Welcome to Students Incorporated, a podcast exploring the topics of business, education,
technology and design.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
Join me weekly as my team and I produce content that's informative, positive, fun and uplifting.
Episodes include student conversations, interviews with thought leaders and inspirational stories
with an international flavor.
This podcast is created and produced with the help of students from the International
Community School of Bangkok.
In today's episode, we welcome a guest named Mr. Sean.
He's somewhat of a celebrity teacher here at ICS.
We get to hear some of his story and he'll also be sharing about his new class called
Senior Transition.
But before we get into our first segment, let's hear our quote of the day and get some
headline news.
Our quote of the day comes from Robbie Schell.
He is quoted to have said, transitions in life can offer opportunities for discovery.
Transitions in life, whether big or small, often presents us with opportunities for self-discovery
and personal growth.
These transitional periods can take various forms, such as starting a new job, moving
to a new city or even going through a major life event.
While transitions can be challenging and accompanied by uncertainty, they also provide us with
a chance to explore new aspects of ourselves, learn from our experiences and step outside
of our comfort zone.
Our Global News headline reports the education of thousands of Ukrainian students being disrupted
because of the war in Ukraine.
With schools being hit by Russian missiles, students now have to pursue online or independent
learning.
The Ukraine government has been trying to remedy this situation by building classrooms
into metro stations where it is safer.
However, the damage caused by stress and lack of educational facilities have negatively
affected around 50% of Ukrainian students' language and mathematical abilities.
Onto our Business and Weather news, El Nino, a climate pattern that warms ocean surface
waters and brings hotter air and drier climates inland that changes global weather patterns,
could possibly devastate crop yields in Asia.
Rice, which is the main staple food for much of Asia, has seen an increase in prices over
the past few years due to events such as the war in Ukraine.
However, with a possible decline in rice production because of El Nino, these prices may further
increase due to a decrease in the supply of rice, which impacts lower-income households.
And finally, easing into our Local Business news headline, Bangsak and Esso, two large
energy companies in Thailand have closed a deal in which Bangsak purchased Esso for 22.6
billion baht, expanding its 1,361 gas stations into 2,193 gas stations after the purchase.
Additionally, Esso will also pass its experience in technology over to Bangsak, which will
benefit the company greatly in its future endeavors.
Thank you for our quote in the headline news.
Now let's jump into our first segment with Mr. Sean.
Welcome to the podcast, Mr. Sean.
We're happy you could join us.
Could you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, so I teach ninth grade.
My class is geography, so I get all the ninth graders.
This is my 11th year teaching.
I taught seven years previously in Kenya, and then it's my fourth year here.
Our first question for you is, if your life had a theme song, what would it be?
I feel like I need to pick something relevant that y'all would know.
What if I went with maybe Antihero by Taylor Swift?
But actually, I can't actually say that.
I think I'm going to pick something that maybe is similar.
I'm going to go with a band that people may or may not know called the Avid Brothers.
They have a song called All My Mistakes, and I'd say it's kind of similar to like Antihero,
where it's like this idea that I've made all these mistakes, but I don't regret them.
They've helped to lead me to where I am now.
That's really cool.
I know Antihero, so I'll have to check the other one out.
Yeah, you should.
That's all right about Taylor Swift.
I like some of her music too.
Okay, the next question is, what is the best gift you have ever received?
Okay, another tough one.
So I have this one gift that stood out to me when I was in, I think I was in high school,
and I think it was a girl that I was dating, and she knew that my favorite candy was lime
green skittles.
Not the green apple ones, but lime green.
I think it's the best artificial flavor in the world.
She collected for me over months and months every lime green skittle she could come up
with, and she gave me a bag of like 500 lime green skittles.
Okay, and our next question for you is, would you rather have a personal chef or a personal
trainer and why?
Yeah, I think I've actually thought about this a lot before because I think both would
be amazing.
I think that I am like enjoy working out enough on my own and like motivated enough to do
that on my own and know a little bit about it that I feel like I can do an okay job of
that.
But like in terms of cooking, I feel like I would get more out of having a personal chef
who is making me like good food, healthy food.
And I like actually would still love to help out with this.
Like I want to be there and like cut stuff and be a part of the cooking process, but
have them like plan out really healthy meal.
Alright, so we got one more kind of lighthearted question.
If you wrote an autobiography, what would be the title?
Or if someone else wrote the autobiography, what would be the title?
I feel like that's a tricky question.
I actually feel like I would, I'm going to kind of rebel against this question.
Like had being well known enough that I was there was a biography about me or I was writing
a biography about myself, like to be that famous sounds terrible to me.
So I like rebel against ever being that well known.
Like to, I just would hate to walk around and have people knowing me everywhere.
So I just, I feel like it's my own journal and I just keep it for myself and nobody else
ever gets to.
Yeah, that's really valid.
I feel that.
Alright, and now jumping to one of the classes you teach, we heard your geography class includes
the Cousine Project.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah.
So in class, one of the things that I need to do with my students is like a research
component.
So I kind of was thinking about like, okay, if we have to research something, what, how
can I make this as fun as possible or maybe the least painful as possible?
And I figured we all like food.
And so what we do is each student will pick a country and they will do research on the
food from that country, the cuisine from that country and how it's impacted by geography,
whether it be the physical components of geography or the culture of that, of that country.
And so they'll research that, write a paper on it.
But then every person will make a dish from that country and we'll have like this big
international food day.
So it's like a big celebration of ending that research unit and we get to eat a lot
of really good food.
It is so much fun.
I remember when I was back in ninth grade, it was a lot of fun.
And now I think I did Portugal and Portuguese egg tarts.
They were good.
I think it was my, the top point to my cooking.
We can say that.
And for the question that I'm sure everyone across all the grades have been dying to hear
to know the answer to what was your favorite dish from all the years the students have
done this.
It's so hard because every year it's just like there's so many that are good.
I do feel like a couple of years ago, Magnus made like these Cubanos.
I was, he was in my block.
I remember they were really good.
So that year there was like somebody, I forget who it was, but they made like a borscht,
it's like a Russian dish that was really good.
But maybe the one that stands out to me through all my years was back in Kenya.
I had a student who brought in like a full out like cheese fondue.
Oh wow.
I felt so fancy.
Like it was really, really good.
I'm feeling kind of hungry right now.
I love cheese fondue.
All right.
So the last question of this segment is what's one of your favorite memories from your teaching
career so far?
There's something that I remember.
Yeah, it was maybe like my fourth or fifth year teaching in Kenya.
And I remember going to a play.
I think that it was like the student play.
I think they were in the musical actually.
They were doing the whiz.
And I remember there being this like dance scene and there was like 40 or 50 students
all out like dancing on the stage at one time.
And I remember just having this sense of like overwhelming pride.
I was like, I know all of those students and I just, it was so much fun.
I just remember like my heart welling up with pride and it was so cool to see.
And I think it was just one of those moments where it was just like, I love what I do.
I love that I get to know these students and see that they're doing that.
And it makes me excited because this is my fourth year now teaching here.
And so now like because I teach all the freshmen, I really know like most of the students now.
And so I'm like really excited for sporting events and going to the play this year and
just getting to be like, oh, I know like almost all of these students and get to have that
experience here as well.
Yeah, for sure.
That's really heartwarming.
And with that, we'll be right back after a short announcement.
One, two, three, four.
Hey students, I have good news for you today.
We have no school tomorrow.
No school tomorrow means we get a day off to relax and have fun.
You can sleep until noon and watch sports on TV as long as you want.
Speaking of sport, our school varsity volleyball team is having lots of games next week.
I can't wait to support our team and cheer them on.
Enjoy your day off.
We'll see you soon.
We are back with part two with Mr. Sean.
We'll be diving into some of his teacher journey as well as finding out details about a new
class called senior transition.
Okay, our first question is how did you get into the career of teaching and what led you
into the subject of geography?
I was one of those students who went to college and had no idea what I wanted to do.
Just felt so uncertain about what the future held for me.
So I just happened.
I had a thing in college called work study.
So you just could get a job on campus.
And so where I went to school, I got a job at an elementary school.
It was like a lab school on campus for kids with like really minor learning disabilities.
And I got the job.
I was in charge of lunch and recess.
But that experience of being at that school while I was like my freshman and sophomore
year of college, the initial thing that really like drew me to teaching was watching the
teachers and kind of their off time interacting with each other and that like kind of community
of teachers and hearing them kind of process what had happened in the day and talk about
the students and talk about their classroom.
And there was something about just that community that really appealed to me.
And I kind of loved being around it.
So that started to really get my mind thinking like maybe this is a career for me.
So then also with geography at the same time, I just was going through my prerequisite,
like classes that you have to take core classes the first three years of college.
And I took a geography class.
And it wasn't because I was particularly interested in it.
I remember thinking like, I don't know what we're going to learn in a college class about
geography and really quickly I realized like, oh, I love this.
Like I just loved the way the teacher taught it.
I loved the content.
It was my favorite thing.
And so I remember not really knowing what career I wanted to do with it, but I just
wanted to tell everybody about how much I love geography and how cool it was.
And so I kind of felt like, oh, teaching is that.
Like teaching is just me trying to get other people excited about this thing that I'm excited
about.
And so I felt like, oh, I can get paid to just talk about how much I love geography.
And so that's kind of how those two things I think kind of came together.
That's really inspiring.
And on the subject of teaching, where have you taught at and how is ICS different from
those places?
And so I did like my teacher training in my first few years working was at a public school
in America, in Texas.
And so I never really had my own classroom there.
I wasn't like a full time classroom teacher, but I was like a substitute, full time substitute.
So I was on campus every day interacting with kids.
And then in 2011, I moved to Nairobi, Kenya and I taught at an international Christian
school and I was there for seven years.
So then now I have taught here.
I would say that the school in America was very different than the school here.
Yeah.
So it's hard to even make comparisons of what would be the same.
It's just such a different experience.
But I would say the school in Kenya and the school here are very, very similar.
It's like the same type of school with it being like an international Christian school,
students from many different places.
And so like Kenya being a Christian country, I think I had a lot more like Christian students.
And so parts of the Christian component of the school were a little more like open.
Like during chapel, we sang worship songs and like there was a bit of that.
And I would say that the students in Kenya, it's also like a very academically driven
country.
Like the students there really had a lot of the same pressures that their parents put
on them of like, you need to achieve a lot.
And you can be a doctor or a lawyer or an architect or like stuff like that.
But I think that in a lot of ways, there wasn't like that school didn't have the same level
of like academic intensity that I experienced here.
So I think it was like similar, but a little bit like less intense in that way.
The other thing I think that I would talk about is the students there were like more
extroverted.
So my classroom often was just like much louder in kind of like, yeah, students just much
bigger kind of outgoing personalities, where I think the Thai personality is a little bit
more like polite and introverted.
And sometimes I'll ask a question and I know like students know the answer, but like you
won't as loudly like talk about it.
I would say like I've really loved teaching at both.
Like the students feel so similar, like these really wonderful students who take their academics
really seriously.
I think in both places, like I've experienced the sense that like, students see me as a
teacher that's a person and not just this like robot, non human thing.
I think it's been really important to me.
And then with both of them, like working with teachers, other teachers that like teaching
is a calling and we like love what we do and it's not just a job.
I think both of those have been really like great places to work at.
Did you teach geography there as well in high school?
Yeah, so my job there was different.
I did teach geography, but I also taught AP US history, a model United Nations class, like
as a class, I taught a class called Christianity and culture.
I taught an economics class.
So there I taught like a bunch of different things one time each and here I mainly teach
geography a bunch of times.
All right, so let's go back to that subject of Kenya.
What was it like living in Kenya, an African country and what were some of the major cultural
differences between living there and moving here and kind of comparing the two?
The thing that I always talk about when I like mentioned living in Kenya first and foremost
is just like the weather was the best weather in the world.
Like it was I lived in a house that didn't have any air conditioning or heating.
It was like not a super insulated home, like a pretty pretty like, you know, it was stone
walls and like tile floor.
Nice, you know, but it didn't have heating or air conditioning and I left the windows
open and year round and I was never too hot, never too cold.
And so it's just this really wonderful climate where you want to be outside all the time
and I like woke up in the morning to the sound of birds chirping outside and just felt like
I spent a lot of time outside.
So I think there was something about living in Kenya that I felt really connected to nature.
I felt like I was constantly outside, constantly hearing nature, nature around me.
And then also just where I was outside, like in Nairobi, there's so much adventure close
by like I could quickly go out somewhere and be on safari and seeing lions and elephant
and giraffe and animals like that.
There was really great camping.
There was like there was a mountain I could, you know, hike up to the top of a mountain
nearby.
The beach was nearby.
I think that's that part of living there.
And so then the things I think similar to what I was getting at talking about the students,
the difference of students, like just culturally African culture, Kenyan culture is very like
vibrant and like a lot of dancing and singing and celebrating and this very kind of like
full of life culture that I loved being around.
Whereas here I think there's still a sense, you know, there's a shared sense of like community,
like very communal cultures just like Kenya.
But I think that the way that the like friendliness of Kenya happens in a very like warm, outgoing,
extroverted way.
I think in Thailand I've found it to be more like very respectful and polite.
And if you know the doing the why like to people who are it's just more formal.
And so I think that in some ways has been harder for me because I'm not like Texas is
not like the most formal place.
So some of those formalities have made me like worry that I'm doing the wrong thing.
But I love, yeah, like so friendly and so welcoming still to me and people who are always
willing to help me.
Yeah, something that I always like one of my goals in my geography classes, I tell students
like I think every culture has something beauty like has beauty in it and something worth
celebrating.
And I've really loved being having lived in African culture and now an Asian culture and
seeing how so many of the values are the same in a really beautiful way, but then expressed
in like very different personalities.
That's a really beautiful way to put it.
Every culture there is beauty in every culture and cultural differences.
And like you said, like the differences in how you express the same values are very interesting.
And we hear that you're teaching a newer class called Senior Transition.
Can you tell us a little bit more about it and what gave you the idea and why should
seniors take the class?
Yeah.
So this is I feel like it's been a long time coming for me to teach this class.
So I grew up kindergarten through 12th grade, Austin, Texas.
I never transferred schools.
It was like straight through and I had like friends that were in the same school as me
the whole way through.
It felt like a kind of a very like straightforward path without a bunch of change and a bunch
of transition in my childhood and not super diverse either.
And so when I moved to Kenya and I was teaching at this international school and really that
school had more turnover than we have here.
Like a lot more people were in for two years and then moving two years and then go two
years and go.
And my initial thought was like, man, like this is such an amazing lifestyle to be surrounded
by people from so many parts of the world.
And like these are the kids who are going to be the future of our world.
Like they just have so much talent at being fluent with intercultural, you know, as our
world becomes more globalized.
Like they're used to that.
Like they are that.
And then year after year I noticed some of these kids that I thought were just going
to do incredible things really struggled as they moved to college.
And I knew that there were like we did a senior transition thing near the end of the year.
And a lot of the kids had MK reentry camps, like things to welcome international students
or missionary kids to wherever they were going to college.
And even some of the kids that stayed in Kenya, there was just this like struggle out of this
very unique international school world.
And I just started to have the idea like, I feel like we can be doing more as a school
to prepare them for that next step.
And so I just really got a passion for that and wanted to think more and more like how
could we do this better to prepare them.
And I would talk about that idea with former students and they'd be like, oh yeah, we
need that.
Like I wish I would have paid more attention when I was a senior to the transition stuff
that was there.
So I just felt like there was more that we could do as a school to send kids.
And so I ended up getting my master's degree in the idea of like creating a program for
senior students at an international school with the hope of implementing it somewhere.
So this is the first year that I'm really kind of like kind of getting to do that in
a classroom setting.
On that same subject, we're over a month into the new school year so far.
So what have the seniors in this new class done so far?
And then what can they also look forward to?
The main focus so far has just been like talking about what is transition and why it's different
than just change.
The main grade in the class, I guess not like an overly academic heavy class.
Like just I'm having them journal every week, at least a weekly check in of a journal.
Just what's going on, where are you in your senior year and your experience?
Just trying to be present in that.
We've talked a bit about like the very formal like stages of transition and how something
like what we call senioritis is really like a very normal part of the leaving stage and
kind of just like what to expect, you know, that if you're feeling a little weird about
the whole experience, like how that's kind of normal and giving them a space to talk
about that.
So one of the things that we've been doing is like sharing songs that speak to the emotions
that we're having at the time or speak about the experience of transition.
That's kind of the main stuff.
So going forward, I think, I mean, there's so many things I still want to talk about,
we're still planning to talk about like how students can leave well or in this time well
and make a plan.
One of the things I'm most excited about coming up soon that we've been talking about is
just like trying to ask the students what are some practical things that you guys really
want to be equipped with before you go.
And so some of the things that we have planned are like some self-defense lessons where we're
going to bring somebody in and do a few different sessions on just how to feel safe.
Like you can protect yourself if you remind yourself in a scenario.
Another thing is like Mr. Mark is going to come in and teach a couple cooking classes.
And so we're going to teach students how to cook like almost just like a Thai dish so
that they can carry that with them and like scratch that itch of like, I'm really in the
mood for Thai food.
Or if you want to introduce it to somebody else that they would get to cook that.
So yeah, those are some of the things I'm really, really interested in doing as we go
forward.
I would love to, I don't know if we're allowed to do this or not here, but I would love to
like, Premi just was here and then left and then back.
So like that idea of transition for you, do you feel like it's something you're experiencing?
Has that been like a transition easy for you or has it been challenging for you?
So the transitioning was, I expected change.
I expected a new environment, but I like personally, I didn't expect for these changes to come
into my life in such a way that like affected many parts of it.
And like the U.S. and Thailand are such, I feel like they're such different places culturally,
like beliefs, traditions.
And so I, yes, I did, the transition was difficult at first, but then I felt that as I like adjusted
it, things got easier and I got more used to things.
But I feel like if I had a class or someone or like advice on how that transition will
be, I feel that that would have been really, really helpful to me.
Yeah.
And that's one of the main things I've been telling students is just like, try to connect
with somebody who's done it before and have that kind of mentor who you can ask those
questions with and get advice from.
Can I ask you one more?
Yes.
How are you seeing Thailand different now with like fresh eyes or even ICS, like with
fresh eyes now that you kind of stepped out of it and now you're back into it?
Oh, wow.
I love that question.
I can speak on this for like hours and hours.
So one of the things that I noticed, one of the very first things like stepping into the
airport was diversity.
In America?
In America, yes.
I like Thailand is a relatively homogeneous place.
So like all throughout my life, I've been mostly exposed to like Thai people or like
Asian people.
And then I went and then I realized that, oh, wow, there's like so many different people
coming from all these different places.
And like there's so many little nuances with each race, each culture, the systematic injustices
I've seen.
I saw like with my own eyes, I saw a lot of that too.
And I think that that was really insightful.
And I think just like that in general, and more so in America, I think that conversations
about race and how people perceive and the differences and also similarities, equity,
equality, I think those conversations need to happen more.
And I think those conversations are also really important.
And also one thing that I learned, like I went to a public school.
Yeah.
Right.
And so I saw the difference between, I saw the differences of how people could freely,
freely express their own ideas.
And I think one thing that America is really big about or like one thing that is important
to Americans is right study of having a right study of you being able to do this because
you want to, and it is your own right.
And one of the rights that I found really inspiring, the freedom of speech.
That was really interesting.
And I met, I made friends with like so many different people and we had like these really
great conversations.
And I saw that like, like there in America or especially where I lived, it was in like
a college town, so it was a lot more liberal.
What I learned or what I saw was that people were a lot more, not only outgoing, but more
felt more comfortable and free to express their own ideas about different things.
And I think that that's really inspiring.
And especially coming back to how Thailand, I feel like Thailand as a whole is somewhat
more conservative, especially on the subject of expressing our ideas and how it would be
perceived in society.
And I think a big part of that is connected to societal expectations and how like culturally
how the society, how Thai society is as a whole.
Been about like around a month now coming here.
And sometimes I would be in like a classroom and the teacher would be talking about some
things and I would be thinking, huh, like I would be having these like new ideas, new
thoughts, intertwined with like how the different like nuances, whether that's like ethnicity,
race, gender, sexuality.
And I would be having these new ideas and I've seen so many different things through
different lens now.
And I think that's really insightful.
And I'm really grateful for the experiences I had there.
Uncircling back to the senior transition class, do you have any quick advice you'd like to
give to seniors or do they have to take the class to get that advice?
Yeah, I mean, definitely to get there's a lot, you know, there's so much to talk about.
And I think a lot of it is like just kind of what you just did, which is like the ability
to process what is it that I've gone through and what's happening and how I'm seeing things
differently and how I'm this unique mix of so many things.
So it's required.
You know, I think that having a whole a whole semester to do that is really important.
An assignment that I had them do was reach out to somebody who has gone through the transition
or a move similar to them.
So somebody from a similar background went to a similar type school, going to a similar,
you know, if they're doing a gap year or went to college or whatever and asked them to bring
back advice.
And so actually somebody who did a really amazing job.
So Miss Jade, middle school English teacher, did an amazing job kind of answering those
questions.
So maybe I'll pull one of her little quotes that she shared because I thought she did
such a great job.
And it's just a reminder that there's so much wisdom around us.
So what she said, this would be her advice to seniors was prioritize saying good goodbyes.
She wrote that her senioritis was so strong by the end of the year that she didn't care
if she said goodbye to her classmates or hung out with certain groups for the last time.
She was so ready to move on to a new place and new people that she neglected to close
off the ICS piece of her life well.
She says that you should take time to sit down and write letters to some friends or
plan a fun trip or an outing with people that you value.
She said that like for her, she thought maybe like it was pointless to do that.
And it may seem like it's pointless because you're about to leave.
But she says that when she looks back, she's glad that she ended her time well and said
the things that need to be said.
So I think that's like a great piece of advice because you get so busy with things like capstone
and this and that.
And then you're it's so hard to like emotionally get in that place.
It's like I'm going to end well.
But transition theory kind of says that the better you end a stage of life, the easier
you can enter into that next stage of life.
It's like saying good goodbyes.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm saying good goodbyes.
Premier, thank you so much for sharing.
We're going to jump into our last question of this segment.
And it's kind of a transition into some new future things for you, Mr. Sean.
So what are some of your future plans?
We heard of something special coming up.
Is that right?
I'm just chilling.
Nothing.
Come on.
Yes.
So I got engaged over the summer and so I'm very excited.
I feel like it's been a long time coming.
I'm an old man, but I'm getting married in January.
So a lot of wedding planning right now and just figuring out and getting excited about
the future with my fiance.
Cool.
All right.
Well, thank you very much.
And with that little bit of good news, we have run out of time.
As we end this episode, we'd like to say a big thanks to Mr. Sean for sharing some of
his story and even some of his insights into the subject of transitions.
In our next episode, we'll be talking about the importance of work-life balance and how
that can affect our lives for good or for bad.
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