You don’t have to teach like that

Euan (00:03)
Welcome back to 'I Taught English Abroad' and it is with, and I mean this every time, you know, I'm introducing guests in this season of the podcast. I'm saying it because I absolutely mean it. I'm properly, properly delighted to welcome back two of my favourite guests that I've had in the season before. And again, when I say that, I'm not buttering up the guests that I'm having. I mean it genuinely. I've got two, two guests I've had on who have genuinely changed the way that I look at teaching and I'm not even a teacher!

So if they can do that to me then surely they can reach you. I've got Jason with me who you might know better as Fluency MC. He was on with us in season 2. And I've got Betsy Potash who was with us much more recently, but gave us really excellent insight on creativity in the classroom and it's not going to shock you, listener, to know that I'm bringing them both back to talk about being creative in the classroom, because what better guests could I have to deal with just that? Betsy joins us from California, Jason you join us from Paris, so more time zone fun we're having, but we've made it. Guys, how are we today? Betsy, how are you doing?

Betsy (01:15)
I'm great. I'm looking forward to this. Thanks.

Euan (01:19)
And Jason in the slightly later time zone, how are you?

Fluency MC (01:22)
Yeah, it hasn't been too bad of a day here. It's raining, it's kind of gloomy outside, so it's nice to be here with you. Thanks for inviting me back.

Euan (01:31)
Absolute pleasure. Absolute pleasure guys. can, yeah, I was going to say I thought I'd maybe have the worst of the weather, but I had a quick look at Paris beforehand and not out of any sort of, I don't know, you know, not bad intention, I promise. So for anyone who, and I don't want to cast aspersions or guilt on anyone, but for anyone who shamefully hasn't listened to either of your episodes yet, can you give us a brief little introduction about who you are and why I might have invited you on a podcast like this? Jason, well Betsy, you were more recent, so we'll give the audience a little bit more time to catch up with Jason first. So Jason, who are you and why might our audience know you?

Fluency MC (02:13)
Yeah, well, let's see. So my name is Jason Levine, but probably more people know me as Fluent CMC. That's the name I use for the music I create and the videos I create for learners of different ages, levels, needs around the world. And the focus of what I do is more for out of class practice. So a way for people learning English to get grammar structures, collocations, pronunciation in their heads through meaningful repetition with songs that they enjoy outside of class, kind of a flip classroom model, except not doing the lectures at home, but practice with music filled with the target language that they need, whether they're in a classroom or they're working on their own for their goal, test preparation, all the way to little kids learning English. So yeah, that's basically what I do.

Euan (03:14)
You're actually being a little too modest and there was one quick thing I wanted to pick you up on. After we recorded, I started following you on Instagram and it turns out you opened for the Beastie Boys, like in their pump. So I…

Fluency MC (03:27)
Not the Beastie Boys. I DJed for De La Soul. I DJed, just open for them at a small club. But that was as a DJ. That wasn't as an MC. Yeah, so I grew up with hip-hop culture, but I was a DJ. I was a music guy. And I make music, the music I use. But yeah, what I really started to focus on as a language teacher with music was writing songs, again, like with the language that my students needed and other teachers needed and students wanted to get in their heads, but using rap music, hip-hop music.

Euan (04:05)
See, you've been far too modest there. I would have dined out on that for the rest of my life, but fair play.

Fluency MC (04:09)
I've been lucky to also, travel, I've been to, okay, I've done shows for kids in 28 countries now, I think. So that's the main thing I do is I don't just make the songs and put them on YouTube and social media. I actually traveled around and do workshops and teacher training in different countries with different types of kids and teachers. yeah, I've been very fortunate to have a lot of experience now, working with so many different people in so many places.

Euan (04:44)
Very cool. Betsy, tell us about yourself and Now Spark Creativity, which if you don't have a saved in your bookmarks as an English teacher, I just don't know what to tell you. Betsy, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Betsy (04:57)
Well, thanks for that nice lead in. Yeah, so I was an English teacher for many years and I loved it. I loved sort of the challenge of figuring out how to teach something new every day and combining sort of what I was interested in and what my students were interested in to create something that would be a little bit magical. And I was kind of obsessed with that. I was up late every night trying to figure out how my…How am going to unveil tomorrow? And so I was doing performance projects and poetry slams and transcendental parties and all these sort of different things to try to get my students to engage.

And, you know, I learned a lot over the years. And one of the things that I learned was that sometimes people felt kind of dubious about my approach. If they weren't as familiar with some of the creative methods I was trying, it was easy for people to think, that's too fun or that's too different or that doesn't look like real learning to me. But over and over, I was seeing that it was real learning and my students were gaining so much from it. And so what I realised was part of the work I wanted to do was to share those methods with other teachers and to help them feel supported to use them and to feel like, it was valid. It was valid to do a poetry slam. It was just as valid as it was to sort of parse out the literary definitions of all the terms in a Chaucer piece. And that in fact, the two can complement each other so well. Because for me, once I can engage the students around something, a topic that they're excited about related to the material, then they're much more interested in going deep in sort of the traditional ways of learning English too and the two work together. So now I support about 40 or 50,000 creative English teachers around the world to feel like, I can do these things. These are a good way to approach English class.

And I try to help them to have ready-made activities and projects and programs because I know how busy it is as a teacher. So it's kind of my full-time job to get that stuff ready and sort of roll it over and say, here's an idea, try this if you want to. And then people pick it up if it feels right for them.

Euan (07:32)
Amazing. again, I think our listeners can get, I think it's maybe clicked for them why I've picked you two to be the same episode. I think it's painfully obvious now, but neither of you had - certainly neither of you fit; I don't know if there is a typical English teacher mould per se. Jason, certainly we touched on this on your previous episode, but I'd like to go over it again. But how did you kind of arrive at the teaching style that you use now?

And Betsy, when you were teaching, how did you sort of come to the understanding that "actually, I need to be creative here. I need to use techniques that I've designed myself" because, well, because why, I suppose. you know, how did you kind of get to that point? I'm really interested in the nuts and bolts of how you got to this point because, in both your cases, it's obviously worked as an absolute treat. So Jason, we'll go to you first in this one, but how did you come to the style that you use now?

Fluency MC (08:34)
That's a great question. I mean, I should point out right away. I sort of mentioned it before, but that, well, let me put it this way. When I'm in the classroom, mainly what I'm doing is the kind of communicative activities that everybody's doing. What's different, I mean, I think I create activities for the classroom, but I'm not the rapping teacher, right? The point is more to create songs that my students will listen to so they come to class with the language in their heads. And so I will, of course, make a video in class with them. We'll use music, but the goal is always that the music is done as practice out of class mainly. And what's maybe different for me and somebody else is that students who use the music are much more prepared and succeed in the classroom with whatever we're doing. So I remember that verb, I remember that language.

I can see it, you know, because they're reading lyrics and they're listening to the songs. And, you know, it also helps that, like, I'm doing a lot of stuff in social media trying to help people who are not in my classroom. And so there's students following the stuff that I'm creating that I put out there. But that stuff, again, is not so much like classroom activities. At the same time, I mean, I have a book for teachers for how to use music in the classroom. I think it's wonderful when teachers do activities with music in the classroom.

But generally speaking, the great effect of music is the way that you can get a lot of repetition, that kind of eats up class time repeating songs again and again. And we don't usually listen to music in groups and sing together. We do it on the bus or walking home or in the shower.

Now, let me answer your question. So, I mean, basically, it was as simple as being frustrated. I was in New York City teaching students from all over the world who came and thought that since they were no longer in Brazil or Korea, they were with international students in New York, they're going to speak English so easily, but they came over with generally very low foundation of language, especially like chunks, collocations, they were taught in a much more traditional way, and so they had just learned rules, and so they were just shocked in a the most horrible way. And if they had to prepare for the TOEFL or something, it was even worse, right? So it was out of necessity, just thinking, well, how am I gonna get these students to have, especially those collocations, those chunks? So started, I wrote a song to practice the regular verbs and kept writing more songs. so it was a way to just to solve a problem that I had.

And then that was five or six years before new media like YouTube came. So when YouTube came around, it was like, you should put your regular verbs video out there so people like, you can see it or other people can see it. I'm like, YouTube? So it wasn't like I set things up to get the stuff out there. But once I realised, "wait, so people anywhere could be practicing these songs so whoever their teacher is, whatever the book they're using". They have a teacher, they don't have a teacher, they can get the language that they need up here.

Euan (11:59)
That's amazing. And Betsy, what was it for you that kind of you cement your approaches to English teaching?

Betsy (12:08)
Yeah, well, I think growing up, I was always really attracted to the teachers who were doing special projects in class. I could sort of give you a timeline of my first 12 years of school in projects, and it would be kind of the only things I would remember. But it was really, it was really cemented for me on my very first day of teaching. And we've talked about this before, but I was so excited. I was so prepared; I had my kind of speech, basically word for word, ready in my head. had my syllabus, you know, and I had my outfit. I was 22, and I was standing up there, and I was giving my speech, and I looked around,1 and the students were all just like glazing over.

You could see that they could not care less what was on my syllabus or why I was excited to be their teacher and they were all kind of like looking at the clock and thinking about lunch and it was the first time in my life I realised you could be saying one thing and thinking something completely different. So I was like "if you turn to page two…" and inside my head I was like, this is the worst moment of my life, like this is so embarrassing and I'm gonna have to do this three more times because I have nothing else prepared. And at the end of that day, I was just like wow, do I quit now? Is this… is my teaching career one day that was horrible? And what I decided was I was really never gonna stand up there at the front and talk like that again. And from then on it was like, how am I gonna get this lesson to teach itself? How are the kids gonna do a project that's gonna teach them this lesson? How are we gonna do like a scavenger hunt, a web quest, a performance, a guest speaker, a guest artist, like?

Because it's not going to be me up there for 45 minutes talking with "the glaze".

Fluency MC (14:00)
Hmm.

Euan (14:01)
And do either of you remember the first time you tried something different that relates to kind of your… it doesn't necessarily have to be what you ended up doing, you know, more regularly. But do you remember the first time you tried something different and it really cut through, and the reaction that you got? Did you have a sort of crystallised moment of like, this is when everything turned around for me? I'll go to Betsy on that because it sounded as though there was kind of something, there was a sort of moment there.

Fluency MC (14:31)
There probably so many for Betsy, how could she remember?

Betsy (14:33)
Yeah, I mean that first year I can really remember a lot of different individual units because every single one was just this experiment. I did not know what I was doing. I was like, okay, I learned about this student centered discussion method, Harkness. We're gonna do Harkness discussions every day for a month, and it's gonna be like an evolution, and we're gonna see what happens and how we change and how we become different participants in a different community by the end of the month.

And I felt like a scientist, you know? It's like, and I felt like the kids did too because I told them we're learning this totally new thing. Like, it's probably going to be terrible at first and it's just going to get better. And I remember us putting on Death of a Salesman on campus, like in different locations all around the campus. I split the kids up and they, you know, the first kids did scene one, like in the grass, with some students up on the balcony outside the classroom, and then we did the next part, like in the library and we were sort of travelling around giving the performances and we did a poetry slam where the students were in charge of the ambiance and so I had four different classes with four radically different ambiances and it was just amazing they gave such wonderful performances and just sort of at every finale of a unit, I had a chance to be like, okay, this is what they learned. I can see the active learning happening. I can see how everything wove together. And also probably honestly, I can see how I'm gonna do this better next time, right? Because you just keep learning. But throughout that year, it just felt like it was almost like doing a thesis for me in active learning because in every two week chunk, was a new experiment. And I was just like constantly reading teaching books and finding everything I could out about how do I teach this better? How do I teach that better? And you know, I was working like 17 or 18 hours a day, but it was really interesting to me. And so it was just kind of the foundation of what became my career.

Euan (16:43)
Amazing. Jason for you, you've toured around the world as a teacher, continue to tour around the world as a teacher but was there a sort of, was there a class you had when things started to really switch? And you were just like my students really get me, and they get what I'm trying to do here? And I know you don't want to sort of give people the idea that you're the rapping teacher, but obviously, there was a time when you implemented, you put more of yourself into the lesson, you put more of your own kind of personal passions into the lesson, and obviously, your class responded. Was there a particular time early on when you were just like, right, what I'm doing works? Because obviously it has worked.

Fluency MC (17:24)
Yeah, I'm actually going to go back before. So I started writing songs and using music in like 2007. I started teaching in 1998.

Fluency MC (17:36)
So for nine years, I was doing all kinds of other stuff with materials. So if I go back to when I felt my students really got it, you know, I was making card games. still do. I remember making the first card games, and, like, students, didn't want to stop. And these are card games. call them colour cards for collocations. There's like games that, you know, they were like, wow, we can learn so much faster with your card games. But even before that, I guess the first thing I had at school was a partner who was Japanese. We had an English school in Manhattan from 2001 to 2007, about when I left and started writing music. But I was doing card games. But the first thing I was doing was I made these; we had conversation guests. Actually, Betsy made me think of this because she's talking about conversation guests, where I'd bring in somebody from New York City to come in like a friend or someone, and students would prepare questions before they'd come.

And it was great. And then I realised they need more practice out of class. Again, like that's where this is the beginning. So I made a DVD like I filmed people answering questions that the students were also practising in class. Like conversation questions. So I take the same questions that they were each week getting to try to practice speaking with each other and with me. I give those same questions to relatives and people on the street. And so they were so eager to like watch those videos and they would repeat them and listen at home. And so yeah, I guess even that it was still the out-of-class thing. I always felt, you know, that's the main thing. But yeah, that's what I realised. And actually, the DVDs were, okay, that's great, but that's not enough repetition of language. Okay, the card games, that's not enough. music, there we go. You know, we listen to songs again and again, plus the audio listening skills with songs and the immersive reading of lyrics. So that's when I settled on that. I was like, "This is the best."

Euan (19:40)
Amazing. We're just going to take a quick break and I'll be back with Jason and Betsy/

TIME CHECK

Euan (21:19)
and I'm back with Betsy and Jason. Now, something I wanted to ask you before we kind of get into, I don't want to say kind of the deep stuff, but you know, I'm going to ask you some, some, you know, very philosophical questions about, about, well, I suppose your philosophy is to teaching. But before we do that, I just wanted to ask, what's the funniest or kind of most unusual way you've managed to get the point across in the classroom? Whether it's through music.

or whether through, I don't know, sound or media or lesson plan. What's the kind of, yeah, what's the funniest and most unusual experience you've had? I'm looking at both of you and wondering who's deeper in thought here? Who's more ready?

Fluency MC (21:58)
Betsy's got more than me, I'm sure.

Euan (22:01)
Well, okay, okay, Betsy's… he's… thrown you under the spotlight here. What do you reckon? Can you take the mantle here?

Betsy (22:09)
The funniest way I've gotten something across…

I would say more and more in recent years I am looking at the whole world as sort of like a treasure trove of possible ways to get things across. Like the more I've listened to podcasts, discovered so many sort of back end video bits about different parts of English all over the internet, I just discovered the most surprising things. if I, I don't know if this is the most… whatever.

But recently I was watching this video and I thought about it for today for this episode that's sort of targeting music. It was the diary of a song and of course Taylor Swift is so popular right now and they were talking about, they were interviewing her about the song that she made for the Lover album, Lover. And it was the diary of her song. How did she build it? She woke up in the middle of the night, she started writing this song.

And they talked about her process and they talked about her bridge and she has such unique bridges. She takes the song from one place to a completely other place. And I thought about this short story curriculum that I was creating and I thought about how the idea of a bridge in a song could translate to the idea of how a short story moves from one part of a plot to another when you really need to like make a big change for a character or whatever, and I thought, what if we watch this song and students sort of understood what Taylor was going for in her bridge, and then they looked at this short story and I asked them to say, which part of the story do you think is the bridge and why? And obviously there's not like a right answer. The short story author isn't like, this is the part that's the bridge, like in Taylor Swift's song Lover, but it leads to like such an interesting discussion and it connects the text to something that many students are very excited about right now in the world. And that's just like an example of the kind of thing I'm going for. And so that was just sort of a fun one for me this year.

Euan (24:24)
I enjoy that. Jason, have you managed to utilise the Kendrick/Drake beef at all in your lessons this year?

Fluency MC (24:30)
I know, again, I know I'm sort of sounding like a broken record, but I don't. It's also because people just assume that we're just always talking about hip-hop in my classroom. I'm actually for the university. So, I teach university students, and the curriculum is pretty intense. So, I guess that also motivates me to keep going with the practice material out of class, because in the classroom, it's, you know, it's TOEIC or it's TOEFL, it's Cambridge, it's… you know, interviews, it's presentation skills, all great stuff. But, you know, again, like how do you do the kind of safe practice with the, when the languages end up here? So that keeps me making more stuff so that they can get it. So when we're in the classroom, we can actually, you know, do, you know, prepare for these, these high stakes situations they're in. Then when I'm not teaching universities, I'm with, primary school students, middle school students and high school students in a big theater or a cafeteria or a gymnasium doing shows, right? So it's, yeah, I don't, the Kendrick Lamar thing, I do have a Kendrick Lamar thing, which is that one of my students, it relates to the answer, how I was going to answer the question. So that's good.

Which is that one of my students connected me with this TikTok influencer friend and I went to his studio and we did a little skit and a freestyle thing and they gave me the Kendrick Lamar beat and I did something over that and the whole thing about the skit was kind of like the university teacher who comes and like starts out like doing some stupid thing on the microphone and then he just spits like this crazy freestyle. So that was over the Not Like Us beat. But how was your question was, I thought of something and it's when I teach online, which thankfully doesn't happen that much, but sometimes we have to meet online for classes with university students, but I developed this thing called Rap the Chat, which at the end of the class to try to remember vocabulary and collocations or different forms, the adjectives, nouns, whatever we're doing for TOEFL foot or TOEIC wake or whatever it is, I tell them to put the words in the chat box. And I think, as a hip-hop fan, you know what happens next, right? So I just make a freestyle off the top of my head with all of what they're feeding me in the chat. But what I like about it is that idea that, you know, it's this traditional idea of like, okay, the end of the lesson, we need to review the vocabulary that we did, you know, but it's obviously a very different way to do it.

And they love it.

Euan (27:16)
That's so cool.

I love that. Yeah, I thought that'd be a nice way to lead into the more sort of, again, I feel like in preface in these questions by, you know, we're not Greek philosophers sitting around, you know, on stone here, but like, it's an important question because as it relates to kind of, you know, your approaches and how you've managed to creativity and so much of kind of your personality into your teaching. But if it's not too kind of… either too basic or too specific a question. What are your core beliefs about language learning and how does your creativity fit into that? And Betsy, I'll come to you first on that. Is that too kind of wide a question or do you have certain beliefs about language learning and do those beliefs… like, does your creative outlook fit into those kind of core beliefs? Does that make sense?

Betsy (28:14)
Yeah. So, you know, I come to English from the other wing, the English literature wing, as opposed to the English language teaching wing. But then I moved overseas to Bulgaria and was teaching students who generally spoke very fluent English, but came from another first language. And partway through my experience there, I realised that

none of them were reading books in English for fun. They were reading books in Bulgarian, of course, if they were reading books for fun. They were busy high school students. And that was when I kind of made a sea change in my approach to reading. And I think my core beliefs around language sort of got defined during that period. Because even after I came back to the US, then the way that I taught reading really changed after that. And I became a very impassioned advocate for students reading choice books as much as possible and for that becoming a really core part of the classroom. And so while I continued to have class texts and class poetry units and everything else, I started to always have sort of a side path where students were getting books from my classroom library and reading them in an ongoing way and I was talking with them about their books.

We were sort of checking in in various ways doing in-class reading. And now I've gotten to really promote things like First Chapter Friday, where teachers are presenting a new book every Friday with a read-aloud. And Book Trailer Tuesday, they show a quick video trailer of a new book that they think students might want to read, or doing book tastings, just like all these little things to activate interest in the classroom library.

And to really promote reading, because it is just such an incredible way to build vocabulary, to build relationships with students, to build their writing skills, just to have them reading books that they enjoy. And I've seen it play out so many times. Wherever kids start, whether it's rereading the first Harry Potter book for the fifth time, they end up somewhere else, somewhere farther, somewhere…

They build their skills as a reader. They become interested in books maybe for the first time when they have that opportunity in class to read books that they would just want to read and that they would choose for themselves. And so I guess if you ask me my core beliefs around language, it's that we need to get our kids reading for joy.

Fluency MC (30:55)
Yeah.

Euan (30:57)
Jason, same question to you.

Fluency MC (30:58)
I couldn't agree more. just feel like just talking about that, but there's some of the other things I want to talk about, but I just want to respond to what that's saying. you I, you said you come from the literature side of things. So maybe your first heroes weren't people like Stephen Krashen, who now all he talks about is reading. I mean, for the last like 15, 20 years about, you know, reading for pleasure and choosing, choosing whatever books kids want instead of, you know, a sort of prescriptive way of thinking about how to teach reading. But in my work, reading is huge because it's immersive reading, my favorite term that very few people know, turns out, which is reading when you listen at the same time. you know, songs with lyrics, subtitles in movies, how so many people learn to read. But especially English, the sound spelling relationships are crazy.

So I find that when students are just relaxed and having fun, you know, my whole credo is the three Rs, relax, repeat, remember. So I love the idea of the fifth time reading Harry Potter, you know, because if you know the story, you know what's happening, you're repeating your brain can just naturally acquire the language that then you can use to produce and communicatively as opposed to analyzing, looking up words and things like that. So that's the great thing when it's pleasurable and so much can happen more subconsciously through reading. But I find that reading while listening is just, it's everything for so many students that I have. It's a breakthrough when they figure that out. But I do also wanna talk about, just because I definitely have very strong opinions on this topic about second language acquisition.

You know, what I see so often when I do teacher training is teachers who are so frustrated because, you know, they have great intentions to, you know, build critical thinking and try to get students to, you know, apply their knowledge and evaluate and analyze and all this stuff. But they miss seeing whether it's because they haven't had the experience I've been teaching 25 years or the programs that they're in are just so like, we've got to teach critical thinking that they fail to realize that without a foundation of grammar and vocabulary, you push students, you have the greatest lesson in the world.

That gets students using their brains at a higher level, but they're going to fall asleep or act out or turn off if they don't have the language they need for that. So some people think, well, are you just saying we should just go to rote learning and repeat things? Well, I'm saying meaningful repetition again outside the classroom. So, if you have this great activity in the classroom that requires more creativity and the ability to evaluate things in a second language, let alone issues that kids might have in their first language with higher-order thinking. But in a second language, don't be surprised if it's not gonna work, but you should expect it to work if they're doing things like reading for pleasure outside of class, listening to songs outside of getting that language there that then they'll come to class and be able to succeed in an activity that requires thinking beyond the just knowledge level. I'm thinking of Bloom's taxonomies, just what I refer to all the time with this back to what I said by original, the reason I started doing all this stuff in the first place was that, you know, how can you do well on the TOEFL, which is C1 academic English, if you don't have basic chunks of academic English to bring to a really difficult listening or reading. So yeah, I'm all in on reading and especially reading while you're listening.

Euan (34:48)
Yeah, great perspectives on both of those. Do you, I mean, again, like really, really useful, useful perspectives. I'm just wondering, you know, maybe some, there'll be some, especially, I guess more, I don't know, I don't want to say traditional teachers, but you do hear about the kind of teachers who thought that online teaching was witchcraft and that like anything that wasn't a CELTA wasn't worth the paper it was written on, all these kind of things - I'm thinking of those kind of teachers when I say this. But have you ever kind of have there has there ever been that kind of bristling of curricula or of sceptical teachers or have you ever been those kinds of challenges along the way when you've been trying to sort of implement more, I don't know if holistic is right word, certainly creative kind of elements to your teaching. Have you ever had experiences where people said, that's fine and all, but you know, are people getting, are your students getting the right stuff here? Has that ever been an experience you've had, or have people, whether it's parents or the school you've worked with, have they seen the results and just thought, well, obviously, this works? Jason, I'll go back to you on that one.

Fluency MC (36:02)
Yeah, well, it's interesting. Betsy said earlier that, you know, people were saying about things she was doing. Well, that's not really learning. And I think that whenever I hear that, it's like you're doing something right when people say that because it's not really learning means it's not really the type of teaching and learning that doesn't work. It's something that will work. And, you know, I'm sure Betsy would like this expression that I think I made up, but maybe said learning when you're not looking, you know, which is the whole idea of acquisition, you know just playing. I mean, what is play? Play is learning. Learning is play. know, we first, well, let's not get into why it happens, but I think we know why it happens. it's obviously wrong to pretend we don't know why we think people come in and say, okay, you have to do it this way, that way. But to lose sight of the basic idea of learning through enjoying what you're doing and play is very straight to me.

And it doesn't mean you have to be like super duper creative. It just means tuning into what your students like to do that's fun and they'll keep wanting to do it. looks like that's how, know, what Betsy was talking about earlier. but directly to your question, like in my experience, I mean, I've been really lucky because when I've taught, you know, for an institution like a university, I've never taught in like, you know, young learners in a public school or something like that where maybe there would be, you know, some kind of negative reaction to what I do. So, you know, I've put my stuff out there for the world. And so, you know, there are people who will make negative comments, but it's rare. And then if they do, other people usually jump in and say, but you know, like, well, right now I just was on a French programme called Telle Matin, which is like Good Morning America in France. It's like a big deal for me. So that a few weeks ago. Yeah. And a lot of people saw it. And it's getting a lot of views on Instagram and Facebook as well. But it has me in the class doing my regular verb rap saying specifically, you know, we're doing this just to practice your regular verbs. But there's, you know, someone came in and was like, you know, what about the students, you make their own sentences and using critical thinking and you this is just repetition and music and what you know and the second that happened like a hundred people came in and just beat the person down. So I think change…

I mean in France it's you know traditionally what you know… what I do would seem really out there like 10 years ago, even, so I think here and in other countries in Europe where I go I think we see less of that kind of thinking and people realise more that, wow, you students need to connect to students of things they like to do. Like Betsy was saying earlier, you know, if you key into what they like to do that connects to the material, then you can do other things that, you know, might be required of the curriculum or a test or something like that.

Euan (39:11)
Wow, I mean, I learned French from Serge Gainsbourg's songs, which isn't particularly helpful, but everyone keeps falling in love with me, so I don't know, I don't know.

I wish that was true and not a joke. But Betsy, what have your experiences been? Have you ever had that kind of pushback from, I don't know whether it's, whatever kind of stakeholder, guess, whether it's parents or employers or the curriculum itself in a sort of metaphysical way?

Betsy (39:46)
Yeah, it's interesting. I never had any pushback about it from students. Students have always been extremely happy about it. Never had any pushback from parents. Parents have always been extremely happy about it. The times I've had pushback have always been from colleagues who would just see the fringe of it, you know, and sort of feel like, that's not what I'm doing, that's not how I went to school, you shouldn't do that. And honestly, it did make me feel pretty bad. It's part of what led me to want to support teachers in this same work because it's easy to feel if you're kind of one of the only teachers trying to do a more creative angle at your school that you're doing something wrong or that you're alone and I don't want teachers to feel that way. And so, you know, 10 years ago maybe I started this Facebook group called Creative High School English for creative high school English teachers. And it just had me and a fake other person that I made up because you had to have two people to start a group. and now it has 25,000 people in it. And so, you know, you're not alone if you're trying to teach in a creative way.

You know, people are going to have their opinions, but if your students are on board and their parents are on board, and usually your admin is going to be happy with your results. So you just, all you can do is talk to the teachers who question you and try to explain, maybe share a book or an article, and just have those conversations because it is hard when people misunderstand what you're doing. I would never want to minimize that because it was hard for me, but it's worth talking about. Maybe you can help influence a little positive change at your school.

Euan (40:50)
That's a fantastic answer Betsy, and I'm sure you're both going to have fantastic answers for the last few questions I have but before we get to those I'll give you another quick break.

TIME CHECK

Euan (41:33)
And I'm back with Betsy and Jason. So unfortunately, I've only got a limited amount of time with you both because of time zones, and also, I've been warned repeatedly that I'm not allowed to monopolise people's time, which I think is unfair, but that's life, I'm afraid. So I want to ask you both which maybe I didn't cover enough in your individual episodes which is unfair on my part I think, but I think it's a nice question. I think I gave you all the sort of deep and potentially sad questions in the last section, but what's the most rewarding experience you've had from utilising your own creative methods in the classroom or outside the classroom? I guess from your career, what would be the most rewarding experiences you've had? I'll go to Betsy on that first.

Betsy (42:14)
Wow, that's an interesting question. I think I would think of this one certain section of students that I had. It was an American literature class. It was a pretty small class. It was a group of kids from many places, wonderful kids, and they were in kind of the third level down.

classes at my school, and so they weren't kind of taking AP or honors. They were taking the regular version, and so maybe they didn't always get as much attention and glory in English class, but I thought they were so fantastic. I enjoyed teaching them so much, and they brought so much to their poetry slam. I remember their play performance and their discussions of literature, and I just felt so connected to them.

And at the end of the year, I was saying goodbye, I gave them my speech about what they had meant to me. And they stood up and clapped. I felt like, I mean, could still just cry remembering the moment because it had been such an intense year, such a busy year, and I can still see their faces. Honestly, it's been 20 years, but when you have those connections, when you like see the light in kids, it just, it makes such a difference for you as a teacher. It makes such a difference for them as a student. would still, I would be so happy to sit down with them today, you know, and hang out and just have a reunion of that class because it was such a wonderful year.

Euan (43:57)
I really hope there's some of those students listening who set up that reunion. hope if we glean, of the few things I hope we glean from this episode, I hope that is one of them. Jason, the same question to you. What's been the most rewarding part of your career, I guess? And I know that's again, such a big question, but if you can distill it into one very handy sound bite for me, that'd be really useful.

Fluency MC (44:18)
I can think of two ways to answer that. mean, I'm very fortunate because we were talking earlier about like, you know, does something work or not? Or if people complain and say this doesn't work. And sometimes people ask me like, you know, how do you know that what you do is actually working? You have research, you have this and that, you know? And it's funny because one reason I haven't done any kind of formal research is I'm just so busy creating more stuff and trying to get it out there to more people. But it's also because when I say I'm fortunate, I mean, I get messages on Instagram or TikTok or email pretty much daily from students and teachers telling me like how it is for them.

So, you know, it's just really great to have that kind of you know continual feedback. So you know I've had amazing experiences I'm going to tell you one in a moment with my students in you know physical space but you know the first thing I think of is not that as far as like stories I could tell you of you know this person you know did well on their test finally because they could remember this language from the songs or a teacher who couldn't get their students interested in, you know, comparatives and superlatives until they have this song. You know, that kind of stuff comes in all the time for me and it helps me become better because there are also suggestions, you know, could you do a song about this or maybe you could do that. So it's also, it's a two-way thing. So, you know, I really just thrive off that. And Betsy said earlier about being obsessed with stuff, like one of my obsessions with creating stuff is people suggesting things and noticing needs and interests that people have. But what came to mind when you asked that question was in 2012, I did a program with the Department of State as an English specialist where I went to six countries in six weeks in the Middle East.

And two of those countries, "countries" gets a little controversial, is Palestine and Israel. On the same day, I went to do work with students in two cities in Palestine and two cities in Israel, actually over two days, going back and forth. And, I could talk about how just mind-blowing that was in so many ways, but just what I want to focus on, obviously, is just the connection I made with those students, but then in social media where they could see, you know, I was there.

And this was a particularly difficult time and the highlight of it was that I got to teach students in Gaza through a web class. it was at the embassy, it was very, it was really complicated, but I did get to teach students in Gaza at a time that was particularly tough in 2012. again, like the connections were great, but more important for me was just afterwards being able to share that and how I got conversations going because you know everything about what I do is about like trying to reach people around the world and get people together and promote communication about cultures so that was pretty cool.

Euan (47:29)
I mean, there's a whole podcast there to talk about how, you know, English acquisition can empower people in so many different ways. Both of you, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you both very much plowed your own lane within the English teaching world. And I think anyone who's listening, who has even an ounce of inspiration to become a teacher should definitely take from your example in terms of you know, using creativity in their own way, being fearless in terms of using your own methods and approaches, using what's traditional and using what's in their mind and combining them to create a teaching experience that's uniquely theirs. But I'm not the person who should be given advice. You two are the people who should be given advice. So if any aspiring TEFL teachers are listening and they want to do things their own way, what advice would you give to them? And we'll go to Betsy on that first.

Betsy (48:24)
Well, I think it's really useful to remember that every student needs something different. And it's very possible that you're the exact person who brings the gift that can give them what they need. You know, if you bring your unique personal history, your interests, your background, the thing that makes you stand up and smile at them and feel excited to teach them every day, you're bringing something no one else can. And, you know, it won't be the perfect match for every single student. Some students will get something unique that they need from somebody down the hall, but like, only you can teach like you, you know? And I think that that's a really useful thing to remember. You don't have to be just like anybody else that you've read about or seen on socials. know, take a little bit from so much that you see out there and become you, you know?

Euan (49:22)
Perfect, and Jason, what would you add to that?

Fluency MC (49:24)
That's great advice. I think what Betsy was saying earlier about teachers being like maybe suspicious or that's not, I think some of them probably could use that advice because it's easy to say people are jealous or haters or whatever. But the other way to think about it, even though you didn't say that, but that's all I was thinking about, is that they probably have some idea, and they're just, you know, they could come out and do something creative, right? I think we all could. So it's how do you feel, you know, confident enough to do it and okay about doing it. It's fine for us to say, just go and do it. But you know, it's usually not enough. And one thing about social media like Instagram or YouTube that I found works a lot when I do teacher training with teachers, you're like, maybe I should try this or you could try that, is to do like, you know, unlisted closed kind of thing with social media, just with your students. Again, I'm back to that outside-of-class stuff because you know, generally the students that I work with, have three hours of class a week.

Four hours, right? They're in university or in public school. you know, how can they get English outside? But it's a great way for you as a new teacher to practice because your audience can just be your students. You know, I made CDs before new media. Now it's easier. can, you know, have, you don't have to, you know, if you're scared, like, people can see my stuff. I'm not ready. Exactly. You know, you can, it's a laboratory thing you can do with social media, you know, keeping it very close, keeping it just for them, getting their feedback.

And if you know another teacher who could help or wants to do something with you, this is a great way to experiment.

Euan (51:07)
Fantastic. Again, amazing advice. so all that's left to ask is where can people find you? Jason, I'll go to you first. can people find you and keep up with what you're up to.

Fluency MC (51:17)
Yes, so for the songs to practice, definitely YouTube, Fluency MC. And then, you know, got a community that's building pretty quickly on Instagram and TikTok. People follow where I'm going, the students I work with, teachers I work with, and I'm also putting content there as well. So yeah, YouTube, would put YouTube, Instagram and TikTok more than anything else. I'm also very happy to correspond with students and teachers through email if they don't want to do social media.

So that's just support at FluencyMC.com. So just remember support and then my name fluencymc.com.

Euan (51:56)
Brilliant and Betsy, can people find you? And the lesson plans, materials that you're writing.

Betsy (52:03)
So my website is called nowsparkcreativity.com and it is full of free resources for teachers. Choice reading toolkits, discussion toolkits, one-pager materials, different types of discussion, writing activities, tons of stuff. And then I also have a podcast. It's called the Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Yeah, so if they're already used to tuning in to teaching ideas with you, they might like to do that with me too.

Euan (52:32)
Absolutely, yep, absolutely, cannot recommend it enough. It's actually, it's how we found you, Betsy, I hope you don't mind me saying. It's how we learned about you. And I'm glad we did because thank you both, that was a fantastic and really, valuable episode of -

Fluency MC (52:49)
I could just add one…

Sorry, I just wanted to add one thing that I'm working on that I'm very excited about is something called Fluency Cards, but online so you can play on your phone or on a computer. So I have a game based on Uno. So off the record, we call it Flu-No, but we're not branding it Flu-No, but it's Fluency Cards. So it's a way you play against the computer, like Uno style, but to practice irregular verbs and simple sentences and short and long vowels. And we're going to have more card decks in the future.

Look for Fluency Cards on Google Play or there's a link to play another browser as well.

Euan (53:25)
Amazing, Well, I mean, I don't know if, I hope that's patented, Jason, because…

Yeah, I hope, I hope, because I mean, that seems like quite a good idea. And, you know, if you spoke to a bespectacled podcast host who could use a few million, that would, it'd be bad luck. That's all I'm saying.

Fluency MC (53:43)
I have two students, who are like programmers who are doing this with me but I've been making these card games for years and years and years in the classroom but as always I'm looking for ways that students can get practice with things outside the classroom so on a phone you know what could be better right?

Euan (54:02)
Amazing, Well, thank you both so much for your time. It's been fantastic speaking to you both and yeah, hopefully we'll get you back on in the future. But for now, I've taken up so much of your time. So thank you both so much.