From Teacher To Podcaster | Legendary Language Learner YouTube Channel: S2E15

This episode is about half of a conversation that Matthew Boyle of Legendary Language Learner YouTube channel and I had about language teaching, content creation and the intersection between the two.

Original publication date: March 24, 2022

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

🔥 Traveling Mailbox: scan/forward postal service for Americans. It's saved me time, money and headaches. 
https://travelingmailbox.com/?ref=3422

 🔥Chase Sapphire Credit Card: annual fee, NO currency conversion fee. Used this in many countries globally. 
https://www.referyourchasecard.com/19Q/MDNYO68N38

🔥 Stackry: Shop in the U.S. and have the items shipped internationally. 
https://www.stackry.com/register?referral=7118738

--------------------

🤸🏽Music from
Damon Castillo: https://www.damoncastillo.com/ 

and 

Key Frame Audio , https://keyframeaudio.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey there, this is Steph. Welcome back to Geopaths Podcast. I do not have a new season for you yet. That is coming soon, and I'll tell you about that in just a minute. But today I actually have part of an interview that Matt Boyle from Legendary Language Learner uh published with me. He actually interviewed me for a language podcast. Yay! Or a language YouTube channel, I should say. I want it to be a podcast. So, Matt, I'm wheeling it into the world. Anyway, um, yeah, so I'm taking a clip from uh that interview that is over on his legendary language learner. Legendary language learner, like legendary language learner YouTube channel. And I'll have that for you today. Now, since a lot of you are actually following me in the podcasting space uh and then dip over into the this expat-ish side of my content creation, what I'm including here is half of the interview that Matt did with me, because I think you're pretty familiar with my podcasting life. But what you don't know so much about and what I don't talk nearly enough about anymore is the 15 or so years that I spent teaching the English language in many different incarnations overseas, mostly in Asia, but also a little bit uh in universities in the United States, which is clearly not overseas because that is my passport country. So I think most people are the most unfamiliar with that giant chunk of my life. So that's the part that I'm including in this episode. Now, if you feel like you want the whole thing, um you can just automatically go over to his YouTube channel and listen to the whole thing, or you can listen to this half, and then if the mood strikes you, jump on over to Legendary Language Learner. Uh Matt Boyle is doing a ton of wonderful things in the language learning space, and that's how we initially connected, and we'll go over all that at the beginning, or he'll go over all of that at the beginning of this really cool conversation. And uh, we connected at the beginning of my content creation in 2017, and so it's really sweet to almost near my five-year pot versary to reconnect with him. I mean, we've kept in touch all the whole time, but to reconnect with him in a way that is turning the tables and where he's interviewing me about my language teaching, my language learning and content creation, and then over on his YouTube channel, the rest of it, which covers uh my podcasting career as a member of the industry itself as a full-time podcast editor, which is currently where I stand. That's a lot. That's a lot, a lot. I am also working on the next season of Geopaths, so I haven't dropped the ball. I've just gotten so busy with my business, which is good, but um, but it's finally calmed down and I've gotten my workflow down where I can work on my own content creation. And I've done the first half of a micro season where I'm interviewing expats or former expats who grew up as children of immigrants uh in wherever their passport country is. And so I'm really excited to dig into that because that's probably the most personal that any of my themes, themed episodes or seasons have been. This really dives much, much deeper into uh the beginning of my own feeling out of placeness, which I should say be I shouldn't say beginning because it's never ended. I will forever feel like a fish out of water. And there's another episode and another podcast coming out later that will fill in the blanks as to why that's okay. But I don't want to spoil that because that's that's a little bit in the future. Anyway, um, yeah, that's pretty much it. So again, this is from the YouTube channel, not podcast, legendary language learner with Matthew Boyle. He is over, uh, he's another American who is over in China and has been there for quite a long time. And he has built up such an interesting life for himself over there. If you want to know more about Matthew, head over to his YouTube channel and I'll have that link in the show notes for you. But again, you can just search for Legendary Language Learner. You'll see the very cool, cool artwork and the subtext of Make Language Learning Magical. And that he does. All right. So thank you very much. And here is the partial interview that, or the partial conversation that Matthew and I had about the beginnings of my content creation and my language learning teaching experience overseas. I hope you enjoy this.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Legendary Interviews series. I'm Matthew Boyle, and I'm here today with Stephanie Fuccio from the Geopaths Podcast Network. And Stephanie and I actually met years ago because she reviewed one of my language learning card games on her YouTube channel, that was Chinese Champions, and then later had me on for some interviews on her podcast. And that was really fun. We've stayed in touch over the years. She's been a great inspiration and mentor to me because she's moved really strongly and heavily into the podcasting space and the social media sphere. But I wanted to have her on today to talk about something at first a little bit lesser known about her. I think people will know less about her past as a teacher. And then we can get into how she actually transitioned into podcasting, which is really quite a major life change and a major career change. So I thought that would be really interesting to have her on to talk about that for people who might be going through something similar and talk about how do you navigate a major life change or major career change? And of course, we'll talk about the podcasting as well. Uh, but first of all, Stephanie, thanks for coming on. And can you tell us how you got into teaching, which by the way, I have a background in teaching as well. So I know we can jam on this, and I'm sure people will be interested to hear about it. So, how did you get into teaching?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yay. Well, first and foremost, thank you so much, Matthew, for having you on here at this or having me on here. Uh, it is 7 a.m. where I am in Rome, Italy. So if I flub, it's probably because it's early. So, how did I get into teaching? Honestly, I was um I graduated with my undergraduate degree at the ripe old age of 30 after like spending a long time in and out of school. And then I was looking for something. I thought I was looking for a job, but I studied uh I studied basically engineering management, but the tech uh crash happened pretty much six months before I graduated. And all the jobs I wanted weren't there, which was such a such a blessing in disguise. And so I ended up accidentally kind of bouncing around the US after finishing university and and doing temp jobs and and just trying to figure out where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do, since the jobs I wanted that I thought I was training myself for weren't there. And I ended up accidentally staying in hostels in San Francisco. And I met all of these travelers that weren't rich, that were going and seeing all of these places on such a low budget, and that got me started living overseas, which got me for like months at a time in hostels in eastern western Europe. And that got me meeting people that were teaching English. So, how is that for a roundabout way to answer the question? So I just started meeting people who were doing it, and I thought, oh, so I don't have to be like a backpacker in a dorm bed in a hostel to live overseas. I could actually have a legitimate regular daily life, which is much more my style. I am a terrible traveler, but I really love cementing myself in a place for one, two, three years and having a daily life, having a job, but going, you know, doing really boring, mundane things. I love that in a different place. So I checked, yeah. So that's that's how I got started.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

So, what subject did you teach? What grade level of students, and how long were you teaching for?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Ah, yeah. When that is the the sticky wicket. When you say teacher, people think primary or secondary school, elementary school, high school. I never did any of that. I was always a English is the second, no, English is a foreign language teacher overseas. And much later, like after a decade of doing it in different countries, mostly in Asia, I actually went back for my graduate degree in the US. And that's where I was teaching oddly, um, Americans, like native speakers of English. And then I slid into teaching the international students um in writing courses, like first-year writing courses in the US. So, but most of the time that I was teaching was teaching English as a foreign language, as a communication skill, as a conversation skill, uh, overseas, not informal situations in language schools, as extra programs and universities, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

So, was it like a mixed age group? Was it young adults or adults, college students, or all mixed?

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Depends on the context. It definitely wasn't mixed. Um uh like for example, when I taught in Hanoi, Vietnam, it was anywhere from like teenagers on weekends to adults, like general classes for adults, depending on the level, anywhere from beginning up to advanced up to TOEFL and IELTS. We also did business classes. We did some business classes in the companies themselves. When I taught in Japan, it was an extracurricular. Uh they were extracurricular classes at the university, but they had to sign up and it was different times. Often it was in their lunchtime. That's hardcore students that we had. They would be like, I don't need a break, I'm gonna go an English class. Um, and when we were in Nanjing, China, uh it was uh foundation year, which is such a British term. Uh it was between their high school and university year where they were preparing to be international students in countries like the US, Australia, the UK, that kind of thing. So it's really different context, but never really in never in the primary, secondary school situation.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

I see. So I kind of wanted to ask you what are the pros and cons of that as you see them, but I realize that's kind of um that's a really big question, hard to summarize what you call in so many different contexts. But I mean, when you think back about teaching as you did, you mentioned Vietnam, China, and I think Japan. Did you did you say? Um you think back, what was it that you liked about this lifestyle and this job and and what and what was the sort of the disadvantage or the downside of it?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Oh that is a big one. Um the the thing I really liked about it were the students, absolutely positively. But because I was teaching like young adults and adults, uh I I just I don't have the patience for tiny kids. I think they're adorable. I just am not that kind of teacher that is really good at at doing more kind of behavioral or cultural kind of shaping. I wanted to dive into the language and make stupid jokes that adults would get and that kind of thing. So I'm I'm more of that goofy adult teacher. Um, so the students were definitely the plus in all of it. I got a window into cultures through trying to help them express themselves by giving them the layer of English, they were able to say things that they wanted to say about who they were and and how they like what they were thinking about and different aspects of their culture. And I got to do it in English, which is a blessing and a curse because I also spent most of my day in English instead of learning local languages. Um, but then it was also like, oh man, I'm getting such a cheater cultural moment here by having these long conversations with folks in a language I already know and I'm super fluent in. So that's definitely an advantage. Um, the disadvantages of the TEFL industry of teaching English as a foreign language uh industry are vast. The me the basic salary of TEFL teachers since I started in 2003 has pretty much stagnated at$1,200 a month. It's 2022. I still don't look anymore, but I have friends still in the industry and they're still looking, saying, I can't believe the majority of the jobs are still 1200 US dollars a month. Like that's almost 20 years of no increase in salary when there definitely has been an increase in cost of living in a lot of places. So it's it's really hard to maneuver advancing in a career while not having many benefits to getting better at what you do and putting effort and time and and career development in and seeing that most of the jobs are still meant for somebody to come and do it for a year or two.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah, it seems like um the foreign language teachers everywhere. I mean, yeah, you hit the nail on the head with this, what you just said there, because you know, one of the advantages is you can go to so many places and learn so much about culture. And a lot of places would be honored to have you and love to have you. But on the other hand, money's pretty low. I mean, definitely don't get into it if you think you're gonna, you know, strike it right. Um, the the I think the only way you can really do that is if you teach at higher level like international schools or get lined up with a good business and to be like yeah, their, you know, work inside a business as their point person for that.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Um, or maybe get into higher level administration somehow. But yeah, most of the jobs are are just like you said, as as I have learned as well. Um, so let's talk a little bit more but before we kind of get into the shift. Uh, let's talk a little bit more about your superpowers as a teacher. What were you really good at and what did you get better at during all those years?

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Uh my superpowers as a teacher. Uh um, I'm I'm good at talking to people as people. I I know a lot of teachers felt that they needed to always keep the authority in the room, and I just didn't care. I was like, look, you're here to communicate, and I want to help you use this language to talk to anybody you want to. So I would personalize and try to give, even though we had like goals, definite goals within each class and each each week, each month, you know, there's their curriculum, but there's things that people that students walk into the room wanting to talk to others about. And so I would try to personalize it to the point where they could not just get the stuff we needed to do as a class, but stuff they needed to do to be themselves in that language. Because I mean, you're fluent in Mandarin, and you know that getting your personality into your non-native language is super hard. And so my goal was to get them to relax and to get them to have the actual language to be able to have those conversations.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Yeah, and now that you mentioned that, I think it's so cool that this is sort of a part of your personality that you're very social and you easily get people to sort of lower their barriers. And uh that is something that you are able to do in your teaching career and now uh throughout social media and throughout podcasting. So it's really great you've you were able to bring this out in yourself and share it with others. I also think it's really important to do that with students, um, to just be on a level with them and let them know that you care and open them up for the communication because there's so much more that they learn besides content or besides the the goals, the standards of the programs. So if you and if you would like to go back to that time, well, I don't know if you would like to go back, but if you did have to go back, if you did have to go back, it is a lot of hard work, guys. If you've never been a teacher, um if you if you if you had to go back, what would you like to change about how you approached that profession? And what advice would you have for people who are going down that road and thinking they want to get out and teach English abroad?

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Oh I I think the one thing that the TEFL industry does is the disservice to the people that work hard in it is it promotes itself if it can, it promotes itself as something where you can see the world. And honestly, to sustain a comfortable life, and I'm not talking about riches, but I'm just talking about to be able to grow old in the industry, you need to stay in one place. And that's that those are two very conflicting things. A lot of like TEPL programs, like certificate programs, say you can go to this country and this country and this country and this country. But if you do what I did and you switch countries every few years, you lose all of your seniority. No matter how much experience you have, everybody in the new place thinks that you're starting new, which is infuriating. But it's it's just how it is. So if you if you pick a place, if you pick a city or a country, even just the country, and you stay there, you can advance and get to those uh those administrative jobs, you can like get uh you can have a mediator career. Whereas if you switch locations, it it's very unlikely to happen, very, very unlikely to happen. Um, even within the international school, well, that's that's a totally different bag, and I've never worked in the international school system. Um, but it's just it's so tricky. It's so tricky. So I wish I had known that. Although, on the other hand, if I had known that, I probably wouldn't have done it in the first place because my goal was to be able to live in different countries. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

What I might say just to kind of summarize that point, and it is a great point for people, is yeah, you could probably try this without too many reservations for a few years, but realize you're gonna have a longer-term plan and you're gonna need to consider where you really want to be. Because I've met a lot of expats who seem like at home and no place and they've built nothing up because they've been moving around so much. And just like you said, when you move around a lot, um, they always see you as new. You lose your pay, you lose your seniority, just like you said. And also you're not really building up a more stable network of friends and family where you are, if you're only there for a few years. So, you know, it could be very fun for you, you could grow a lot, but if you if you really wanted to sustain you in the long term, you have to think a little bit differently than just getting out to see the world or teach English or whatever. Um, and I I like that you pointed out sort of the conflict of how they advertise it and show it to the world and what actually ends up happening to people. People can easily kind of be uh be drawn into the sort of feed the machine teachers and students alike, the the sort of English teaching and learning machine. So we have to be careful for ourselves. Now, you've mentioned to me that you faced some burnout. You already mentioned the low pay. You also told me uh that you went through a life-saving surgery, and that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. And you decided that I'm going to get out of this industry, I'm going to get out of this field, take a new direction. So, can you tell us more about that?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Oh, gosh. Yeah, I was actually in a PhD program that I left, did not finish uh because of health issues. Um, but also because, oh gosh, it was so it was so exhausting. Great program, but PhD programs within the US are exhausting. They're like five to seven years, and you're literally working all the time if you do the funding route. And by funding, I mean you get very little and you work all the time. It's just, it's a lot. So I I had um I had some serious health issues and I had to get surgery, and I was teaching first year found, you know, writing classes, and my supervisor basically said, you have to find your replacement. And at that moment, I was just like, you know, I don't think this is gonna work. I just um no degree is worth this, no step up career wise is worth this. And I said, This is just like you said, the camel that broke the the straw that broke the camel's back, not the camel that broke the straw's back. Um 7 a.m. Yeah. So yeah, but but I was still, you know, in grad school and not super. So I actually ended up going back to China and doing um IELTS testing as an examiner, which at the time, this is pre-pandemic, pre-pre-pandemic, it was still a very lucrative thing, which is just crazy to me that teaching like 10 years of teaching, and I was still struggling to make way in a substantial way in the career. And yet I went back and honestly, as an examiner working full-time, traveling all around the country in our busiest month in August, I almost made 10 US, 10,000 US. It was just crazy. I'm like, wait, wait, wait. We test people and we make tons of money and we teach people and we make very little.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

It was crazy. It was really truly crazy. I was I was very confused, but also very grateful to have that job and recoup financially because I thought I needed a few more years to transition to something. I can't just turn on a dime. I took that job so that I could recoup financially, I could get my health back up, and so I'd have time and mental space to figure out what to do so I could have something else happen. I had no idea what it was, but I was like, I need a few years to transition out of the industry.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Yeah. And when you mentioned the IELTS examining, I realized I left that out. If you are thinking you need more money, that's also something that pays higher. But as I think Stephanie would agree, that's um a whole nother can of worms because you're basically just examining students all the time. You're not really with your students, growing them and teaching them. You're constantly examining. Um, so that's a different ball of wax.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

And I don't, and I'm not even sure what it's like anymore. Um, with the pandemic and things, I'm not sure that the opportunities are really as they are.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

You would know this much better than I I also don't really know, actually, but but yeah, worth it for people to consider and investigate. Um, can you tell us? Uh, this is a part of the interview I'm really excited for. I think a lot of people stand a lot to gain from this, myself included. So, how did you start to brainstorm and plot out a new direction? What were some of the ideas you were bouncing off the wall and what form did it eventually take?

SPEAKER_01 24:30

I none of this was strategic. I I literally got back to to Shanghai in 2017, and my brain felt like it was falling out. Like I was just serious of the PhD program was stimulating to a certain degree, but it also was very tax thing. So I was, I just said, I'm gonna take a few months, I'm just gonna do the job, I'm gonna eat in good restaurants, and I'm going to enjoy being back in Shanghai, and I'll see what happens. And that's when I got um back into studying Mandarin, um, studying reading and writing Mandarin and started the and I just kind of let things happen. So I was traveling a lot for work, so I was taking a lot of pictures and photos because China is just oh man, it's so easy to visually capture something amazing. Yeah, and so I was just having fun. I was just letting myself have fun and just kind of heal. And I just started creating content, I started documenting what I was learning with the Hansa characters, and so I started a YouTube channel, and then I started I started a podcast in secret uh about my expat experience, my first time in Asia in Taiwan. And and then after a few months, I finally started telling people that I had a podcast. Like I was just trying to get stuff out of me and just to get just to be creative again and just to do other things. So I was just kind of throwing, I was I wasn't even throwing spaghetti at the wall because I wasn't even thinking. I knew I was gonna be there for a few years. So I just was doing stuff to have fun and relax and heal. And things just progressed really fast.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

And about what time was this? Because I feel like this is around when maybe I reached out to you or when we met online through the social media stuff.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

I think so. I think so. Well, that was to early 2017. And I don't remember when we connected, but I feel like it was that first year.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Yeah, gosh. Wow. Yeah, I realize now how many years passed. That's crazy. But I think I've I probably found out about you from the Chinese stuff that you were posting about, probably and changing scripts and all that. Yeah. Um, so you are sort of going through this uh period of R and letting the creativity regrow and come back, and you started producing content, doing some podcasting in secret. Could I could I um ask you a little bit more about that part? Because that may be interesting for people thinking to get into content creation and podcasting, that idea that you were starting to do it, but you weren't telling anybody. So why were you not uh letting people know? And and when did it start to become you were more comfortable with letting people know? What was that process like? Because I think some people fear to put up their first videos, their first podcasts.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Okay, so I'm intentionally cutting the interview off there, like I mentioned before. I really want um the podcasting stuff, which is pretty much not a repeat, but it's information that I think a lot of people are already familiar with to be over on his YouTube channel. So if you are someone who's more in the language learning space and you're not familiar with my podcasting side, hi, nice to meet you. Nice to ear meet you. How do we say that? I don't know. I don't care. I'm just excited that you're here and that you've been listening this far into this borrowed episode from Matthew Boyle's legendary language learner YouTube channel. So to hear the rest of this conversation, go over to Matthew's YouTube channel and have a listen. You can start at about 22 minutes in, is about where I cut that off. And again, this is uh borrowed from Matthew. So thank you so much for letting me replay it here on Geopat's podcast. The other episodes that we have uh range the full gamut from online, like expat, they're expat heavy and they range from coffee in different places around the world, books that teach us about where we're living outside of our passport country, languages that we're learning or want to learn, and so much more. I hope you dig into the Geopets catalog. I am still moving a lot of the episodes back into Geopaths. We did some uh rebranding twice within two-year period. Um, yeah, it's been messy, but we're getting everything organized and back into one. So do, you know, subscribe or follow to us wherever you are so that when newer episodes emerge or recombined back in, you actually have access to them immediately. Thank you so much for listening to this borrowed episode that is uh playing on the Geopaths Podcast. And um, oh, of course, if you want to contact me, I am Steph Fuccio, S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O. Everywhere online. That's also my email address and my Gmail address and my website. All right, more soon. Promise. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Membership fees apply after free trial. Cancel anytime.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

You know what's wrong with health and fitness? You weaponize it against yourself. Why didn't you go to the gym today? You're so lazy. Ah, why did you eat that? You have no self control. Stop it. At Beachbody, we think training and caring for your body in a way that works best for you should be about loving yourself. Let us help you without all the judgment. Here's how. Go to Beachbody.com to claim your free membership and start feeling great.