I Taught English Abroad

It’s 2025, and building upon the advancements from the past year, it's no secret that the TEFL industry is rapidly transforming. With more students becoming teachers, greater access to a high-quality English education, and a booming online teaching sphere, it's an exciting place to be. So, what’s ahead? With AI becoming more prevalent than ever, are there threats to the TEFL industry? Wh...

You could go your whole TEFL career going “by the book”, carrying out the same lessons over and over, and still have an enjoyable experience. Or, you could innovate, make a name for yourself, inspire generations of learners, and be invited to teach around the world, with an online audience reaching millions. Betsy Potash and Jason Levine (Fluency MC), in their own distinct ways, chose the creative...

While TEFL can open the doors to the rest of the world for talented teachers, there are also incredible opportunities to make a difference for newcomers to your local community. With ongoing crises worldwide, there’s a significant demand for English teachers to help asylum seekers and refugees fleeing persecution, war, famine, poverty and other traumas.  So, how do TEFL teachers make a difference?...

It sounds like a simple enough question. How do you become a great TEFL teacher? Seemingly, greatness can come through countless routes, but what skills does a person need to become a brilliant educator? Thomas Kerr, perhaps the most enthusiastic, qualified and talkative English teacher you'll find, joined ‘I Taught English Abroad’ to give his perspective. Building on his wealth of experience...

We’ve all been there: the rain clatters against the window of the bus, train or car on the commute to the job we don’t necessarily want, in the city or town we don’t want to be in any more. You feel stuck, and the dreams you once had of travelling and working overseas feel as distant as ever. For Rachael McGettigan and Daniel Gillard, divergent paths took them from these Groundhog Days to achievin...

Why do so many TEFL teachers want to try their luck in Japan? What is it about the land of the Rising Sun that draws so many curious English educators over to its shores? Why do so many people try their hand at applying for the JET programme? We brought in two experts - returning guests Patrick Smith and Celi Reeder - to give a tell-all on the reality of moving to Japan, managing expectations, dis...

We're excited to announce that the sixth season of I Taught English Abroad will be out next week! We're returning stronger than ever with in-depth interviews about the TEFL topics YOU care about. What's more, we've got some amazing guests coming back onto the podcast to give us both a little update and some expert advice on some of the most inspiring, controversial, futuristic...

When Seth Knight left seminary after training for the priesthood in Milan for 3 years, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do next. Qualified in music, and a former professional dancer, Seth knew he loved working with people and performing. Teaching came calling, and a truly unique story followed. In this fascinating episode, we deal with spirituality, navigating important junctures in life, changing d...

Rachael McGettigan had pretty much put any plans to teach and explore Asia aside. It just wasn’t a priority, nor something that seemed realistic - until she happened upon the ‘I Taught English Abroad’ podcast. After listening to our first-ever episode, Rachael caught the travel and teaching bug and hasn’t looked back. We talk about changing career, being inspired by stories of Cambodia, and how sh...

It can be difficult when you have parents from two different cultures. Growing up, Lucia identified as both a Londoner and a Canarian, spending different periods of time across the capital of England and Spain, but what was once a tricky balancing act among peers has become a huge strength, and now she teaches English. We caught up with Lucia to find out more about her life and career, and what it...

Through her own company, English With Grace, and from her career in working with refugees, asylum seekers and other vulnerable groups, it’s no exaggeration to say that Grace Davis has opened doors for all kinds of people through immersive language lessons. We talked about how bilingualism can help in English teaching, putting textbooks to the side and starting an online teaching school. --- Visit...

We love a unique perspective on ‘I Taught English Abroad’, and if you do, too, try this on for size: Frank Carrizo Zirit has more qualifications than you can shake a stick at, was accepted into university at 16, is a bilingual Venezuelan-American and has both a popular podcast about English teaching, and a considerable following on social media. Suffice it to say, Frank is a singular voice in the...

Fernanda Cwiertnia had planned for a career in chemistry, but after finding herself dissatisfied with life amongst the test tubes and periodic tables, she opted for a career in teaching English, and the results have been fantastic. We talk about teaching approaches, teaching in Brazil,  mentoring English teaching talent and more! --- Visit the episode page to learn more about Fernanda Cwiertnia an...

Benjamin Robson dreamt of Premier League stardom growing up - who doesn’t? - and even played in a couple of notable soccer academies. Now, though, he’s one of the preeminent stars of English pronunciation online, with a formidable following across YouTube and TikTok.  We spoke to Benjamin about his teaching journey, life in Valencia and Hamburg, and growing his brand as English Life with Benjamin....

Pronunciation is an integral part of learning a language, and there are so many different accents, types of English and ways to perceive phrasing. Ellie Caudwell Casey, a linguistics expert so enthusiastic that she wrote 25,000 words on the /r/ sound alone, tells us about finding an audience online, how drilling into the specifics of linguistics and phonetics can help English learners, and why fin...

We don’t meet many TEFL teachers who start in Iran, take online classes with American universities, and then opt to live and work in Italy. But then, we don’t meet many teachers like Roya Abedi. The definition of a determined self-starter, Roya has used social media and online word-of-mouth to start a very popular English teaching business. We hear all about the IELTS, her motivations to leave Ira...

Johnny Ward is a one-of-a-kind. Growing up poor in Ireland, Johnny made it his mission to make a career out of doing things that he loved. To say he succeeded is an understatement; Johnny’s been to every nation on earth, climbed the highest peaks, rowed across the Atlantic, visited both Poles, dodged bullets in warzones, lived it up in Turkmenistan and so, so much more - and it all began with TEFL...

When he joined TikTok during the pandemic, Michigan-born TEFL teacher Patrick Smith thought it’d be a fun way to kill some time while teaching in Japan. Instead, it turned into an amazing platform for Patrick to share fantastic teaching stories, with over a million followers keeping up with his updates.  We talked about the African-American teacher experience in Japan, using social media as a forc...

How could I Taught English Abroad possibly go bigger than it did last season? How can we outdo ourselves after reaching lots of new listeners, recording in person and even doing some travelling of our own for season 4? Well, it was simple. We stuck to what we do best: great chats with amazing guests.  We meet a man who’s travelled to every country, climbed the 7 summits and visited both poles. We...

The idea of the career changer is something we talk about a lot at The TEFL Org. We like to imagine that teaching English can be a get-out from the tiresome commute, the job that remains unfulfilling, the same old. For Andy Korterling, of Can Travel Will Travel and the Pigs on Bikes YouTube channel, that’s exactly what TEFL became. And while it wasn’t the easiest transition from engineer in Englan...

How determined does a person have to be to achieve their goals? How highly must the odds be stacked against you for you to give up? Sara Alami, an English teacher from Iran, couldn’t have had a more difficult road to where she is now. She’s the co-founder of an Iranian English language school, teaches online to students around the world and has a massive social media following. But nothing about h...

Imagine your first ever teaching experience was in a purpose-built Korean village, where everything was in English. Even if you’ve worked on film or TV sets, or in the entertainment industry in some form, it’d be quite a jarring experience. Well, that’s what happened to Angie White, our next guest, who decided to explore the world of TEFL teaching after some time working in Hollywood. Our second o...

Let’s be clear - the English language can be difficult. Whether it’s on a conversational level, where idioms stalk almost every sentence, or at the academic level. So, imagine navigating English for both casual chats and textbooks when it’s not even your mother tongue? Our next guest, Cecilia Nobre, grew up in Brazil, absolutely fascinated by language. So, she mastered both conversational and acad...

We love confidence here on I Taught English Abroad. The confidence to say “I’m going to be a teacher”, for example. The confidence to travel to entirely new places, either having gained employment, or just going to see what you can find. The sheer - as we call it in Scotland - gallus to say “I’m going to do this, and what’s more, I’m going to be good at it”; we like that. So when we met Brittany Y...

When it came time to pick somewhere to live and teach in South Korea, Ilsa Strough had loads of options. Seoul and Busan, for example, represent two buzzing, sprawling choices where expat communities are widespread and jobs are plentiful. Except, doing the expected isn’t exactly Ilsa’s way. Hear about how she built an online audience, inspired countless others and fought against the stares and the...