Teacher Talking Time

"When you are constantly thinking in scarcity because you're broke... you don't put enough value on yourself, on your time. You will undercharge, you will always look for ways to stretch yourself too thin. And you can also say yes to the wrong customers, too." We sit down with entrepreneur and BE School founder Zoe Smith.  Zoe Smith is the founder of BE School, a specialized Business English insti...

"People ask me all the time, 'Are you worried that AI's gonna take your job?' and I tell them, no, but I'm worried that you would ask me that question, because it tells me a lot about what you think my job is." We chat with researcher Matt Coss.  Matt is a professor of applied linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages & Classics at the University of Alabama (USA). A research-practition...

"To build a company, it really requires time. At some point, there will be only you who still believes in the product - not your team, not your investors, nobody. You and yourself in the room and your laptop, and that's it." We sit down with Amazy founder Kate Bodrova.  Kate spent over 10 years as an ESL teacher and language school owner before founding AMAZY, a digital workspace for teachers and...

"Choice generates agency, agency generates engagement, and engagement is where learning begins. If you aren’t ‘falling over’ as a teacher, you probably aren't pushing yourself or your learners to take ownership of the language." We sit down with the esteemed Professor Jonathan Newton. Jonathan is an Associate Professor at Victoria University of Wellington, where he leads postgraduate programs in T...

"It’s 5,000 metres high, and I promise you: it is much scarier to launch a business than it is to jump out of a plane. When you launch, you are open to being judged, and you can fail, but that 80% fear is exactly what drives you to succeed." We chat with Smart Cookie co-founder Martina Montreal. Martina is a language educator and the co-founder of SmartCookie. Since 2016, she has taught over 1,000...

"If you only have this theory, you will never be able to swim. You need some water to experience it. Don't be afraid to start with a speaking exam in the first year. If we change the way we assess, we can change the way we teach." We sit down with the amazing Charline Rouffet.  Charline is a foreign language teacher educator and PhD candidate at Utrecht University, specializing in task-oriented la...

"One of the mindsets that I really like is that I want to earn more so that I can sometimes offer more to those who can't afford it. It's like a cycle." We sit down with teacher and creator Jennifer Lebedev.  Jennifer is the creator of English with Jennifer. Launched in 2007, her YouTube channel has over 1M subscribers and 100M views to date. She is also a published author with Pearson, an award-w...

"We’ve got to have a very hard look at ourselves and stop calling ourselves experts just because we have a Master's from 10 or 15 years ago. Those times are over, and we’ve really got to focus on what added value we can bring that AI can’t." We sit down with BELF trainer Evan Frendo.  Evan Frendo is a freelance trainer and consultant based in Berlin, Germany. He has been active in corporate langua...

"You have to get beyond the 'it’s all about me' and get over that 'non-profit mindset' to realize you have a skillset worth an investment. Don't compromise on your value." - Catherine Angus We sit down with Catherine Angus, founder of the Hear You Go podcast , to talk about self-worth, education businesses, and standing firm on value.  In addition to the Hear You Go podcast, Catherine is an Englis...

"Designing curriculum around proficiency goals for your program  is a way of making them a positive, empowering tool instead of something that's punitive" - Caitlyn Pineault.  Caitlyn teaches undergraduate second language acquisition courses at Georgetown University with a dedication to connecting research and practice for language teachers. Her work can be found in the Modern Language Journal and...

"You don't have to feel confident to be great at what you do."  We talk with Laura Wilkes, founder of Communicating for Impact , about content creation, putting yourself out there, and what it really takes to build a full-service production house. Laura has 15 years of experience in education leadership and media production for global education brands. She started Communicating for Impact after se...

Want to monetize your skills as a teacher? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help. "You can be included and still not feel that you belong" - Ben Goldstein.  We sit down with Ben to talk inclusion in ELT - and what that actually means (and what it doesn't).  Ben is a writer, teacher trainer and conference speaker. He taught materials writing for many years on the online MATESOL program of t...

Want to monetize your skills as a teacher? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help. "Make a decision about which direction you wanna head towards. Start walking and don't do anything else for 30 days" - John Healy We chat with John Healy about education businesses, how indecision stagnates us, and what teachers can do to execute as entrepreneurs.  John Healy is the founder of My Speaking Sco...

Want to monetize your skills as a teacher? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help.   "So many people are out there doing great things and they aren't ready, either, so I asked myself: Why not me?"  We chat with teacher and entrepreneur Mariela Mondaca.  Mariela is an English teacher, teacher trainer, and entrepreneur who has turned her 25 years of classroom experience into an online busines...

Want to monetize your skills as a teacher? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help.   "How do we make research meaningful for the classroom? What really helps students acquire grammar? Can apps ACTUALLY support second language learning?" These are some of the questions we tackled in our conversation with Dr. Shawn Loewen.  Shawn Loewen is Professor of Second Language Studies at Michigan Stat...

Want to chat with us about your business?  Book a free meeting here.  "I have no shame whatsoever in marketing my own courses because I feel proud. I know for sure that it works." We chat with entrepreneur Anna Aleksenko Anna is an entrepreneur based in Georgia who runs Voice it English , a program that helps professionals turn English into their career superpower. She's been teaching for over 17...

Want to move away from 1:1 and build your teaching business? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help. "There's this myth that kids learn faster than adults. Research shows it's not true; adults are actually better language learners" - Dr. Karen Lichtman.  Dr. Karen Lichtman recently moved to Binghamton University after ten years training language teachers at Northern Illinois University.  He...

*This is episode two of our series highlighting education entrepreneurs. New episodes every first of the month.  Want to chat with us about your business? Book a free meeting here.   "If it doesn't go according to plan, what is the worst thing that could happen that is the minimum I can be satisfied with?" We sit down with entrepreneur Jessica Dias to discuss growing a business.  Jessica is an Eng...

Want to move away from 1:1 and build your teaching business? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help.   From beginner to intermediate in 9 months: yes, it's possible and Claudia Fernandez tells us how. Claudia runs her Spanish program at the University of Illinois-Chicago using a task-based curriculum. One result was bringing fifteen A1 students to intermediate over 9 months. She shares her...

*This launches the beginning of a new series of our show: education entrepreneurship. We'll release an additional episode monthly, highlighting entrepreneurial voices in our industry doing great things. Want to chat with us? Book a free meeting here.  In this episode, we introduce the series and discuss what it takes to start and run your own business. Specifically, we explore the transition from...

50% off our CPD courses for podcast listeners - click here and use the code "TTT"   Does the grammar that is normally taught match the evidence corpus linguistics shows? Dr. Graham Burton helps us dissect the big beasts of English grammar. Dr. Graham Burton is assistant professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy). His main research interests are applications of corpus linguistics to...

Want to move away from 1:1 and build your teaching business? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help.   "Don't teach at the students. Teach off them." Scott Thornbury becomes our first repeat guest and helps us dissect this and more.  Scott Thornbury is a teacher, teacher trainer, and award-winning author in English language education. He has taught and trained teachers around the world, inc...

Want to monetize your skills as a teacher? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help.   Learner autonomy is something that happens INSIDE the classroom, not out of it. Teachers can't sit back and wait for their students to become autonomous. This is part of what the esteemed Dr. David Little shared with us in our conversation.  David Little is Fellow Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin and a le...

Want to monetize your skills as a teacher? Book a free 1:1 with us to see if we can help.   "It's  such social injustice to expect people to use English like native English speakers, whichever country they're in." We dive into this and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) with Jennifer Jenkins.  Jennifer Jenkins is a British linguist and academic. She was Chair Professor of Global Englishes at the Uni...

Book a complimentary meeting with us to help grow your business.  Learners can think a native teacher is a vaccine against poor pronunciation. Equally, native teachers can be misinformed in thinking that students should just follow them. We dive into pronunciation, intelligibility, and teacher effects on learner performance with the great John Levis.  John is Professor of Applied Linguistics and T...