ITP - 143: 5 Years of ITP – Cohost Reflections and International Teaching Today

Greg: We could make it a two-hour one, like one hour today and an hour there, and it’ll be the special anniversary two-hour show.

JP: I know, I know. We’ll do a little blend into the next one. Trust me, you guys can be a part of it at the end of this show, right? But we’ll just treat this like our happy, happy birthday. Kent’s got to do the intro because he hasn’t been around, and then that way everybody will be like, “Kent’s back.”

Greg: Of course. She’s the boss. See, she’s still the boss, Kent. She’s still the boss. Can you hear us okay? You look like you can’t hear us.

Kent: What’s the name?

JP: Yeah, but it’s because I have good ideas.

Kent: Yeah. All right, so welcome to the thing that we do. This thing that we do. Glad you’re here. That guy’s Greg or something. I don’t know who he is. That’s JP Mint, and thanks for coming. We’ll see you guys next week. It’s been great. How’s that? That’s about the right intro, right?

Greg: Yeah. That’s a great intro, Kent. What have you been doing? What have you been doing, Kent? You forgot about ITP. You forgot about us, Kent. What have you been doing?

JP: But it’s our anniversary show.

Kent: Listen, I’m dealing with domestic things here. When we get on the air, make sure to ask me about the frogs. Just ask me about the frogs. After we’ve done this “hi, welcome to the podcast” thing, which I think we just did, someone ask me about the frogs.

Greg: What about the frogs?

JP: All right, what about the frogs?

Kent: You know, let me tell you about frogs. Listen, I know this is a podcast about schools and international things, but this is the first time I’ve lived in the United States in a decade. And the frogs, does this happen in Canada, JP Mint? At eight o’clock at night, they just start up, and they’re so loud.

They’re mating or something. I don’t know. Listen, I don’t know what Greg sounds like when he’s mating, but these frogs, I mean, they go all night long.

JP: Are you living near a swamp? Are you living near a swamp or a bog? What’s happening?

Kent: I would wear one of my Shrek shirts. I am wearing green. I’ll give you that. Donkey!

Greg: Welcome to the ITP. This is Shrek, our new podcast host. What’s with the frogs? I mean, Kent, if you don’t put all those insects around your apartment on the ground, then they won’t come and eat them every night and mate and have fun.

JP: Oh my God. No, but honestly, how many frogs? How many frogs would you have?

Kent: It’s not about the way you look. It’s what’s in your heart.

Listen, when I was in Saudi Arabia, we worried about the jets overhead ruining the podcasts. Here in Bellingham, Washington, it’s the frogs. I mean, you could hear them. They’ve traumatized the cats.

Greg: Can we just be quiet and listen for the frogs? Listen for the frogs. Yeah. I can’t hear any.

Kent: I don’t know how to say it. You want to listen to frogs? Yeah, you can. I can hear them. They’re constant. All night long.

JP: No, I can’t hear them, but I could hear your kitty when you first signed on. I heard your kitty cat. One of them. Because you have two now.

Kent: Yeah, she’s wondering what I’m doing. I haven’t done many podcasts since we got two of them, and we can’t have nice things anymore. Someone asked me about the cats. Yeah, this is what you do when you live in the United States. Not these guys. Not these guys, listen.

Greg: You know cats like frogs. Cats like frogs. Why don’t you let your cats out?

JP: Are you getting scratched furniture and stuff now? What’s happening?

Greg: They’re going to come up and lick you. They’re going to taste like a frog. Gross.

Kent: Listen, anything that’s standing gets knocked over. You cannot own nice things with cats. You put a glass of water out, it’s done. You might as well — you know what I do now? I just pour it on the floor ahead of time to save the cats the trouble. I just take the water and dump it right out ahead of time.

JP: I’m a dog person. I did not know this. I watched a whole video of cats just knocking things off shelves, and they would just go “doink,” and then the person would go, “No,” and then they would look at the person and go again.

Greg: Cats don’t worry about that. They don’t even look at it. They just go by and knock it over and keep going.

Kent: They just knock it over. Seriously, they figured out how to open the closet doors, and they just pull everything out of the closet. Listen, we’ve taken these creatures into our home. They belong on some sort of plain chasing things. I don’t know where these things live, but we bring them into our homes, and they sit around going, “Well, there’s nothing to really do, so I’ll go here and just push everything off the shelf.”

JP: Have they done the thing with the toilet paper yet? I’ve heard that as well.

Kent: Yeah, well, they’re too busy dumping litter from the litter box onto the carpet and watching me vacuum because they get a kick out of that. Most cats are scared of the vacuum. Not these guys. These guys can’t wait for me to use it.

All right, so I do have some international teacher things in my domestic subbing. And by the way, if you’re out there teaching internationally, don’t stop. Don’t. Don’t stop.

JP: Don’t go home and stop.

Greg: Don’t go home.

Kent: Don’t stop. Don’t go home. Listen, I’ve been subbing, and shout out to people who have subbed with me and the students here. At least one or two teachers I’ve talked to have said, without knowing anything about me, “I’m thinking of international teaching.” I said, “Well, I know a podcast. But don’t waste your time.”

No, I said, “I know a podcast. I know a podcast you can listen to.”

Greg: Thanks, Kent.

Kent: Why isn’t that JP Mint? She’s pretty good. Why don’t you sign up with her? Don’t bother with the other guy. Don’t bother with the other guy. And buy your meat from Bob’s Maple Meats. Whoever. Buy your meat from Bob.

Anyway, I will say this: based on my very limited experience, I’ll say an N of about three, there is interest in international teaching out there, only as a function of the shape of domestic teaching right now in the United States. I mean, the school district I’m in here in Bellingham, bless them. And if the superintendent listens, because of course he does, not only are they not hiring new teachers, they’re getting rid of the ones they already got. So I wouldn’t exactly call this the golden age for teaching.

JP: I thought there was a teacher shortage everywhere.

Kent: No, no. The teachers are short, but there’s plenty of them.

JP: But I thought they were all retiring, and the generations are getting older, so they are retiring and they need new teachers. No?

Kent: I think what they’ve done, at least in my very limited experience, is they’ve just gotten rid of them. They’ve found a way, even within a teacher shortage, to make do with less and get rid of them.

We have far fewer specialists. When I left the States, we had four or five specialists that the students went to for three or four hours a week. I mean, not as great as an international school. My first year teaching abroad, we had seven and a half hours of specialists a week. That was awesome.

Now they get an hour a day, tops. PE, music, PE, music, kind of zigzag between the two. We used to have art. We used to have technology in the States. We used to have some science. All sorts of things.

Greg: Wow. Your district doesn’t have any music? No music, no art?

JP: And foreign language.

Kent: They do have music. All the schools do have music, but they only get it for a half hour a day. A standard specialist time, at least in Washington State, in the districts I’ve been in, has been at least 45 minutes for a block.

Greg: As an elective.

Kent: You go into music for a half hour. As soon as you’ve done your vocal warmups, it’s time to go.

I think what they’ve done is they’ve cut back on specialists. Now, the high school also has found some very — and they’re very nice to me. If the admin in my little village of Bellingham is listening, you guys are all working your hardest. I get that. But they’ve restructured the schedule to find a way to put larger numbers of students into fewer classrooms. So that’s how they deal with a teacher shortage and not hiring.

JP: Can you move out of the subbing and into a classroom? Is that on the horizon this coming fall?

Kent: I mean, I talk to these lovely teachers. They’re very nice. Someone’s getting hired, sure, here and there, because they put out a newsletter every month where they talk about all the great people who are hired. More power to them. But I’ve met plenty of excellent teachers who are sitting around .2 FTE for the last two or three years and can’t get an assignment, and they’re perfectly fine teachers.

Someone’s getting hired out there, yes, because according to the newsletter, they put their names in there and they get hired. But most people are not.

And the other thing that they do is, I’ll be honest with you, it feels like about 10 to 20 percent of the teachers in my little town are leave replacement teachers with no continuing contract. They get a contract for the year if they’re lucky, meaning that whoever used to have that contract is on leave.

JP: Yeah, but isn’t it one, two years max usually?

Kent: School districts have always known this, and I think it’s just kind of been their little secret domestically, is that they love to put teachers on leave because it gives them huge flexibility to give these temporary contracts and to revoke these temporary contracts. And it gives them huge power over their workforce. That’s how they deal with the ups and downs in the business.

I’ve never seen the district — and bless you, Bellingham, don’t get me wrong, because I’m sure you’re tuning in. The powers that be are tuning in. But they probably haven’t given a real contract to a real full-time teacher in a classroom in gosh knows how long, unless it was extraordinary circumstances.

JP: Yikes. So it doesn’t look like anything is going to change next fall then for you.

Kent: Who knows what changes and what doesn’t change? Enrollment has continued to decline for various reasons. I think it’s the trust in the public schools. The more that public schools have been defunded, the more that our classrooms get packed in with students.

And these teachers are the best teachers in the world, in my opinion, to do what they do in the United States. International teachers are special too, don’t get me wrong. But I want to say that domestic teachers are not worse, and they have harder conditions that they’re dealing with.

JP: What about charter schools? Are you able to get into a charter school situation?

Kent: I don’t really know. We don’t have a lot of charter schools in Washington State. Washington State does have a large number of religious and private schools. I wouldn’t call them charters. Well, I guess they are classical charter schools, I guess. But we don’t have, like in Michigan and some states, where 20, 30, 40 percent of the schools might be charter schools. We don’t have that. We just have struggling public schools and religious private schools.

But what I do want to say is that I don’t think students have returned entirely from COVID. And judging by the trends of infectious disease in the United States right now, it could happen again, gosh knows. But I think enrollment has continued to decline in most of our public schools.

JP: You’re talking about measles. Where are they going? Is it homeschool?

Greg: Homeschool.

Kent: Probably a lot of them are going homeschool. Listen, if you’re being homeschooled and you don’t like your teacher, you’re in big trouble.

Greg: That’s true.

Speaking of teachers, JP, do you know that I actually have a connection to somebody else in Bellingham? Kent says the other day — and I won’t say his name on the air because of whatever — but I’m sitting here talking to Kent, and he’s like, “Yeah, I was in Todd’s classroom the other day.” I’m like, “What?” Todd used to teach with us over here. And now Kent just pulls it out of the air. He’s like, “Yeah, I had to teach in Todd’s room today.” I was like, what a connection that is. How crazy.

Kent: Todd Denton. We don’t talk about Denton.

JP: So he got a full-time job at some point, presumably a couple of...

Kent: No, he did not. He’s a leave replacement, much like, like I said, large numbers of teachers.

Greg: Four years, right? He’s been gone three years? Four?

Kent: Yeah. Year after year, leave replacement. On one hand, it does protect that teacher who is on leave and will, in theory, some year return. It protects her position, but at the expense of someone who probably could use a continuing contract.

JP: For four years. Full time. Yeah, because I always thought it was one to two years max. That’s what I’ve always heard about people taking leaves and then going overseas and coming back and saying, “Is it possible to get another year leave?” And the school saying no, because you’re at your two-year max.

Kent: It used to be. In my experience, my first overseas assignment, I took a leave from my school district, and they said, “Okay, one year.” So I said, “Okay, I’ll take the year.” Then they sent me a letter saying, “Well, your year is up, but you know what? Hey, congratulations, you got another year.” I said, “Okay, I’ll take it.”

Then the next year I decided not to come back. They were like, “Well, I’ll tell you what, we’ll give you another year leave.” So in other words, they have a stated policy, but it doesn’t escape them, the flexibility. What they did in my place is they hired a leave replacement in my place.

Greg: I have an idea, Kent. Let’s see if we can run this by your district. I’ll be your leave replacement. I’ll be the leave replacement’s leave replacement. That way you can find another job and still get credit. I mean, I could see these guys working another job. I’ll be the leave replacement’s leave replacement. How about that, Kent?

JP: This is like Inception.

Kent: Well, then I’ll end up subbing for you as your leave replacement’s leave replacement’s leave replacement.

I will say this: there is a lot of interest in international teaching, to bring it full circle. The very fine teachers that are here stateside — and I think this is important to remember because most of us as international teachers have done teaching in our home countries. I think it’s easy to forget that they’re working very hard and they’re very good teachers, and many of them could potentially be our coworkers in our international schools.

There is a lot of interest in international teaching, but I think there are a lot of people who are not sure how to do it. It’s the same reason why the ITP got started. People don’t always know how to enter into that arena, where to go, what steps they need to take.

Greg: There’s a book about that, you know.

JP: Or two.

Greg: I can’t remember the name of it, of course. Neither can you, ever.

Kent: If only I had an app to help me memorize names to go along with that book. If only there was...

Listen, I’m behind on the episodes. Full disclosure, I haven’t caught the last two or three episodes that have dropped, but my wife tells me that there’s this app. My wife tells me there’s this app out there that I really need to buy that’s going to help me memorize names. Because she listens to the ITP.

JP: Two or three? That’s pretty good.

Greg: Kent, I don’t think you’ve ever heard an episode, have you? Have you ever heard an episode? We’ve just made them for years.

Kent: I don’t even know what we’re called. How am I going to listen?

JP: And we changed the logo. We changed the logo so you can’t even look for the logo with the cat and the parrot.

Greg: You can’t find the app. You can’t even have it pushed to your phone.

Kent: Well, listen, pretty soon we’re going to need an app just to remember the names of the ITP hosts.

Greg: I know, right? I’ve got a special group on my app for that. Exactly. Oh, you’re a gas.

Kent: Right now, he just went to my name and said, “Delete for that one.”

Greg: It would put a big X in front of your name.

JP: Well, that’s five years. Five years since Greg and the original OG family guy started this. Then they brought you on, then they brought me on, then they brought Darian on, and then we brought Hannah on.

Greg: Kent just showed up. Kent just showed up one day and did a podcast interview.

Kent: Yeah, right. I was just walking by, saw the camera on, and said, “What’s going on here?”

Okay, so let’s get caught up a little bit here, because I haven’t talked to the two of you.

Greg: Remember we bought these, Kent?

JP: The lapel microphones.

Greg: Remember we bought lapel mics and microphones? Anyway, I interrupted. Go ahead.

Kent: Hold on. I’m going to get to you in a minute. Hold on, don’t go away, Greg. JP Mint, how’s JP Mint Consulting going? What kind of milestones are you hitting with JP Mint this year?

JP: Well, you know that ITP and JP Mint Consulting actually share the exact same day, April 2nd, but one year off. So I’m celebrating four years. I never actually thought that this would go for four years. And I just signed a three-year contract with my wix.com website.

Greg: Commitment.

Kent: Wow. That is commitment. That has been longer than many of my relationships over the years. That’s a contract plus an extension in the international teaching world.

Greg: Well, we don’t count the voices in your head, Kent.

JP: Yeah, because it was interesting. I got the offer from Wix, you know, “Hey, 50 percent off,” or something else. And I was looking at it, and I thought, you know, let’s just do it. Let’s commit to three more years of this. So everything is going well. Almost doubled business from last year. So that is crazy. It just keeps — I think I heard this — a J-curve? Is that the right math term?

Kent: The J-curve. I like that.

JP: JP Mint curve.

Greg: So algebraic.

Kent: Well, Greg and I just signed a three-year lease on an oil shipping container going through the Hormuz Strait, so I feel like that investment might not be solid, but we’ll see how that goes.

JP: This is going to date this show.

Greg: We have intermittent subs around there too. We can’t get a full-time crew, so we just have to get leave replacement crew.

Kent: Okay, Greg, give us a quick update for you. Because Greg says, “The show is not really about the hosts. It’s about the guests.” I’m like, you know...

JP: Yeah, but the fans, who I count, we like to hear. Greg, what’s the latest app?

Greg: I don’t know about me. I’m drawing to an end. I’ve got about four more months here, and then I’ll be joining you.

Kent: Have you told the ITP crowd lately that this is your deal?

JP: Dad-tirement.

Greg: I have, in a couple episodes. I guess it’s more about me. It’s more about the ITP, you know? I’m going to continue doing it. I’ll go back to the States, but I’ll continue.

Kent: See, there he goes. Greg, you are the biggest deflector we’ve ever met. It’s like, “Greg, how are you doing?” “Oh, it’s really more about the show.” Well, it kind of is, but it’s also kind of about you. Because really, if you weren’t here, there wouldn’t really be a show. So it’s kind of about you and the show. Stop deflecting and tell us about yourself, for heaven’s sake.

Greg: All right. Well, I was born back in 19... I’m just kidding. I woke up this morning and had breakfast. I don’t know. I’m an old guy, that’s for sure. And that’s the other thing. I’m getting close to retirement. Sixty is the retirement age, right? So I’m going to be 57 in June.

Kent: Not 60.

Greg: Not yet. I’ll be 57 in June. That’s pretty good. But after I’m in the States, Kent, I didn’t know if I told you this, but I’ll be looking at a new position. So I will go recruiting next year. I’m going to find someone to do my resume. If you know anybody that does resumes and helps out with finding jobs, I might reach out to them.

Kent: I don’t know. If only we knew a resume consultant in this business. We’ll have to find someone.

JP: Somebody that can help you interview.

Greg: I know, right? I don’t think that person does resumes anymore even, but maybe they’ll give an eye on it and give me some advice. I’ll look for another job during next year’s recruiting season, and we’ll see about that.

So I’m going to golf next year. I think I’m going to take some Spanish classes with Dad.

Kent: Listen, we’re not talking about the Gulf here, okay? This is not a political show.

Greg: No, golf. G-O-L-F. Right?

JP: And the Spanish classes at the local college?

Greg: Absolutely. My dad’s got a girlfriend who’s originally from Colombia. She’s been in the States for so many years, but she came when she was 20, landed in the States, and she’s been there ever since, like everybody else in Florida from Central and South America.

She’s awesome, and he wants to speak Spanish. So I’m going to get him into a course. He’s an alpha learner, right? He studies. Not like you and I ever did, Kent. My dad actually studies. Alpha learning.

JP: What’s an alpha learner?

Kent: Alpha learner. Alpha learner. Go-getter.

Greg: He’s top of the class, valedictorian, all that kind of stuff. I figured the best way for him to learn is to be in a setting instead of Duolingo. Let’s focus on one language instead of 14, learning Hawaiian and Croatian and stuff like that. Let’s focus on the one language that he needs to learn, and that’s Spanish. So he can talk to his cleaning ladies, talk to anybody in Florida. You need to know how to speak Spanish.

JP: We’re going to have letters of apology all over the place. Croatia, Hawaii...

Kent: I would just like to say the ITP officially apologizes to the entire Spanish-language-speaking world.

Greg: Have you ever been to Florida? If you don’t speak Spanish, you’re missing out on half the life in Florida. If you don’t speak Spanish, let’s put it that way.

You think I’m being critical. I’m not being critical of Florida. I’ve lived in Florida. You have to know Spanish to get along and know people in Florida because their population is Spanish-speaking more than English sometimes. There are parts — you land in Miami and you are in Little Venezuela. You go a couple blocks over, and it’s Little Havana. You go a couple blocks over, it might be a Portuguese-speaking community. There are so many languages in Miami, it’s crazy. But Spanish is number one, not even English, I don’t think. That’s my personal opinion. That’s my focus on Florida.

JP: Somebody fact-check and write a Gmail to us. Write an email and fact-check Greg.

Greg: Yes, fact-checkers out there, please.

Kent: As long as we’re doing some fact-checking, I would like to appeal to all the Latin speakers out there. Now, we learned that Greg’s dad was at the top of his class, otherwise known as a valedictorian. What word do you use for Greg and I, who are at the bottom of the class? What’s the Latin word for the lowest student in the class?

JP: Is that a setter? Alpha setter? Or omega. We need a Greek letter.

Greg: What is it? I don’t know, Kent. That’s a good question. We never talk about those, right? We never talk about the underdogs.

Kent: The underdogs.

JP: So Greg, also with Dad-tirement, you have an exciting ITP project. Tell Kent about your ITP project, because we just started to talk about this, I think, the last episode.

Greg: Okay. Listeners, earmuffs. This is just for Kent on the ITP. Don’t listen to this part.

Kent: Am I supposed to listen?

Greg: No, not you, Kent. No, you get to listen.

The idea is I want to do a little in-betweens. We only publish a podcast once every two weeks. I think I’m going to do some kind of retirement show as a child show of the ITP, just with one theme, and that’s retirement after international teaching.

So I’m just going to do a side work there. Maybe I’ll have my podcast go so long, but that’s a birthday idea to grow a little bit for the ITP. Double our income, right?

JP: Double our zeros.

Kent: This is going to sound kind of jokey too, and it kind of is, but I’ll be honest with you. My last year of teaching, I could have done a podcast called The Short-Timers Podcast, and it’s really just me in the chair napping while the students are doing a worksheet. It’s called Short Timer, the STP, the Short-Timers Podcast.

Because honestly, when you put your heart and soul into something for over a decade, and then you get down to the end of it, there’s a swirl of emotions and conflicting sort of, “I really don’t need to work hard, but I will.” I don’t know where that came from, but it’s definitely there.

Greg: Well, I’ll tell you what, Kent, I’d like to get a little bit into this. As a teacher, I know you. JP, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen him teach, but this is a good question following this setup.

I know I’ve had this discussion with people. People are like, “How’s Kent doing?” And I say, “Well, Kent’s having a rough time as a sub because your teaching style — honestly, no joke here — your teaching style is getting to know your students. You have great relationships with your students in a homeroom.”

But now you’re faced with the problem of going into a school where you don’t even know where the bathroom is, much less know one or two kids, much less even know the staff. You’re going into a different school every day of the week, or possibly once every week you’re going to new schools. How do you build a relationship with kids to be that kind of teacher you are? How’s it going?

Kent: Well, I think you just start at the beginning. There’s no other place, right? You start at the beginning.

I will share a conversation I had with one of the principals that I admire here in Bellingham. I won’t use his name. He’s been around when I’ve been subbing, and he’s in and out watching. At the end of one particularly rough day, I talked to him and said, “Well, listen, it was kind of rough out there, wasn’t it?”

He says, “Listen, it’s not you. Let me tell you a story. I’m a principal. I’m in charge of this school. I walk around. I do my job. I run this place. But if I’m a guest principal at another school and I’m walking around, nobody knows who I am, and most of them don’t even care who I am. I’m just like this other guy walking around out there.”

He says, “It’s not easy being the new person in a school. Don’t get discouraged by this.” And I think he’s dead-on right.

When we first show up, you might want to say, “I’ve been doing this for two decades, and I’m really good at this,” which, marginal. I’m not that great at this. But you don’t get that. It doesn’t mean anything. Nobody asks you for your resume. No offense to the resume. But these kids don’t want to know your resume.

JP: Wait a minute. Are you saying you’re not wearing one of those sandwich boards with your degree and then your CV on the back, and you’re walking in with a sandwich board going, “Look”?

Kent: You know, step by step, brick by brick. Some of these kids, they don’t even care. You can tell them how many degrees you’ve got, and they’re like, “Whatever, what is that?”

So it’s one step at a time. I think there’s this idea that it’s all going to get better and better and better the more you do it and the more you get out there. And you know what? There are good days and bad days, just like having your own classroom.

So yes, when you try to build relationships, you’ve got to do it from the very beginning. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Our town is such that I’ll go to the local market, as I do, and then there’ll be a little kid staring at me. I’m like, “Hey, what are you trying to pick a fight with me? What do you want, kid?” And they’re like, “You’re that sub guy.” I never even taught her. I walked past her in the hallway, this child.

JP: You’re like, “No, no, that’s Jared.”

Kent: So I guess it cuts both ways. There are still good days that are still fun. It’s still fun to connect with the kids and teach the kids and things like that. But every day is not an easy day. So yes, when you try to build relationships, you’ve got to do it from the very beginning. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Greg: What a challenge.

I would guess, and maybe I’m wrong about this, that you listen to people a lot more. In my experience, you are a good listener too, as well as a bundle of energy. But if you don’t know somebody, you listen to them. That’s one way to reach out to kids, to give them a little time where you’re not telling them to do something, but you’re listening to what they need.

I would imagine that’s going to work for you. I can’t see any other way. That’s the beginning of a relationship, giving them time and listening. As I interrupt JP.

JP: Well, we didn’t say you were the one that...

No, I was going to ask, how’s Mrs. Cat with the adjustment? Have you seen some signs of very happy to be back, or still struggling with some of the differences?

Kent: I was just thinking about that. It’s not any easier for her than it is for me, or any easier for me than it is for her. We might experience it differently, but it’s still a phase you go through that is challenging.

I was just thinking about this with some of the challenges at my old school that they’re going through currently, which you may or may not know about because of the region of the world it’s in. It’s kind of weird because it’s part of your life for so long, you feel that pain. You kind of wake up in the morning and look at the headlines for no reason other than it’s what you always did.

I think we have these ingrained patterns. You learn the rules of wherever you live and work. You know how things go. You know what you can get away with. You know where the lines are. You just kind of know what to expect. There’s a predictability in your life when you get into the rhythm of it.

Coming back to the States, which is weird, is not being in the rhythm of the life, but yet being from there. I think that’s just another way of expressing reverse culture shock.

I would say it’s challenging. I don’t know any other way around it, unless you’re walking into a situation that’s pre-made for you. I suppose if we were both walking into jobs and walking into large support groups and things like that, that would be one thing. But for us, it’s a fairly new town.

The frogs. I told you about the frogs.

The weather, my good God. Pardon my language, but a cold morning in my old country would have been 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m like, “Well, that’s cold, but okay, I can do that.” It hasn’t been above 32 degrees in the morning for a month. I’m done with that. I’m over the cold weather. When I said I don’t mind the cold weather, I didn’t know what I was getting into.

To make a long story short, yeah, I think it’s probably more challenging than you think it’s going to be, in my opinion.

JP: Well, and that’s the thing. You never know what it’s going to be like until you do it. And then you find out. The common theme that I have heard about people moving back to their home countries is it’s a struggle. It is a struggle.

Kent: It’s a struggle. Listen, what would help my struggle a little bit is if they continued to send me the paycheck they used to send me. If we can arrange that. Nobody tells you that when you stop working, they stop sending you a monthly paycheck. See, I didn’t see that coming. That kind of hit me.

Greg: I’ll talk to HR for you. Let me talk to HR.

Kent: Thanks. I’d appreciate it if you would. I thought they’d just let that one go.

But yes, I would say it’s probably a pretty big struggle. And I would say that it’s probably not talked about enough, because when you leave your school internationally, that’s your support group. You’ve gone from your support group to sort of being on your own. There are not many people to talk to about it, really. So yes, I think it’s very challenging.

Greg: You’ve got each other and your cats.

Kent: I do have cats. Do you guys want cats? I’ve got two of them. They run around and destroy things.

JP: No, we’ve talked about that with other guests, where they miss the community, right? Amy Perrier-Moran, the author of Repatriation, said you miss that community that’s built-in friends and family and support. Now you’re maybe bouncing around from school to school. It’s hard to make friends, isn’t it?

Kent: Yeah, that’s right. I’ve known plenty of teachers who were teaching overseas and never left. They retired from their jobs there and ended up living there for that very reason. So yeah, it is leaving a community. And she’s right.

I can only say that mostly it’s time. Mostly it’s time. And the amount of time, I couldn’t even tell you that yet because I’m still in the middle of the process of getting reacclimated. Talks about the frogs, right?

Greg: It’s not like you’re moving to another school anyway, Kent. You’re going from a situation where you had your own classroom for years. You got to know the staff for years. You knew where the bathrooms were. You had your own bathroom. And your wife was coming in and teaching too, right? Mrs. Cat?

Kent: Yeah, she was volunteering at the school every day.

Greg: And now you’re in a situation that’s fluid. Every day is almost different, and every classroom is different. It’s not like you have one place to go. It’s got to be difficult for you. Trudge on, man. Carry through. I wish you the best with this. It’s not easy. You’re my hero, because I don’t think I could do it.

Kent: Well, there’s a lot of upside too. The air is clean. The water is clean. I don’t have to filter my water four different ways before I drink it. So that’s a plus. There’s rain. A little bit too much rain.

JP: What about — are you done with report card comments? You don’t have to do report cards.

Kent: That’s right. I resigned from my job 30 times, three times a year for 10 years over report cards. In my mind, I’d resign. So yeah, there are pluses and minuses. I think you tend to forget about the things that you gain.

We have a nice place here. We’re lucky we have a place here, except for the frogs. I told you about the frogs, but we do have a nice place. You can edit the frogs out or edit them in. I can invite them in. Welcome to FTP, Frogs Teaching. Maybe it’s just the FP. I don’t know what you want to call it.

What, we’re done talking about the frogs? Is that what you’re telling me? All right, go on.

Greg: Hey, Kent, let’s switch modes a little bit here. Do you know one of the best episodes, still the number one episode, or at least number two or number one, that we’ve had on the ITP in the history of the ITP? One of the greatest episodes. Do you know what it is?

Kent: It’s the recruiting one we were talking in the living room. Is that it?

Greg: Number 18. Kent and I sat down, and we didn’t have a guest show up or something, so we were just like, “Let’s just talk about something. Let’s talk about recruiting.” And Kent and I went into detail about recruiting and our thoughts and what recruiters are looking for.

It’s a great episode. You should go back and, if you ever listen to one, you should go back and listen to 18. It’s like 2021.

Kent: I don’t want to... I don’t know if I recall correctly, but in that episode, Greg and I had just got some new microphones, and we wanted to try them out. So we turned them on just to see if they were going to work. Then we just started talking about ITP stuff and recruiting, and it became an episode. But really, it just started out as a way to test the microphones.

Greg: Yes. Magic. It was magic, and it’s good information. We thought it through. We were just doing it off the cuff, and I think that’s the way ITP has always been. We don’t script anything, and it’s worked. I just thought I’d mention that.

JP: Greg, was that before you wrote your first book?

Greg: No, it was after.

JP: Okay. Because I was going to say, could we say that that episode was the instigator for the book? But no, not so much.

Greg: Well, you can say whatever you want, JP. Go ahead and say it if you want to. The book came out before the podcast. It was February of 2021, on Valentine’s Day, I think, or the day before. And then the ITP was born in April.

Kent: To be fair, the book was probably being written for about 10 years, I imagine.

Greg: Twenty years, yeah, at least.

Kent: When I met him, he was like, “I’m working on a book.” And I’m like, “Well, can I see it?” He’s like, “No, I’m working on a book.”

Greg: Right. And like my buddy Joe says, it doesn’t matter if you’re writing a book. You’re only done when it’s published. So if you can publish it during COVID, you can do anything. I’ve got three books right here. Oh my God.

Kent: Yeah, we’re all writing books here. JP and I are writing books. Come on.

JP: I’m writing a book right now.

Kent: I’m writing a movie. I’m writing a book. I’m writing an opera.

Greg: Well, you know, Kent and I would do other things besides podcasting. We moved on from that. During the times that we were together after school and podcasting, Kent and I used to do flute, right? We used to do flute duets during lunch. I used to have lunch with him and Mrs. Cat when they came, right?

Kent: Yeah, we did. Have you gotten on your instruments lately? Have you been playing?

Greg: I have. I have been playing a little bit, but not as much as when you were here. I’ve been practicing the banjo at lunch, usually.

The reason that we did that at lunch, JP, was so we didn’t have to travel the whole time to get home, which is what? Three minutes. But leaving school and coming back, it’s not my nature. I like to stay there and be ready. In between there, you get more time to do some kind of other activity. I turned it into building or playing music or something. Kent and I would usually do something.

Or Kent had anime during lunch sessions. At least twice a week, he’d have 20 kids in his room learning about anime or doing some other kind of lunch detail. Great classes that Kent would offer for third and fourth graders.

JP: Hey Kent, did you see at the Oscars that K-Pop Demon Hunters’ “Golden” song won the Oscar? Is that anime? Or animation?

Kent: Yeah, I was thrilled. Did you know that one of the producers of that show is Canadian and Korean Canadian? It was a Canadian who won that Oscar, at least part of the team.

Greg: Go Canuckies.

JP: I just know that it’s an earworm. Every time I hear it, I am singing it for days afterwards. I do really enjoy it. But I was wondering, is that anime or is that simply animation?

Kent: It’s animation, but it’s very much inspired by the world of anime. It’s got a very positive message too about what’s on the inside and all that. Great music. Villains who are kind of villains, but not villains, and you don’t really know who the real villain is. It’s great.

You’ve got to hand it to them, to make that K-pop team and hunters appeal to such a wide audience of kids across the world. It’s amazing. I’m in the classroom, and they’re like, “Sing.” It’s amazing. Kudos to them, and they are going to have a sequel coming out at some point. Again, shout out to Canada for being part of that project.

Greg: I had kindergarten singing it and drawing it.

JP: Well, and Korea, because I do remember seeing the speech of the lady that said, “I’m sorry it took us this long to put you into animation so that you would see your face reflected.” I thought that was very touching too.

Kent: That was very nice. And she was crying when she said it.

JP: She wasn’t the only one.

Kent: We still have a problem with Asian representation across North America, to be honest. It’s still a project in motion, let’s say.

JP: In progress. Yes, it’s in progress.

So what’s coming up, Kent? Is pickleball season coming? What’s happening?

Kent: Well, we’ve got some more tennis coming up. My wife Carla’s had some shoulder and knee issues she’s been working on. She goes to PT and works on that, and we’re getting ready to hit the courts again. It’s been a couple months for us.

I’ve got some more classes coming up. I won’t get into all that, but it’s been very busy. From sunup to sundown, life has been busy. I always imagined I’d be — you know, my friend keeps calling up, lives a couple cities away, like, “How come you’re not here? You’re just sitting around all day in your underwear.” I said, “The underwear part is correct, but I’m busy in my underwear.”

JP: You’re taking classes? Is that what I understand?

Kent: I am taking classes at the local college here. One of the local colleges. It’s been very busy. I’m taking a plethora of courses, including math and some engineering-type stuff, trying to keep my options open. Greg says he’s going to be 57 and ready to retire, but you know what? You could have a whole other career ahead of you. A whole other stint of teaching or anything.

Greg: I never said I was ready to retire. I’m not ready to retire. You’re putting words in my mouth.

JP: He’s not ready to retire. He’s retiring one year. No, no, no. He always said he’s going to have to get dragged out.

Greg: Mine’s just a hiatus.

Kent: Based on our blood pressure, when we say we’re going to work till we drop, that could be two weeks. Or less.

JP: Or less.

No, Greg has always said that he was going to get dragged out by his feet, but he is taking one year off to spend time with his dad, and then he is recruiting and he’s going to go back. We’ll see where he ends up. It’ll be very exciting. Hopefully in a time zone that still kind of works with some of our other time zones.

Kent: Well, I’ll tell you what, we’re calling that Spanish because your next job could be a Spanish-speaking country.

Greg: That’s the most difficult thing. That would work well with the International Teacher Podcast. I mean, we have four or five different time zones we’re working with right now. It’s hard to get all of us together.

At the end of this, we’re going to segue into the other ITP hosts, right? And we haven’t been able to get together. That’s why we’re going to have to push two shows together, one without you, Kent, and one with you right now. So we’ll make it happen.

JP: Plus the guest. Yeah.

Kent: We’ve been doing shows for years where we just AI you and put you in. You didn’t notice that we didn’t call you for about a year? That’s what happened. It turns out that the fan base liked the AI version of us better.

Greg: That’s what happened. I couldn’t believe that.

JP: Deep fake women.

Greg: I think they do. I mean, the AI version of Kent, the AI version of Greg. Imagine that. It’d be just the ITP with JP, right? It’s called the JP instead of the ITP.

Kent: You know what? JP might like that version too.

JP: I might just be signing that one up if I could only figure out how AI works.

Kent: Oh boy. So JP, how are things in your neck of the woods? Sorry, that’s the frogs calling. Tell us about your neck of the woods real fast. Give us a quick update on that.

JP: Well, I’m in Mexico. The hot season is coming up, and then rainy season. Then I’ll be celebrating my birthday in September with my mom in Canada for the first time probably since I was a kid.

Think about it. When I was a teacher, when I was a vice principal, when I was a principal, where am I in September? I’m in school. I’m in the country. I’m never going to be in Canada. I don’t know why this never occurred to me these last four years that I’ve not been in a school. Why haven’t I spent my birthday with my mom?

So that’s my big plan, to go back in September. And a certain family member is getting married, and we’re very excited. We’re going to have a wedding in our family as well. It’s not me. There’s no surprise.

Kent: Is it you? News, ITP, hot off the press!

JP: No, that’s the big plan this year. In a few months I’ll be back in Canada. I’m kind of keeping one foot in Mexico, one foot in Canada.

Greg: What about Luna? Is she keeping a paw in both also? Is she going up to Canada with you?

JP: She does. She has a wide straddle. She’s able to come back and forth flying with me on the airplane.

Greg: That’s your dog.

Kent: I know. She just stepped right over the U.S. Just kind of stepped right over.

Listen, JP’s spending time with her mom. Greg’s spending time with your dad. I will say one other change that’s happened since I got back to the U.S. is that my mother has stopped taking my calls.

When I’m overseas and I call, she’s like, “I better take that. That’s my son living overseas.” Now I’m living down the road, I can’t get her on the phone. She’s like, “It’s just that guy. I’ll talk to him anytime.”

JP: Wait, I thought she was in California.

Greg: No, you’re too close to her.

Kent: She’s down in California. So not right down the road, but still. Mom, if you’re listening, answer the phone.

Greg: You’re still too close to talk to.

JP: Text me back, please.

Kent: Either that or I’ll just go hang out with Greg’s dad. He’ll be my new family.

Greg: We’re taking callers. Mrs. Armour, please call in and say hi to your son. Never mind the frogs, Mom. Never mind the frogs.

JP: Oh my gosh, we have missed you. We have missed you, Kent.

Kent: You know, I would imagine this production would get much more professional without me yammering on about things like frogs and whatever else I talk about, anime, manga.

JP: No, we’ve just missed you.

Greg: Well, your animation AI has been doing great on the show, Kent. A very small show, but you haven’t heard episodes recently.

Kent: I cannot... I’ll be honest with you, there are some things that I’m not ready for. AI voiceovers, I can’t deal with them. The big thing now is they do animated commercials, and it’s just their way of saying, “We don’t want to pay actors.”

Not only that, but you can have an animated podcast. Hola, ¿cómo está? Me llamo... God damn it. Right?

Greg: They do animated podcasts. They do complete AI podcasts. I won’t listen to them. I’m not going to listen to them. Are you? I’m not going to listen to them. I refuse.

Kent: No, you can do it. I won’t even get into it. I am excited about technology, but this is one aspect of technology that doesn’t excite me. I’m still excited about human beings.

Greg: You know, Kent, we have people writing into the ITP as agents and managers for guests. I can tell an email that’s written by AI immediately, because what they’ll do is they’ll start with a paragraph that goes through almost a perfect summary of one of our episodes. And I’m like, there’s no way they listened to that episode if they did that perfect summary. There’s no way. And then after that, they’ll praise us.

Kent: And that’s right. Then I love at the bottom of the letter that summarizes the bullet points of the letter they just sent you.

Greg: Right? They’ll be like, “Oh, we were listening to episode 18, and you and Kent are absolutely amazing sitting there talking about all things recruiting. And by the way, we have a guest that we’d like you to have on the show.”

And I’m like, nope, nope, nope. It’s not going to happen. I just send them back an email, usually saying, “No way.”

Kent: JP, this does not include you, but I think this could be our version of the CAPTCHA. If we just ask that same AI, “Which one of the two hosts, Greg or Kent, is better looking?” the whole system is going to come crashing down because no AI in the world can answer that.

Greg: Right. Confusion. Nope. It’s a loop. There’s no way to answer. The answer is neither. The answer is JP.

JP: Well, I think at this point, I don’t know if anyone is still listening — AI or human — but I wanted to say it has been amazing to see you. We really do hope that we see you again, that you come back in the fold anytime when it works with your schedule, when it works with your pickleball and tennis and college classes and subbing. We do understand you’re busy, and we do appreciate you taking the time this evening.

Kent: Well, that’s very nice for you to say. And I will say that you guys have a very lovely new host with Hannah, right? Did I get the name right? I got it right, right? I’ve interviewed her twice.

I met them at the airport on the way home. We converged in Dubai one year. They were flying out of whatever area they were flying out of, and I was flying out of my area. We had just interviewed them for the first time, and we were hanging out at the Dubai airport. So you’ve got a very lovely co-host.

Greg: I forgot about that.

JP: Still one of the best baby COVID taxi border stories ever. Definitely. I even have it written down: 99 and 136. I have it written down on a little Post-it next to my microphone. Episodes 99. Go listen to that episode for sure, for one of those stories.

But yes, we were very happy that Hannah could come and join us. Greg was saying something like, “Boy, if all five of us actually happened to show up at the same time as a guest, and let’s say the guest was two people, that’d be seven windows.” That would be a little crazy, but I’m up for it. Let’s try it. Let’s see what that looks like.

Kent: Well, listen, with the five hosts on there, the guests will be like, “Well, maybe I can come back next time and talk.”

Greg: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you’re wrapping up.

Kent: Oh, I forgot we had guests here. How are you doing? Thanks for coming.

JP: Well, I’m kind of wrapping up because I’m thinking, you know...

Greg: Oh, well, we still have another two or three hours with Kent on the line. What are you talking about? I haven’t even hit record yet. I thought we were just planning this out. I didn’t even hit record. What are you talking about?

JP: We’ve got a double episode.

Kent: No, let’s go ahead and wrap this up. Once you’ve cut out the frog stuff, you’ve got about five minutes of material here.

All right. Well, you guys are beautiful. You’re lovely. And I will say hi to the other hosts. And now I’m out. You guys are great. I will see you, no doubt.

Start Part 2
JP: Hey everybody. Oh my gosh, I think I just blew everybody’s eardrums. I came in hot. I came in hot.

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the International Teacher Podcast. I am so excited because today we are celebrating five years — five milestone years — of the International Teacher Podcast.

I am joined with four hosts for five years. First of all, we have Darian, long-lost co-host Darian in the house.

Greg: Woo woo!

Darian: Good to be back. Good to see you. You have to make it for the five-year anniversary.

JP: For those that are listening, they need to hear you as well as see you.

And then we are also joined by our latest co-host, Hannah. Hannah, the better-than-Family-Guy family gal.

Hannah: Hi.

JP: And of course we are joined by the host with the most, the original OG founder of ITP, Greg the Single Guy, wearing his “Go Patriots.” What is that?

Greg: Oh my God. It’s the Green Bay Packers, JP. And by the way, I’m so sorry that we kicked you so badly in the Olympics. First time since the 1980s. Sorry, Canadians.

JP: Them be fighting words. I know.

Hannah: It’s okay, JP. I call them the Green Bay Pukers.

JP: I know. I’m going to tear up a little bit here.

Greg: We’re going to ignore Hannah for a second, listeners. She’s just jealous.

Hey, it’s good to be back, JP. I never thought it would be five years. Most podcasts, from what I understand, last for five or ten episodes. Would you believe that? And we’ve been on the air since 2021, every two weeks, basically. We have to thank our listeners for that, and our guests.

JP: I just quickly looked at the spreadsheet, and it’s over 140 episodes. So when you say five to seven episodes, it’s amazing, the content that we’ve — and I say “we,” I’ve only been here a few years — but that is amazing.

Greg: And it’s amazing because we have, I think, 500 followers on Apple. I think we have 400 on Spotify. We’ve got a few on YouTube. Most listeners listen to podcasts. It might take off if you want to see us on YouTube, that’s fine, but listen to our beautiful voices and hear what we have to say.

A couple more stats for you: we’re probably over 65,000 to 70,000 downloads since the beginning, and our listener base is over 140 countries, I think. That grew a lot because the first year it was like my mom. That was the podcast right there. Mom. And I couldn’t put her on as a guest because she was back in the U.S. at home. She never traveled as a teacher. Even if I did put her on, she doesn’t want to listen to herself, so it didn’t work out that way.

JP: One per episode.

And now we have five co-hosts, along with Matt, sixth guest host. Anytime he wants to come, Matt, we love you, we miss you, and we think that would be amazing if he ever did come back.

But with Kent, who is quite busy in the U.S., it’s very tough to find a good time because he is substitute teaching, and he’s getting reacquainted with the U.S. system. But he has not left, folks. He’s here. It seems like it, but he’s here.

Darian, give us a little update. What’s been going on in the world of Darian? This is a great time to get to know what has been going on.

Greg: He teaches eight days a week, seriously.

Darian: We’ve been plodding along happily, as many things in Saudi Arabia tend to be about routine. We went home for the summer. We’ve returned. Everyone’s a year older. My daughter is 12 now, so I’m looking at her and she’s in those preteen stages. I’m nervous, scared, apprehensive — all the synonyms.

Her coming into her own is beautiful to see, but it kind of makes you nervous that your princess is turning into a young lady. My life has been consumed with trying to make sure I’ve been present and there, creating conversations and spending time, to ensure that our relationship is strong as she comes into her own.

Kids are growing up. I just came back from Amsterdam, which was really neat. I took a little trip out there. The boys are getting older, becoming young men. It’s just been a hodgepodge of experiences and trying to take some time to enjoy every single one. It’s been neat. But I’ve really been taking this time to be present with the family and the kids.

JP: That work-life balance is always something we’re chasing, isn’t it? And in your case, with a number of kids and with a wife as well to balance in there, having some time with her too, that’s the challenge we’re always looking for.

Darian: Yes. I went to Amsterdam because my wife went to Amsterdam a couple of months ago. We try to refill our buckets by taking these individual trips. We have trips and things we do together, but taking these individual trips is something that we put in a little while ago to try to get somewhere independently.

Because we’re international, a lot of places we go, we go as a family. Sometimes the most difficult part is trying to find time to refresh yourself because you’re always putting your family first. It was neat to just travel with a friend of mine and do some things you can’t do as spontaneously when you have a family.

We went to Amsterdam, went to Bijlmer, which is kind of like a suburb. It was amazing. It was a city that was trying to almost reinvent itself. We talked to a bunch of entrepreneurs, random entrepreneurs in Amsterdam, who were building up businesses and trying to pour back into their communities.

It was probably one of the most influential trips I’ve taken because it wasn’t necessarily touristy. It was just these small conversations from entrepreneur to entrepreneur to entrepreneur for about four to six hours.

JP: Was it a conference or something you attended?

Darian: No. We went looking, and as we were looking, we would just stop at a store.

It was neat. We started our journey at this store where the country of Amsterdam — they support art and they also support entrepreneurship. They have these stores that are empty, and every two weeks they get new entrepreneurs to come into the store.

We went in there, looked at these entrepreneurs, talked to them, bought some product, and tried to support. They led us to another lady who was creating a jazz, R&B, hip hop, Soca recording studio where people can come in and record and use her equipment, and just pay for those fees.

Then she told us about her vision of what she wanted to put into the community, where they would have almost like a restaurant with live music. Then she called ahead to this guy named John, who spent some time in New York, and he had a DJ studio where people could come in and utilize his equipment in order to livestream.

I didn’t know it — 40 is on my back, so I’m a little disconnected from the youth — but a lot of people, if you have a live recording, you could just put that in your background. You can play that at your party because people are DJing and switching and entertaining in an area, but to millions or hundreds of thousands of people on TikTok and Instagram. You can just put that as your background, and you can actually almost be at the party.

So the opportunity to utilize this equipment — it was that over and over again, which was really neat as we just had these conversations with these people.

Greg: Let’s dig into this a little bit then, Darian. Did you cut a tune for the ITP in the background, either at the DJ booth or in the studio? Did you cut a new tune for us?

Darian: You know, I mixed it up. I put my thing down, flipped it, and reversed it. But John is producing it.

Greg: 2027.

Darian: I’m telling you, it was five-year anniversary and everything. He says it’s going to take him some time to produce it, put it in the autotune. He has some guests dropping in on the track. I got you.

Greg: I like this story. I like the way we’re weaving this story along. What a great trip you had. That’s just the best trip, when you go off the beaten path and do something you would not expect to have done. Love those trips.

Darian: Yeah. And I have to say, if you ever go to Amsterdam, there’s the tourist spot, but you want to go to Zuidoost, southeast in Bijlmer. You have to go. It’s live. It’s really diverse. It was diversity I didn’t expect to see in Amsterdam. It was just a surprise and a very welcome one. It was really nice.

JP: Very cool.

Hannah: I have a question. Did you happen to get the names of some of these entrepreneurs?

Darian: The one man was named John. And the thing about it was, that 40 on my back hurt me because the first question people ask is, “Will you follow me on Instagram?” And I don’t have an Instagram account.

I was just thinking to myself, there are opportunities to connect with people. So I remember John. I took some pictures. I don’t remember the young lady’s name, but I have pictures. Now I’m on Google trying to reverse image search to see if I can find these people.

One thing I struggle with is recording memories because I like to stay in the moment. Oftentimes I won’t have my phone. I won’t have anything. I’ll just be there in the moment. So that’s one thing I could do better with, just connecting and maybe getting an Instagram account so I can follow these unique, amazing people.

Hannah: If you ever do find their names, send them my way because I have some Dutch heritage on my dad’s side. I guess I do have some relatives still in the Netherlands.

Greg: I thought you were going to say you have some money to throw around with us as an entrepreneur.

JP: To invest. Hey Hannah, have you ever taken a solo trip? I think this concept is fascinating. Good for you, Darian, for thinking of it and proposing it out there. Greg and I, that’s all we do, our solo trips.

Greg: It’s the opposite, though. I have to really think about it and put it into my trip schedule, if you will, to go and see family. I really have to take that time to make sure that I go and spend quality time with my family instead of going traveling all the time. I’ve been doing a lot better with that for certain reasons in the last couple of years. But going forward, I’m going to be more proactive with that.

One of the things I’m going to be doing soon is I’m going back to the U.S., not even necessarily to see my family. I will, but I’m targeting one of my friends. I’ve never gone back before just to see a friend, a whole trip. I said, “You know what? I’m not going to Europe.” I was going to go to Germany and see family, but I’ve got a friend that I need to see. So I’m going to go back and do that.

But Darian spends a lot of time with his family, and it makes it richer to go off on that solo trip. It’s probably better for your marriage and better for your family. My little brother and his wife always had date night. They got so busy and separated with their family — they had five kids — so when the kids were younger, they started doing date night. He was a doctor, right? They did date night once a month, and it was a priority for them to stay together as a marriage and as a family. It worked great.

Maybe Hannah will get to that point. I can’t remember how old your kids are, Hannah. They’re a little bit younger, and Darian’s at a point where his kids are a little bit older and easier to manage, I think.

Hannah: Yeah, but we do have scheduled date times out where our nanny takes care of the kids, and then we go out and have some us time. Most of the time it’s just going to a restaurant and grocery shopping, but occasionally JP jumps on and helps us with recruiting. Remember that, JP?

JP: Yeah, I remember. I was on the date night. I was on the iPad date night, and I went, “What the heck? This is not supposed to be the content of your date night, a JP Mint video call.” But yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Greg: I have not heard of something like that. That is hilarious.

JP: Darian, feel free. You and your wife can have a date night with JP Mint as well.

Greg: Listeners, when you’re out on date night with your significant other, just call out to JP, and she’ll talk with you and get you through the date night.

Hannah: Okay, I should clarify this. We were in the process of recruiting, so we were talking shop. We had a meal beforehand, and then it was like, “Okay, time to call JP,” and hash out details of our CVs or whatever we were doing.

JP: Well, that’s what happens when you’re recruiting. That almost takes priority. Where are we going? What are we going to be teaching? Where are we going to be living?

But Hannah, tell us a little bit about your family. For new listeners who may not have heard your previous episodes and your intro episode, they’re going to be listening to this anniversary and go, “Wait, what happened? We’ve got a new host?” So Hannah, give us the elevator pitch.

Hannah: My husband and I have been married 10 years now. We were college sweethearts. We hit the ground running, I think a couple months into our marriage, with international teaching in Brazil first.

Then we moved to Kuwait, and we had our first kid in Kuwait. He’s six now. He’s our COVID baby, right on the cusp of COVID. We have a crazy COVID baby story that goes along with that. That was episode 99, I think. It was our police story.

Then we moved in the midst of that to Texas for a couple of years because we thought that was a great idea, and it turned out it wasn’t. We had our second kid while we were in Texas and then decided, when he was three months old, I think, that we were going back to Kuwait. Actually, I was super pregnant with him when we decided, but when the paperwork was all said and done, I think he was about three months old.

Then we lived in Kuwait for three years, and now here we are in Pakistan and loving it so far. So that’s kind of the quick elevator pitch of my family.

JP: And for listeners, what is interesting for us is you’re both an adult who works internationally, but you were also a kid who went to an international school because your parents were missionaries.

Hannah: Yes, correct. My parents were missionaries in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which is how we got our first international teaching job. It was at the school that I attended. That’s also a funny story. I graduated from there, but I didn’t really graduate from there. I ended up back there.

JP: Wait, what do you mean? You didn’t graduate from high school?

Hannah: Do you guys want another police story?

JP: Yeah, we need them all.

Greg: Hey, we need police stories on these episodes, of course. Darian, you’re next.

Hannah: Okay, so this is from my teens police story. When I was a month into my senior year of high school, my parents went to do visa paperwork stuff. We were in Rio at the time. They went to do visa paperwork, and I guess they had changed the way they were doing visas that year. For some reason, we fell through the cracks.

My parents went when I was at school, and my dad said he remembers seeing the head of immigration, who we had kind of made friends with, stamp deportation stamps on our visas. They gave us a week to get out of the country.

They were like, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing you can do. Your visa’s up in a week. Get out.” So we did. Of course, we contacted a lawyer at first to try and figure out what our rights were, but at that point it was like, okay, there were no rights.

My parents gave me two suitcases and told me to pack as much as I could. A few days later, I found myself in Des Moines, Iowa, because we had lived in Des Moines when I was younger, and they thought it would be easier for me to restart there.

I ended up technically graduating from the high school in Des Moines, a public high school. But my parents were able to get all the visa paperwork sorted within a couple of months, so they moved back to Rio. I stayed with some friends and did my graduation ceremony in Des Moines. Then I flew down to Rio and walked in the graduation ceremony there as an honorary graduate, and was handed a blank diploma.

JP: So that you could be with your friends that you’d grown up with.

Hannah: Yeah.

Greg: Like a blank piece of paper? Or did it have your name on it? Like they ripped off a piece of notebook paper and put a little bow on it?

Hannah: I mean, it was rolled up. They were all blank. They had rolled them up and done the fancy bow, and then they gave the diplomas later.

Greg: I don’t even remember my last two graduations, so that sounds good. At least you got a blank. At least you got something out of the deal.

JP: And you, in fact, graduated from some form of high school. So that explains how you became a teacher. Otherwise it’d be like, “How’d that happen?”

Hannah: Yeah. So I don’t know if I claim that I graduated there or not because it was an interesting time.

JP: But later you went back as a teacher.

Greg: That’s a great TCK story and part of our little family here, to hear that you are our only TCK. So you have a whole different view on this show compared to the rest of us. I love that.

JP: If anybody follows Hannah’s Instagram, it’s a combination of mom of boys and “I drink coffee.” Every now and then there’s sort of the Brazilian Venn diagram. It’s like three circles: coffee, Brazil stuff — although there’s an overlap there — and kids. So yeah, it’s always interesting watching.

Speaking of Instagram, Darian, Hannah’s really into Instagram and shares a lot of fun reels.

Greg: We’re hoping that Hannah’s going to take over the ITP Instagram because we’ve been failing with that. Listeners out there, fans of the ITP — I don’t know if we even have any...

JP: Once her master’s is done. Once her master’s is done.

Hannah: Actually, I’m trying to get my Instagram up and running as a traveling-with-kids, international teacher, expat mom type — whatever you want to call it — Instagram. Who knows?

Greg: Nice. And then wait, world, here comes Darian. He’s going to be Instagramming soon.

Hannah: I’ll help you out, Darian.

Darian: I’d appreciate that.

Greg: Once we figure out what kind of phone he has.

JP: Greg, you’re not on Instagram, are you?

Greg: I think I’ve been on Instagram for like 10 years, but I have no idea when the last time I posted was. I did it for my nephews and nieces when they were into it. That was like a hundred years ago.

I’m too busy with other Instagram accounts and other side gigs. I don’t really prefer Instagram. It’s not my gig. I don’t even like Facebook that much.

JP: I love watching the reels. I love following people. But as for creating content, I just screenshot or make a photo collage in PicCollage or something.

I’ve even had a tutorial with my cousin’s daughter, who uses Instagram for her business with her husband. Brown Paper Things, shout out to Brown Paper Things on Instagram. I did a tutorial with them to try and figure this out, and it still didn’t take. How do I do reels? How do I do stories? What is this thing? What do I do exactly?

Hannah: JP, you could use this for your JP Mint Consulting.

JP: I know, but Greg even asked me, “Go and post this on Instagram.” He gives me the shorts from these Riversides, and I’m like, “I don’t know how to do that.”

So now we have an Instagrammer on our staff, Greg, and we can definitely look into that.

Greg: I’ll double your salary, Hannah. I’ll double your salary.

Hannah: Okay, good.

Greg: That’s right.

Hannah: By the way, for listeners, if you want to follow me, reach out to That Expat Family.

JP: That Expat Family. There we go. Yes.

Greg: Well, there you go. We can plug you for that. And when Darian gets his Instagram going, we’ll get his going too.

Darian: Follow That Expat Family. Follow.

Hannah: Yeah, he can be That Expat Dad.

JP: Ooh, you could be That Expat Dad, Darian.

Darian: Better Than That Expat Family. We’ll see.

Greg: What?

Darian: When it comes to posting, I’m nervous because I feel like you have to consistently do it. I’m always nervous about when to post and how it is content. Is it something you have to commit to? I don’t know. It boggles my mind.

Hannah: I mean, you don’t have to.

Greg: I think it matters whether or not you’re trying to make a business out of it, or whether you’re just trying to share with your friends, family, and people who care. If it’s a focus for your business, your side gig, or your hobby, then consistency matters.

But if not, and it’s a spur-of-the-moment Instagram, I think that’s great too. There are a whole bunch of people in the world who just post on Instagram when something great happens, or something sad happens, or they want to reach out to somebody.

That’s just my opinion from looking at a few Instagrams. I can’t get addicted to Instagram reels because the last time I got addicted to something on my phone, I sat on my toilet for two hours playing Candy Crush.

JP: Oh no.

Greg: I was on like level 700, and I realized I’d lost all feeling in my legs. I had been sitting on the toilet for two hours. Not seven. Two. And I deleted it from my phone, and I never went back.

So I would rather do more productive things. It’s addicting. But to answer your question, Darian, you can post as much as you want to. There’s no rule about when you can post. They won’t take away your account.

JP: Instagram will give you feedback. I don’t know if they do this to you as a non-business account. I am a business account. JP Mint Consult, I think, is my Instagram handle. I clicked over to business not knowing what I was doing, and then that immediately meant I couldn’t use any real music.

Now I just have fake music, and it’s so bad because when I think of something and want to use that little tune or that little song, I can’t find it in my list because I’m now a business.

Greg: You need to reach out to a few entrepreneurs in Amsterdam, and you could find a couple people making some music for your background. Talk to Darian. He might find the name of the person. He’s got a picture on the phone.

We’re bringing all this conversation together. We like to do that on the show, right?

Hannah: I just posted right now.

Greg: While multitasking.

JP: She posted while we’re... I don’t even know how to turn my phone on while we’re doing this. That’s too many things at once.

Hannah: It’s us.

Greg: Well, listeners, this has turned into a hobby, side-hobby, side-gig thing. What international teachers do when they’re not on a podcast. This is pretty interesting. I like it.

JP: Let’s get back to updates. We’ve got Darian’s update. Greg, we haven’t had an update about you for a while. I’m looking back at our list and it was December. But since December?

Greg: There’s not much to talk about. I think I announced that I’m going to live in Florida for a whole year with my father, which is funny because it’s dadcation, or Dad-tirement.

JP: Dad-tirement. Yes.

Hannah: Which, by the way, you need to create an Instagram for and then hashtag Dad-tirement. You’re going to go viral.

Greg: I can’t wait for you to do that for me. You’ve got such experience. I’ll triple your salary.

That’s what I’m going to be doing. I know the school is going to be sad. Darian’s going to be sad without me. I’m going to go spend a year with my dad.

I guess an update would be that I just signed him up for a college. I reached out to Florida State University to see if we can get Spanish classes. He’s a retired doctor. He’s 83. I think he would learn Spanish better instead of Duolingo if he had something in front of him, like a book, and we talked to some college students, even some nice-looking women, get my dad all going on that kind of stuff.

Talking in Spanish with real people and getting a textbook open, learning vocabulary. I think that’s going to work because he’s got two maids who are Spanish-speaking, with very little English. He keeps pulling out the Duolingo phone when he’s trying to talk to them about what else needs to be done. He fails at that.

He’s trying to focus on like 15 other languages, but his girlfriend is originally from Colombia. That’s my new mission. I’m going to get my dad into a college course. I’m actually going to take a course in Spanish too. I’ve never had an official course before. I learned on the streets, which is going to be fun. And we’re going to spend time together.

Hannah: Greg, why not learn Portuguese? Because Brazil. They have a very big population of Brazilians in Florida.

Greg: Because my dad’s girlfriend is Colombian, speaks fluent Spanish, and he’s missing out on this. If he’s doing it, I’m going to do it.

I literally don’t need to go and learn Spanish. It would be fun, but I’m going to be well ahead of everybody else with speaking. I’ve never taken a college-level course. I’m not talking about a Berlitz course because I don’t think that would be very beneficial.

I’m looking into a university course where we actually go and sit down three days a week for an hour or whatever, and have to submit things for a grade. I think my dad, as a super learner — he got through medical school and all that stuff — would probably thrive with that kind of mission.

I threw that warning shot at him to see if he’s interested, and he said, “Bring it on.” So I’m like, yes, I can’t wait. That’s my update.

JP: Nice. And a field trip to Mexico would be a great thing for both of you, just to check out and be able to practice.

Greg: Well, we’re nearly there. We’re in Florida. It’s like we’re almost there.

JP: You’d have two bedrooms with your names on the door. I would even make plaques. I would say, “Greg the Single Guy” and “Dr. LeMoyne, Dad of Single Guy,” and have those put onto your rooms.

Greg: I appreciate the invitation. We might have to couch surf. Although my father’s not really into doing a lot of travel right now. He’s more focused on staying. He’s closing his house up north, selling that, and he’s going to settle down. I think he’s just going to settle down and sundown down in Florida. He’s got his golf going.

I need to improve my golf game, which is sad because I have a golf course right here within walking distance. I can see the lights from my apartment at night for night golf. I need to go out and golf, but I’m just not a golfer any more than Darian is. Darian doesn’t golf. I don’t think we’ve ever talked golf.

Darian: I was waiting for you to point me in the right direction.

Greg: Well, it’s that way, Darian. I haven’t been in your apartment, but it’s exactly like every other one around here, so I figure it’s probably that way.

JP: The only time I’ve golfed — my brother is a huge golfer, and I really wanted to get into it — I have only golfed when it’s been one of those charity golfs, where you do nine holes and drive from hole to hole and rent your equipment. By hole three, I was like, “Do I have to get out of the cart now?” Because the drinks are happening, and you’re just getting lazier and lazier. By nine, I was like, yeah, I’m done. I’m out.

Hannah: That sounds like my trip to golf.

Greg: Can I give you a golf story while we’re on this here? I used to live in Cairo, and I had a contract at the American International School in Egypt. I’m one of those guys who worked at one of those schools. They have like nine schools around the Middle East. ESOL schools.

And Darian, check this out, man. You may not be a golf guy, but I know you guys might not be golf people. But you’re pyramid fans. I bet you both fangirled the pyramids. Not pyramid schemes. The Giza, the OG pyramids.

There’s a nine-hole golf course right near the pyramids. One of these other teachers and I had like four guys carrying our golf clubs and our beer, and we were in golf carts. They were walking behind us. I don’t know how many degrees it was outside, but we’re golfing right near the pyramids.

I’m like, “All right, I’m going to knock it off Khufu and right into the hole. I’m going to knock it off the pyramid and right into the hole. Hole in one.”

I have pictures of me swinging a golf club and missing the ball, but behind me is this picture of a pyramid. The Great Pyramids of Egypt. It was fantastic. I don’t even remember. It was nine holes. I don’t know what I got. I can’t really count golf. It was an experience.

Not really that detailed of a story, but I was there, and that’s an international teacher story right there.

We do have some golf courses in Saudi that are like oiled-down sand. They put a little piece of grass to drive the ball when you start off, sort of like putt-putt golf. They have a little square of grass, and you knock it off. The green might be a little bit of green around the hole.

But our golf course on our camp compound here is an 18-hole golf course with grass. They water the hell out of it, which is crazy. Think what you want, but it is great to go out there. You see the desert foxes crossing the fairway at night. It’s beautiful. I love desert foxes. They’re all over here, although they do eat people’s cats and dogs.

JP: Jeez. That went a different direction.

Greg: I know. My mind goes that way, though. Sorry listeners. That’s just the way I’ve been for years, and you’ve listened to me on this show for a lot.

JP: Hey Hannah, wait. I thought Hannah had a golf story. Can we just check in with Hannah?

Greg: Okay, Hannah, do you have a golf story?

Hannah: I mean, I have a golf story I stole from my husband, but is that close enough?

JP: Two-point connection. Yeah.

Hannah: During the 2016 Olympics in Rio, we were living there at the time. I was actually back home in the U.S. for a little bit right at the beginning of the Olympics, and Jake got to go see golf at the Olympics. We got cheap tickets.

JP: I didn’t know it was an Olympic sport.

Hannah: Every time they have a new Olympics, that country that is hosting gets to choose three new sports. Brazil decided to choose golf, which is hilarious because if you know Brazilians, they are not quiet.

So Jake is there with a buddy, and they’re being quiet, and all the Brazilians are being super loud and cheering every time someone knocks it in the hole. Everyone’s shushing them, and they just did not get it. They were excited to be at the Olympics, and they were going to cheer for it.

JP: That would be my kind of crowd for sure. I don’t think I could shut up enough to be watching and not be reacting.

Greg: It’s like a scene out of Happy Gilmore. Thank you for having golf during the Olympics in Rio that year. I appreciate it. Thank you to the committee, whoever decided they could do that.

I think if we had our own choice, we should have beer pong for the U.S.

JP: Speaking of Olympics, I was happy to watch the curling teams.

Greg: Canada lose?

JP: That was very disappointing in the hockey, but the curlers were really interesting. The Canadian who got some flack for being a little bit vocal when he was accused of touching the rock as it was crossing the line — that was the famous touching of the rock.

But with AI these days, we don’t know what we’re watching. We don’t know if it’s the real thing.

Greg: That’s the sport where they have big toothbrushes, right? The game with the big toothbrushes on the ice, and then they have this thing like a big shuffleboard.

No, we don’t have curling. There is absolutely no curling in Wisconsin whatsoever. I have no idea. I just thought I’d say that.

JP: I call BS on that. Anybody from Wisconsin, please reach out if you are on a curling team so you can let Greg know. It’s got to be. Minnesota, Wisconsin, all those northern states. It’s huge in Canada. Every little town has a curling...

Greg: Well, if you’re in Wisconsin at all listening to this, please reach out, because that would be a heart attack zone for me right away. And we’re not including my family.

Hannah: By the way, fun fact: Brazil became the first South American country to win a gold at the Winter Olympics this time. And guess what? It was a TCK.

Darian: Really?

JP: And what was the sport?

Greg: Did they not graduate with you?

Hannah: No, I think they must have gone to a different school somewhere else. His name was Lucas Pinheiro Braathen. He’s Norwegian, so he’s Brazilian-Norwegian, securing victory in the Giant Slalom event.

JP: Slalom. You’re showing your Arabic pronunciation.

Greg: That’s the one with the big flags where they’re going around the flags down the mountain. That’s interesting. But are you sure they didn’t just recruit him?

JP: I think he had a Norwegian parent and a Brazilian parent.

Greg: This has become the most interesting episode of the ITP ever.

JP: It’s all over the place. We were thinking it would be nice to talk about the podcast, but we’re just talking about everything else.

Greg: I’m impressed because I haven’t followed it. Let’s go back to... I’m just kidding.

Darian: We do want to hear about what’s been happening in your life, JP. You didn’t give us an update on your life.

JP: Well, I’m back in Mexico. I had a three-month hiatus of Ontario visits in Canada, as well as Christmas with my mom in London. We flew into London around December 15th. Not the UK trip, but the Paris trip was a surprise.

Greg: It was a surprise for your mom, right?

JP: Yes. My brother and I surprised her with an extension to the UK trip. We did Paris, and we had a blast. We planed, trained, and automobiled our way through the UK. We visited three of the four capitals because the UK is actually made up of four, dare I say, countries. For the Scots and Welsh and Northern Irish out there, they feel like their spaces are also countries.

We visited London, Edinburgh, and Cardiff in Wales. That was my first time in Wales, which was crazy. Listening to Welsh, I think I’m listening to something that sounds almost like Arabic. It’s very guttural. It comes through the throat a lot. To see it written on signs, you’re like, “Wait, where’s the English on this sign?” because there are so many consonants with Xs.

That was interesting. We got to drive through Wales. We just missed Northern Ireland on this trip because it’s actually on a different island, but we did manage to see quite a bit. My mom and I got along really well despite the snoring in the hotel. Not me. Her. My earplugs came in real handy. But she knows. She wakes herself up.

Greg: We apologize, Mommy Mint. We’re so sorry that she brought that up on the worldwide episode of the ITP, brought to you by Mama JP Mint, Mama Snoring.

JP: Mama Mint. She knows she wakes herself up. She’s like, “What was that?” And I’m like, “That was you.”

Greg: Does she yell at herself? “Stop snoring. Stop snoring.”

JP: She’s like, “Who just woke me up?” You did. The freight train that’s coming through this hotel. That was you.

But no, it was great. Mom kept saying it was her last trip. We’ll see if that happens or if I get to convince her to do another trip in a year or two.

Greg: What a great update. And now she’s back hard at work again. Ladies and gentlemen, the recruiting season is still going on, and you know that’s her side hustle.

JP: Hard at work?

I’ve been seeing a lot of new articles. Stacey Stephens put out an article in the TIE online newsletter, and I think Kelly Riding, who was on ITP with us a few years ago, posted on LinkedIn. People are talking about how the recruitment season is no longer just November to February. It really is all year long, and schools are hiring all year long.

Even in February, I’m still getting a lot of clients getting offers. I think they’re seeing that turnover is happening. If somebody says, “I got a job,” now that school has an opening. If that happens in February, then they’re searching in February.

Darian: What are two more trends that you’re seeing? That’s one trend, that the recruitment season seems to be lengthening and becoming less of a season and more of recruitment continuously going on. What other trends do you see in the international teaching arena?

JP: I can state that the job fairs are really back. What I saw this year from clients who went to job fairs is that they got job offers. That personal, face-to-face is definitely back after COVID. It’s important, if you can, to get yourself to a job fair and have those face-to-face meetings.

More often than not, clients were successful when they got to job fairs. For the first time in years, I joined two job fairs. I got to see a couple of job fairs in Toronto because they were there while I was there. I signed up with ISS, and I was there to help people navigate offers and interviews. I was constantly pushing everybody, “Go back in that room and get two more interviews.”

Greg: We should have started the episode with this. What? You went to a job fair? That’s excellent. You know that’s my passion. I love it.

JP: I went with my pens. A very good friend in the UK gave me this for Christmas: JP Mint Consulting pens with an iPad boop-boop thing. So I was handing out pens. I had QR codes for people to scan.

I wasn’t there as a candidate, even though I had a candidate lanyard. I was there to help.

Greg: You were consulting. You were supporting.

JP: I didn’t want to take away from ISS or do anything to disparage that organization. I was just there in addition, trying to help teachers.

Teachers came from all over to join this ISS job fair. I spoke with people from Arizona and Oregon. I was amazed. You flew across the country to come to Toronto, and of course it was minus 20 Celsius or something.

Greg: Were there a lot of expats from overseas too?

JP: There weren’t as many as I expected. I was surprised that it was a lot of local Toronto teachers who managed to come and find out about this. I didn’t meet a lot of people who were already overseas, maybe two or three in my day.

Greg: Follow-up question. Did they still do some interviews in the hotel rooms? The last ISS I went to, they had a lot of them in those sub-conference areas, multiple people having quiet conversations in these open areas. It’s trending farther and farther away from being in a hotel room. That’s the scary thing. Finally. I was wondering when that was going to happen.

JP: ISS was being hosted at a private school, Branksome Hall, which is affiliated with Branksome Hall in South Korea in Jeju. They’re separate schools, but they have a sort of sisterhood. They were hosting. The interviews were happening basically in that big hall because it was big enough and spread out.

I also attended the Search Associates fair, but not as an official attendee. I just kind of hung out near the washrooms. Sometimes I was near the buffet.

Darian: Need a mint?

Greg: You’re hanging out in the bathroom? It’s like a wedding crasher.

JP: Not in the bathroom. Near the bathroom. Because I didn’t get to sign up, so I was off to the side, trying not to be too noticed. But I had clients at that job fair I wanted to support. Because I was in Toronto, it was a no-brainer.

I got to speak with a lot of candidates who were nervous, and I was giving them good energy and feedback: “You can do this.” Even in the washroom sometimes, I was like, “Power move. Put your hands on your hips, stick your chest out. You’ve got this.” And ladies were doing it. They were like, “Yes, I will take any help I need right now.”

Greg: Have you been to that great workshop? JP Mint’s in the bathroom giving advice. She’s in part two now.

Hannah: Are you sure it’s a workshop or not just a crazy lady?

Darian: And wash your hands.

JP: They got a pen out of it. This crazy lady. They kept saying, “Who are you?” I’m like, “I’m JP Mint. It’s all right. Just go get your interview done.”

That one was in a hotel. However, I believe all the interviews were happening in the big ballroom and also in the cafe and things nearby, like the hotel lobby. I don’t think they were taking them up to the hotel rooms anymore. I think that trend, thankfully, has been put to rest.

Greg, you remember walking in sometimes and the bed wasn’t made, or the breakfast tray, the half-eaten breakfast tray, was sitting on the desk. It was just weird.

Greg: I have a thousand stories about that. It didn’t bother me.

Darian: Whoa, whoa. Wait one second. So Greg, let me paint this picture. You were going to an interview, and a person or group of people was leading you to isolated bedrooms with unmade beds and half-eaten sandwiches, and you interviewed?

JP: Mm-hmm.

Greg: That’s one of my favorite stories. I’ll reflect on this for a second. It didn’t happen all the time. A couple times it did happen. Recruiters in the past used hotel rooms, and I don’t know if some still do. According to what I’ve heard about recent ones, they’re held at big hotels, and there aren’t enough conference centers to have 900 people and private conversations.

So every recruiter would have either a suite — like our school at the last one I went to, we were in a hotel suite on the top floor corner with three or four rooms and a living room — or they were just tiny little hotel rooms.

When I was in Bangkok, Thailand, I spent four days at a job fair, ISS in January of I want to say 2008. I was looking for a job. I was in Kuwait at the time and had flown to Bangkok. It was a week-long or five-day event. I was doing interviews, and the majority of the time I sat downstairs in the lobby not hearing anything, because at the time that was basically a couples fair early in January.

Anyway, I went through several interviews, and the one I remember most is from the last day. Everybody’s flying out, including all the recruiters. They’ve filled up their dance cards. They’ve got their recruits. They’ve got everything done.

I went up for a last-day interview, tail between my legs, like, “I’ll have to take Mongolia. I don’t want Mongolia. It’s not the right fit for me.” But I got an interview with Cambodia for the International School of Phnom Penh. The elementary principal calls me in, and we set up a last-minute interview. She’s looking at everything I have and says, “This is great, but you need to talk to Rob. I think he’s still here.”

So after an hour-and-a-half interview with her, I follow this woman upstairs. She says, “I think you’d be perfect for tech, not just elementary. I think you’d be a great teacher, but we need you for tech. I have to check with Rob.”

Rob was a great, great leader, and he was upstairs. I follow her to Rob’s room, knock on the door, and Rob’s putting stuff in his suitcase. I swear to God, this place looked like it had just had a bachelor party. Cigar butts around, a dirty glass, bottles everywhere, food everywhere, bed not made. He’s putting stuff in his suitcase on his way out the door, and she says, “I’d like you to meet Greg. Do you have a little time before your plane?”

He sits down with me. I had a brutal interview with this guy. No holds barred. Talk about transparency. You better be transparent with everything on your resume. He looks at my resume and, short story, I had only spent one year in Cairo. I broke contract at this second school and went to Kuwait, and I was going from Kuwait, hopefully, to his school.

He looks at my resume, turns over the other side, and says, “So tell me about Cairo.” And I’m like, “So tell me about this party.”

Anyway, I told him what was going on and explained it to him. He’s like, “Fine.” And yes, the room was not set up or anything. I said, “Did you have a party last night?” He goes, “Yep.”

Then he said, “I’d like to offer you a job. I think you’re great for it. I can read you right now. I’m good with people. I know you’re the right person for this job. I’d like to offer it to you.” I said, “Okay.”

I said, “Did you have a party in here last night?” He looks at me and goes, “Well, yeah. That was for all our new recruits, all our new teachers. We had a party last night.” I’m like, “Oh, I just missed this whole party.”

But I was literally in this dump of a room that had not been cleaned, and he’s leaving. So that’s the old way. I’ll include a little story like that in my book, but I’ll have to modify and update my book now about the process of getting through a job fair successfully, because a lot of those are happening in more public areas in small conversations.

It was the norm back then, and we’re talking 2001 all the way up to COVID. It was still standard practice to go into a hotel room. They’d put little chairs outside of each person’s door where they were interviewing. They’d have an open-door policy. If you asked them, “Could I please leave the door open?” they would.

Usually the hotel staff knew what was going on. The conference center knew. They would target the people interviewing candidates and get their rooms set up in the morning right at breakfast. So when they came back upstairs, the room was immaculate. There was a desk. You sit in the double chairs. It worked really well, if you got past the fact that you were in a hotel room with a stranger with the door closed.

JP: Hannah, have you had that experience? Because we haven’t talked much about your experience in job fairs.

Hannah: Yeah. When we went to GRC in Bangkok last year, most of our interviews were either in the lobby, in the lounge, or in the ballroom. But I don’t know if it was GRC or the hotel, but the hotel ended up kicking the GRC fair out after day one. Not kicking them out of the hotel completely, but they needed the ballroom for a different event. Everyone had to shift out into the lobby.

I did have one interview in a hotel room, which was interesting because it was one of those hotel rooms where they’ve got a sitting area and then the door that leads to their hotel room. Still, I thought it was interesting because the person I interviewed with ended up posting later about something that happened to them at a different job fair. A harassing comment was made, and they posted about it on social media.

I know it’s not the same because they were just doing interviews and we had gotten kicked out, but it was interesting how hosting interviews in the hotel room could open up that can of worms.

Greg: It’s a scenario you don’t want to be put in necessarily. It was accepted for a long time. I don’t know if it still is. Even in Iowa, at UNI, hosted by the university, they had a convention center, and the hotel right next to the convention center was where they had their hotel room interviews for years. I haven’t been to one for a while, but I have been to six job fairs over my career.

JP: So even though it’s at the University of Northern Iowa, it’s not on campus. It’s in a hotel?

Greg: It’s in Waterloo. It’s in a different part of the city.

Anyway, sorry you got me sidetracked on that one, Darian. It’s my favorite.

JP: Because he has a book that’s all about job fairs. It’s like half of your book, Finding the Right Fit.

Greg: It’s interesting that you say that in the past tense, JP. “He had a book.” It’s still alive. My mom read it twice. Seriously, I had one fan.

JP: You had a book. Well, yes, you have a book. But you wrote it, so it’s past tense. And Hannah owns it, right?

Hannah: I read it.

Greg: I have two books, and then I’ll have a children’s book coming out next year. It’s going to be awesome.

JP: Darian, have you ever done the whole job fair thing?

Darian: Yes. I had one experience where I went down to South Carolina or Charlotte, North Carolina. I forget which one. And I didn’t get asked to go into the bedrooms. I don’t know if I wasn’t anyone’s type.

Greg: You’re jealous.

Darian: Yeah, I didn’t get invited to any bedrooms. We had regular chairs, boardrooms. I’ve been to a job fair. The first one I went to was in Charlotte, and it was neat. It was a lot of people.

When I went to the UAE, we were onboarded with, I think, 1,500 people. It was massive.

JP: Wait, onboarded meaning the school itself hired 1,500 people? Or the school district?

Darian: In Abu Dhabi, the district. When you were hired in Abu Dhabi, they brought everyone over at one time and then dispersed you. We came to Abu Dhabi City, and they brought everyone. They did all the instruction and onboarding, getting your Emirates ID, your furniture allowance, all these things.

Then they split you up into whether you were staying in Abu Dhabi City or moving to rural Al Ain. We got moved to Al Ain. I think they shipped more families to Al Ain because it was more of a suburb, and a lot of people stayed in Abu Dhabi City.

That was my only job fair, and it was neat. We just made it into a trip. I took the family, we stayed in a hotel by ourselves, I went to the interview, interviewed, and came on back.

It was fairly straightforward, I think, because of the job you were interviewing for, which was a public UAE school. They wanted to know more about discipline procedures, whether you were able to hold attention, what you could do for engagement, and how you overcome language barriers, rather than diving deeply into the curriculum.

JP: Ministry of Education.

Well, as I said, I think the job fairs are firmly back, which is interesting when you think of all the technology we have now with Zoom, Google Meets, Teams, and video calls. The face-to-face is definitely back. It’s an interesting take on bringing the world into one location.

You have all these different schools and countries being represented by one or two people. Typically, at each table, there was one or two people from the school. It might be a head of school, a principal, or somebody from HR assisting with applications.

It was also very cool to see that Mexico had only one school at the ISS fair, a school I’d never even heard of actually, the American School of Durango, and it had a lineup going out the door. Everybody wanted to go to Mexico, and I was really excited to see that. I never even got to meet the woman who was there. She was by herself, and she was bombarded by candidates wanting to interview with her. I just saw her round the clock, constantly interviewing.

It was nice to meet people face-to-face that I have LinkedIn connections with, and then make more LinkedIn connections as well. So it was interesting.

For a third trend, Darian, to get back to your original question, I keep hearing that there is a teacher shortage. The world is having a teacher shortage. A lot of teachers are burning out or wanting to move out of the classroom and maybe into consulting or coaching. But despite that, I think this year was a tough year to be recruiting.

I don’t want to say a lot of clients, but I have some clients who have struggled to get traction, to get interviews. You hear things like, “I applied to 50 schools, and I haven’t got one interview yet.” That’s disheartening.

I also wonder how much AI is changing that, where AI is scanning CVs and cover letters to see if you even make the pile of the pile of, “Yeah, maybe we’ll take a look with human eyes.” That’s what scares me: if AI or an applicant tracking system is looking for keywords in your documents and then spitting you out before even a human looks at your things.

Darian: Really? Hmm.

JP: So that’s my take on this year, and it’s not over. That’s the beauty of a year-long recruitment. It’s not over, and a lot of people are still getting interviews. We’re still seeing positions open up even in February.

Darian: It sounds like, if you can, it’s best to make it in person. That’s what it sounds like from what you’re saying.

JP: I definitely recommend it now, having seen it in action and having seen a lot of my clients make the trip. It’s an expensive trip sometimes if it’s across the nation or across the world. It’s hotel, flights, food out. And if you’re bringing a family...

Greg: But it’s also an investment in your career. It’s well worth the investment. I think it means a lot. People used to talk about getting hired over the phone instead of seeing them in person, and that was crazy to me. A lot of us are proponents of job fairs and meeting face-to-face because it’s an investment in your own career.

Darian: You can hear more of that in Finding the Right Fit by Greg.

Greg: Thank you, Kent Armora. The funniest thing about that, Darian, is that Kent always ends the show. If you listen to the earlier podcasts, he’s in so many episodes where he brings it to a close, and he never gets the name of my book right. He always screws it up and adds letters. He’s like, “MBBA, BSA, BFF...”

JP: Gregory F.R. LeMoyne.

Let’s wrap this up by talking about the next year. This is the anniversary show. What is the next year going to look like for the International Teacher Podcast? Everyone’s dying to know. Greg, Dad-tirement, are you still going to be hosting? Are you still going to be editing this podcast?

Greg: I really don’t think anybody cares, but yes, I will be.

JP: Of course they care. We’re all wondering.

Greg: I’m with this podcast until I don’t have a heartbeat anymore. Let’s put it that way.

JP: So all our diehard fans can put that to rest: Greg will continue. First of all, he has to edit this because I don’t know how. Hannah, do you know how? Darian? Kent? We don’t know how to edit this, so he has to.

Hannah: I can learn.

Greg: The other thing is I do have another hope, and we’re going to have to discuss this and get permission from a lot of people. But I would like to write a book based on stories and advice given by our guests over the years. We have a whole collection of advice, and to put that into print would be exciting. But we would have to have a lot of different permissions.

If you’ve been on our show before as a guest, you might be getting an email in the next couple of months about that, so we can get started if people are interested and would like to help out.

That’s one of my interests in doing this. We will hopefully continue to do video and audio. We don’t hear enough from our listeners. I’d like to hear more from our listeners. Maybe that’s on us. We need to reach out more. We need to maybe answer more questions and reach out in different media.

One of my goals for this year — and not so secretly now that we have Hannah — is Instagram is going to shoot up. It’s going to grow. Those are just some ideas.

JP: I’ll put the responsibility on me. The Facebook group is still there, but it’s just not as active simply because I dropped the ball on being able to introduce the next episode every two weeks. I found it very difficult to keep up with that because of my business.

Hopefully people are still enjoying the camaraderie in that group. There haven’t been many posts recently, so that’s something. It is hard to engage with our listeners when we don’t know where they are, who they are, or if they’re not sending us emails.

But they can reach us at — what was our email address again, Greg?

Greg: I think go back and listen to the episode in the middle of the show.

JP: Come on. I think it’s InternationalTeacherPodcast@gmail.com, right? And I believe even on itpexpats.com, we have a Contact Me button, do we not?

Greg: Correct. It’s ITPexpat with no S. That is our website address.

Darian found out today that we have a website, so welcome to the website, Darian. I have to dig into you a little bit because you’ve gotten back on the show. I love having Darian back. That’s the other thing I was going to say. And having our newest host, Hannah, on here is so much fun. We’ll get Jake on here too.

But I do miss Kent a lot, which brings me to a promise to our listeners. We’re going to redesign the show calendar a little bit for our guests, but also to modify it for our co-hosts. For future guests, we’re going to modify our calendar and open up the window for interviewing so we can include our guests.

Darian is a family guy, and he needs to be in our time zone. He needs to be in the evening, and it hasn’t always worked out, or not enough. So we’re trying to juggle. We have just three time zones with the four of us here. Soon we will have four time zones when I move to Florida next August, and we have Kent, who is now in Seattle. We are dealing with a real finagle here. It’s a tough little puzzle if you add in the guest with their time zone.

JP: Which is like two time zones behind me.

It’s good to explain to the listeners why sometimes they don’t see some of us, because of the time zones. This was supposed to be a 45-minute episode, and it’s just a monster of an episode.

Greg: If they lasted this long, this has been one hell of an episode. Let’s wrap it up this way. Let’s say a little one-minute pitch for each one of us. Something they’re going to do between episodes. I don’t know. What do you want to do?

JP: How about our favorite episode or something? Since this is the anniversary, think back. Hannah’s a fangirl. I’m a fangirl of the show. What are some things you remember?

Darian, have you ever listened to an episode? You could just bring that one episode up if you want. I’m just wondering, because he already said he’s not a fanboy of anything.

Greg: You called him out. He makes episodes, he doesn’t listen to them. He’s not a podcast listener.

Darian: I need to listen more in-depth to the roots of the show to get a feel. I think my favorite episode was the one I was on.

No, I think I need to go look and really have an in-depth look so I can really give back to the podcast appropriately. The times I have been on have been awesome, and I look forward to year five. I look forward to being up here more. I look forward to the guests and learning as much about teaching and moving and maneuvering internationally as I can.

JP: Yeah, year six actually. We’ve just completed five, so we’re going into year six.

Hannah, what’s an episode that stands out to you?

Darian: And we’re off to six.

Hannah: There are a lot of good episodes. I would have to say any episode with Greg and Kent and JP on it, when they’re bantering back and forth and it’s a good chuckle. That’s a good episode.

Greg: Awesome.

JP: I’ve got to say, I liked the ones right from season one and season two when Kent joined. I think he joined halfway through season one maybe, where it’s just been the three of them. I think Kent was really a proponent for host episodes like this, where we don’t have a guest and we can just banter back and forth.

I always liked those August and September ones, Greg, that you guys posted. What did you do over the summer, and what does it look like starting a new school year? Being out of the school year, it felt like, “Oh, we’re starting a new school year.” It was exciting.

Greg: Since I’m the one doing the episodes here, Darian, you were on number 43. That was back in 2022. Episode 43. Darian was on as a guest, and you need to listen to his because he came to the UAE with a crockpot, and that’s all he needed. That’s all I’m going to say. That is a great episode. You need to get to know Darian that way.

Hannah, you were on 99 and 136. Episode 99 is the greatest baby story across borders you’ll ever hear. JP Mint joined us on episode 38 and episode 50. Episode 50 was a special one because we had just had our second anniversary, and JP had her business for one year, right? Did I get that correct?

JP: Yeah, and now we’re in our fifth year. That’s what’s unbelievable. That was three years ago.

Greg: I feel old.

So this is my chance, as a founder and creator of this with Matt, to thank all three of you for joining our show as co-hosts and adding so much flavor to it. I miss Kent. I miss Matt. If we get them on the show, it’ll be even better.

Right now, we have a great show even without guests, which is not a dig on the guests. It’s more like a thank you to the three of you, and Kent and Matt. We never thought it would come this far. I totally appreciate all of our listeners and fans out there, our fangirls.

You can see the trend here. If you’ve been on our show, sometimes you reach out and say, “Hey, we need another co-host.” When we’re wowed by somebody and they have a personality, we’re like, “This person’s got to be on the show again.” If not, we can get them as a co-host.

That’s been a lot of fun. It’s come a long way, and we just have to thank you as co-hosts and thank the guests who listen to us. Even if they’re in Australia binge-listening to us — there’s a guy who listens to us. I can’t remember his name. Pedro.

JP: Pedro in Melbourne. And also shout out to our Canuck in Nova Scotia who listens to every episode on his commute.

Well, I think this is it. I’m calling it your outro.

Greg: I think that’s it.

This has been the wildest episode in a long time from the International Teacher Podcast. I’d like to thank Darian. Thank you, Darian, for being on the show again. You can find him in his house, usually in his daughter’s closet when we record. I think he moved into his own study now. His kids are asleep.

I’d like to thank Hannah for joining us. She and her husband, Jake, are in Pakistan. Hannah, thank you for being on the show. You can find them in Pakistan or playing golf in Rio.

JP: That Expat Family. Sorry, That Expat Family on Instagram.

Greg: Excuse me. You can find her on That Expat Family on Instagram.

And JP Mint, I’d like to thank you for joining us, and as always, JP Mint Consulting for your great consulting needs. You can see her in Mexico to get your pen.

I am Greg the Single Guy, and you can find my books or my new apps or something like that somewhere online. Just Google me or something, and we will see you next episode. Thank you very much.
JP: Yay!