italy. So my experience in schools, I taught for one year and I was like, the high school thing for me clearly in Italy is not, it's not for me. It was a high school and a middle school and middle school even more difficult because then you have puberty and all these things that I just, I was like, I can't do these things. So high school teaching.

Euan (46:44)
Yeah.

Seth (46:47)
I think that's something to consider though, too, to think about if you're going to another country and going into that country's school system, research the school system and what those expectations are, because it isn't a given that it will be like what you think, how your country functions. And I really didn't think of that, you know, even the things that teachers have to do among other teachers and the meetings and it's every country has its own school and education.

culture of what's expected. So things to think about.

Euan (47:19)
No, definitely. And because you had to learn that lesson the hard way, but people listening to this now will kind of use the benefit of that wisdom, I'm sure, or they should at least. So, I mean, that kind of answers my next question because I was going to ask, you know, when you decided to go completely online, how you sort of came to that decision. But it sounds like, you know, those are pretty clear reasons for why you came to that decision. But did you ever worry about becoming an online teacher? Did it ever feel like a risk to you? Or was it just the kind of sensible decision to make? And how has it been since?

Seth (47:49)
Well, it all happened actually, I taught in also language schools in Italy. When I left the high school, I worked in like a language center for adults who were coming after work. And I worked for a really big company here in Italy called My English School or My S, but My S sounds like something else. I love My S, you get it? But anyway, you can edit that. But…

Euan (48:15)
Well, I'll put jaunty music underneath it, it's fine.

Seth (48:19)
Yeah. Which was a good experience. I was with adults who were wanting to learn and I had a nice experience. And the reason I decided to go online during COVID, I was teaching at this language institute, this language school that, you know, over, and Italy was the first country after China, you know, to have COVID and I lived in Milan, which was where everything started, you know. So like, I think of all the people, I obviously in China, I don't know how things went, but in Italy, like Milan was,

Like we were the first spot in the world really. And I remember it was really, really strange. Like we started in February, we started closing things down, you know? And so we went online. The transition for that was relatively easy actually with the way my company was, because they already had online things and an online portion. But a year after COVID, I lost my father.

And he took a nap and didn't wake up. Like it was, yeah, so it was really unexpected, obviously. And I couldn't go home because of COVID. And I could go home, but there were all these, it was too complicated. And so I stayed in Italy. And I think at that point, it seems like everyone, many people sort of changed their lives.

somehow during the whole COVID thing. And with my job, I was enjoying teaching at home and I don't know, I just, I already, this was in the spring when I lost my dad and I had already started, they were starting to talk about us coming back to the school and I was like, I don't wanna do that. I'm enjoying being in my pajamas at home with my students and…

And I think because of my dad, you know, that whole thing with my family and things, I just thought and again, my age now, my mom's alone. I have a sister, but nonetheless, just, you know, I'm at that point, I was 39 or 40. Like I need to have something where if I need to leave, I need to be able to leave. I need to because I am, you know, teaching online. I can still be in the United States and teach my students. I want to arrange that. So during one summer, I.

Yeah, I resigned from that school and did what I needed to do, to open a little freelance business here. I mean, it wasn't that for me, I don't know. It wasn't hard. I don't wanna say it wasn't hard. I mean, finding students, it took me about a year and a half to get to a point where I felt like, okay, this is like viable. Like this can be a thing. This can be…

this can be a business. But for me, it was just the choice of having those freedoms and being myself. But it also as a teacher, every company you work for has its brand or its image or its methodology or whatever. And it's not that I think I'm better than those, but I found sometimes constraints with

wanting to do things my way, but that I'm working within a company where I have to do things, you know, they have a method or they have lessons that, I don't know, I just felt like the right time to do that. And so I did.

Euan (51:55)
So, Seth, a time when careers aren't as well-defined as they used to be, and people have all sorts of jobs in a lifetime. I mean, my granddad was both a bus driver and a farmer at one stage, so.

even nowadays, it's much more varied than that even. But your story is still really profoundly individual. And I have to ask, what advice would you give to people who feel that they're stuck in one path, that they're stuck in one lane, and they want to explore another one? What would you say to them?

Seth (52:23)
Um, you know, I've changed enough, right? From, I've had multiple careers already, like four. I guess the biggest thing is, you know, because all of this, as I've been saying, for me, at least how I see the world and how my life is, it's important for me to be myself or to see myself, you know, being happy. It can be hard when you're in a moment to see how to get out of that.

But I don't know, I would say the most important is you have to look, but go slowly, don't make rash decisions because they usually don't work out very well. But no, I mean, listening to, it sounds like a song, listen to your heart, but it's true. I think that we often know where we want, like where we wanna go, what we want to do, who we maybe want to be to some degree, not, but.

but listening to those little voices inside, I feel so inspirational. I should have like a poster behind me with a little cute otter or something. But no, I mean, it's corny, but those things are true. Like just, I think with the internet and things now too as well, finding help or finding places, things to do are.

it's easier, you know, it's easy to find things that can help you and doing research or studying appropriately to prepare for things. But yeah, I don't know. For me, too, it's just always I try to look for things that are reputable. You know, like I know that sounds obvious as well, but there's a reason why so many scams exist because people follow them. So, you know,

I've always tried to look for reputable companies or people or networks or institutions that, you know, if something's been around for a long time, it's probably because it did something right. So, or is honest because if, you know, I mean, not always, but generally, if everyone is wrinkling their nose up at something because the people aren't good people, they're probably not good people. You know, I mean, there's reasons why we say these things. So.

I often, and this is a phrase that I say to my students a lot, but it doesn't sound like a nice thing, but stereotypes exist for a reason. There's grains of truth. It doesn't mean that they're always nice, but things, be it good or bad, they exist for a reason and because it's what we're all seeing. So it's what people notice. So when I'm making decisions about…

Euan (55:03)
Mm-hmm.

Seth (55:15)
changing or doing something different. You know, what you hear, you know, I'm thinking of Italian words, in giro, what you hear like word of mouth is often, you know, I mean you can trust that a little bit and then do your own research and decide what to do.

Euan (55:36)
Absolutely. So can you tell us a little bit about what your teaching life is like now and if you have an overarching teaching philosophy? I know some people do so yeah I thought I'd ask.

Seth (55:46)
Yeah. Well, at the moment, so this, my private studio, I've been doing like two and a half years now, and most of this, it's interesting when you start this sort of thing, you don't realize that there are steps that you follow, that everyone seems to follow, but the first step is just making money and making enough money, you know? So the, really, I'm at a point, I got there just recently after two years, I would say, of…

like, okay, things are good. I have my body of students that I like, that are good. I'm starting to find enough people that I can now expand on and start other things. But my job in general right now is just individual one-on-one lessons. In Italy, it's interesting. This would be different in every country, I'm sure. But here, my clients are primarily professional adults who are working.

And using often, not all of them, but most of them have some sort of contact with English because of their job. They might be reading it, they might be in meetings or whatever, but what I do mostly in a lot of my lessons is like maintenance, English maintenance, people who already do things and they need to feel more confident. And so we kind of just talk.

I mean, that is what we do. And of course there is a teaching aspect to it, but it's, you know, I'm not sitting with, it's not like traditional teaching of like today, we're learning past simple, this is what we do. Maybe I do that if I start, you know, when I recognize there are problems, but, and in Italy that is what a lot of people need. Of course I have a few students who are coming to English at lower levels and so we're doing more.

standard teaching, let's say, but my technique is, my methodology is definitely just very, very conversational. So during a normal day, I have, depending on the day, three, four, five hours of private lessons. So there's a lot of time preparing for those lessons. The nice thing about being a teacher is the longer you teach, the less you have to prepare.

here, yeah. And also, because I'm just conversing with people, I don't have to be making a lot of lessons. Making lesson plans, everyone knows, takes a very long time. But when you're having conversations, it's more just a matter of topics and finding a topic. But then my skill as a teacher is that I've learned ways to make those interesting and also build the questions so that they're actually useful to the student from a linguistic point of view. But

So that's what I'm doing. And then lots of content creation, which takes forever, takes a very long process. I think that if people knew how long it takes to make even just one picture on Instagram, I love doing it though, I really enjoy it. So those are the two really big sides of my business are the teaching and then preparing, like maintaining my Instagram account, which is a job. And, you know, talking to…

Euan (59:02)
Yep.

Seth (59:05)
to people on Instagram who may or may not become clients of mine, but that's not even really for me a goal because I enjoy the contact. And I'm hoping to go forward. The next steps I have are to, I live in Rome. So to start doing some more face-to-face things, you know, meeting people, I'm starting to have a little base of followers here in Rome. So like museums and restaurants, you know, like doing things together in English just to.

have sort of a more community side to it so that people can have opportunities just to be normal in English. And that's kind of you asked about an overarching sort of method. And that's kind of what it is, I think, because I live in Italy, I speak English all day for my job. But my whole life is in Italian when I'm not here. I you know, my partner is Italian, all of my friends are Italian. So that whole integrating into a culture thing, I finally got to do it. And so.

Euan (1:00:02)
Hehehe

Seth (1:00:04)
And so for me, I learned Italian very much in that way, just by saying, you know, with my friends, maybe saying something stupid and then us laughing, but me learning from it and, or someone saying a word and me going, wait, what was that? What did you just say? You know, so I've really learned Italian through being here. And I think that so often when we learn a language, you know, so many of our students are like,

there's all these weird hang-ups that they have, they're like, all this stuff, you're doing all of this, it is far more simple than this, just say something. So that's kind of my technique often is just, or my methodology is just say something and if it's really, really weird, we're gonna talk about it, but if it works, we're gonna keep going. I'm making, I'm oversimplifying, but like generally just talk, we talk. And of course,

because it's a classroom set, either as a teacher, student, if there's no embarrassment because you're here to learn. So I try to just create a very, very relaxed, but sort of experimental place. I usually tell new students that I want, in Italy you have this thing, the aperitivo, like going out for a drink. And I often tell them that like our lessons should be like,

like aperitivo, like, you know, if you want to come here with your cocktail, that's fine. Just so that we're relaxed and like, you know, I'm not going to kick you out of my lessons if you make a mistake. Settle down. It's okay. So that's definitely my overarching thing is just for the person to bring me their language as they have it right now. And then for us to make that

better and prove upon it when we need. And if not, then it just becomes confidence in the next time I need to use those words.

Euan (1:02:03)
So just to wrap up, as you said, where can people find you?

Seth (1:02:08)
Um, so my little business is called talk with Seth and, uh, everything is talk with Seth. So if you find me on Instagram, it's talk with Seth. Um, and talk with that.com is, is my website. And at the moment, those are really, I like to keep things simple because, you know, doing all of this is when you're, when you start a job like this, you're, you're everything. I'm, I'm the marketing, I'm the content creator. I'm the teacher. I'm the financial, you know,

There's, you wear all the hats. And so I try to keep things as simple as I can. And also it's not necessarily my intention to become, you know, like the Kardashian of online teaching where the entire world knows it will be impossible, you know? So yeah, talk with Seth is where you would find everything. That's it. And you can talk with me.

Euan (1:03:01)
Well, Seth Knight. I'm sure lots of people after this will talk with Seth. And yeah, it's been fantastic speaking to you. What an amazing story, and thanks for your time.

Seth (1:03:12)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's been a really nice experience for me. Thank you.