Welcome to Students Incorporated, a podcast where we dive into relevant topics and issues
related to the world of business, technology, education, and design.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
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 explore the topic of literature and storytelling, its importance,
and how it connects to our lives.
I'm joined by our co-host, Lyon and Linda.
We also welcome our special guest, Mr. Mark.
In keeping with our tradition, let's hear the quote of the day before we begin.
Thank you, Mr. Jason.
Today's quote is by G.K.
Chesterton.
He stated that literature is luxury and fiction is a necessity.
In local news, major flooding is happening across Thailand.
Some roads have been shut down and some travel has been restricted.
Some worry that the flooding may hurt the economy.
And regionally, in Singapore, almost 6 out of 10 people find that buying or renting property
has become unaffordable.
This is mostly due to the lack of construction during the pandemic, which delayed the building
of many homes.
In global news, Queen Elizabeth II recently passed away.
At the age of 96, she was Britain's longest-serving monarch.
She passed away in Scotland and her funeral was held on September 19.
King Charles III is the new current monarch of England.
Thank you for those headline news, Linda.
Let's jump into part one with Mr. Mark.
First of all, Mr. Mark, I'd like to say thank you for coming up this early to be on our
podcast.
Yeah.
But our first question for you today is a very simple one, all right?
I think you can answer this.
Can you tell us where you're from and how many years you've been part of the ICS community
and what your current role is?
Sure.
I'm from the US.
I grew up in the state of Oklahoma.
I've been at ICS for nine years.
The first seven were as an English teacher.
Two years ago, I transitioned to the role of secondary assistant principal.
I've been interested in maybe doing admin for a while, and I really like that it's a
role where I get to be in teachers' classrooms and kind of coach teachers in the same way
that I coach students.
Since you were previously an English teacher, what do you love about literature and what
significance do you think literature plays in our lives?
Maybe something like what is your philosophy of literature?
Is that such a thing?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I remember the last few years in my classroom, I kind of had a slide that I shared on the
first day where I kind of laid out a few reasons why I love teaching literature.
I kind of actually had three points that I would make about literature.
I love literature because it communicates big ideas unlike anything else.
I think that the way that you can build complicated characters and create complicated conflicts
I think enables people to explore complex ideas in a unique way.
I think my second point was literature encourages empathy in a really unique way, the way that
you can kind of inhabit the shoes of a character.
And the third point was just that I think that beauty really matters in our lives.
That created people and creative people, I think that we need to take beauty seriously
and take seriously pursuing it.
That's a very interesting and philosophical idea, Mr. Mark.
I never really thought about literature in that way before.
Thank you.
Shifting to a lighter question, what are some of your favorite books or literature genres
and who are some of your favorite authors?
I like a lot of different kinds of literature.
If you're talking about poetry, I'm a pretty old school guy.
I really like, honestly, a lot of my favorite poets are like classic British poets.
Since being at ICS, I've just really enjoyed reading kind of a variety of international
authors.
I think that is like a cool way to engage with my very international students.
I think for a favorite, my students would tell you that I really love a guy named Wendell
Berry.
If you take the AP literature course here, you'll read him.
But he's a really interesting guy.
He writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
So he writes kind of everything, and he's most known for writing about kind of environmentalism
and responsible agriculture, but then also writes a lot about community and politics
and kind of society at large.
And yeah, he probably has inspired me more than any other author.
Can I jump in really quick?
Wendell Berry really inspired Coleman.
That was something he came home a lot about and talked.
And so my wife and I kind of looked up, who's this Wendell Berry character?
And yeah, his philosophy was great.
Just his, I guess, outlook on how we are to be caretakers of like creation and the things
that God's given us.
So that was great through your influence and through our son's influence.
My wife and I also enjoyed Wendell Berry.
Next question, if you could recommend several books or works of literature, maybe two or
three, what would they be and why?
Would you say these have had an influence in your life?
Yeah, good question.
I think books, literature have been super influential when I think about kind of ways
that I've shifted my mindset and thinking.
Honestly, I think my go-to answer for that is you should take either world literature
or AP literature because I, in your senior year, because I think both of those classes
I kind of built from the ground up and kind of selected books and inevitably I selected
a lot of my favorite books to read in those classes.
Well, thank you for that ad for your class.
Anyway, were you always interested in literature from a young age?
Like do you start reading when you were a kid or do you like to read?
And what inspired you to become an English teacher?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I guess it's a little bit unique in that I was not a reader as a kid.
I remember it was something my parents really tried to push, but they would have to be kind
of more forceful when I was younger.
For me, it was really, I had an excellent English teacher my junior year and then a
really excellent English teacher my senior year.
Those are probably my two favorite teachers of high school.
And so, yeah, I get really excited when students of mine have said that they're interested
in being teachers because that's kind of what happened to me.
I was inspired to be a teacher by teachers.
Wait, I have an off topic question, but what kind of book does the Bible classify as?
Is it a novel?
Is it a historical text or what is it?
The Bible is a collection of books, so you shouldn't view it as being of one genre.
I think you should view it as a collection, an artifact that was compiled over thousands
of years.
And it's a really complicated thing.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for that.
A collection.
I like that.
Hey, and with that, we will be right back with Mr. Mark, educator, literature guru,
and the moonlighting English teacher.
Caps for Cure was a huge success.
Thank you to everyone who donated and wore your caps.
The proceeds will go to helping cancer research and treatment.
Why is this important, you ask?
Well, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the World Health
Organization, every minute across the world, there are 37 people who are diagnosed with
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Well, thanks again for your support.
And together, we will continue fighting cancer.
We are back with part two with Mr. Mark.
In this segment, we'd like to discuss your side gig, if that's OK.
It's pretty cool.
And I don't think very many people know that you are inspiring thousands through your own
show on YouTube called A Moonlighting English Teacher, which, by the way, the last time
I checked had almost five and a half thousand subscribers.
Congratulations.
I think Linda has our next question.
Yes.
Speaking of your show, what inspired you to create it and what was your vision for it?
I mean, I think the first thing I would say is that I really like watching things like
it on YouTube.
I really like, I guess you could say the genres, mostly video essays.
And I guess it was a couple of years ago in COVID, I kind of had the thought like, oh,
I should like give this a try.
I think I'm often somebody that has something creative that I'm doing.
And I found that it kind of brought together a lot of different creative avenues that I
like.
So it involves writing, because a lot of what I do is analyze films or books.
So it kind of involves essay writing.
I've done some music recording in the past.
And so that's an element I've done as a teacher.
I've kind of done the sort of thinking approach to work of literature from a point of view
of wanting to explore it in a deeper way or inspire through it.
And I would say the thing that I had the least experience with was video editing.
So I learned quite a bit, but I keep it pretty simple.
I just use iMovie on the Mac and PowerPoint for the extras.
But yeah, I think the time and the wanting to have another creative avenue.
I think nowadays I don't have quite the time for it that I used to.
It takes a lot of time.
It makes me respect people that do this kind of thing on a consistent basis.
I think my last video was posted probably four months ago or something.
So it's been a while.
But I always have more ideas than I have time for.
I think I have a list of like 30 to 40 ideas right now of videos that I like to make.
So always too many ideas than I have time for.
Is it possible to hire a production team or have an internship?
I've got a question if I can jump in here.
I watched a few episodes where you actually can show some clips of films.
Was that a problem getting permission or being able just to show a clip?
What was that like process for you?
Yeah, it's a good learning curve for sure.
For YouTube, the trickiest thing when it comes to copyright is actually music, which is kind
of a bummer because the one video I have which has a lot of views has copyrighted music in
it because it has to do with the musical Hamilton.
So that's the only one that I can't monetize and get ads from.
But the way that visuals work for YouTube is that it has kind of built in when you upload
a video sort of like an automatic way that it can detect copyrighted material.
And you'll find that if you keep clips short, that usually YouTube doesn't pick up on it.
But sometimes, for example, my last video was on the movie Dead Poets Society and I
think I had to re-upload it like 30 or 40 times.
And every time it kept flagging, it'll upload and be like, oh, you can still do it, but
it wouldn't allow me to monetize it basically and I would prefer it.
So I've literally like 30 or 40 times I had to go back and like shorten this clip a little
bit or so.
Yeah, it's complicated.
And sometimes it depends on who owns it.
So I know that like Warner Brothers, for example, is like really well known for being really
like difficult to make a video of their stuff because they're like really intense about
copyright, whereas something maybe a little older like wouldn't be as big of a deal.
Speaking of Hamilton, I love Hamilton.
I really like history and with people singing about it, it's even better.
And one of my favorite personal favorites is the show you did about the rhymes in Hamilton.
What have been some of your favorite shows to make and why?
Yeah, I've been some of my favorites.
This last one on Dead Poets Society was pretty cool because it brought together kind of,
I guess you could say it was my first time as this channel that kind of took its inspiration
from being an English teacher.
It was the first time I really directly talked about teaching.
So that was pretty fun.
It kind of allowed me to explore an educational thinker that actually Mr. Sean, our ninth
grade teacher, he turned me on to this guy named Parker Palmer.
And yeah, probably reading some of his books was sort of one of the most kind of influential
things that I've done the last couple of years.
And so yeah, brought together a lot of cool influences.
And plus it's just a movie that every English teacher loves.
Every English teacher loves Dead Poets Society.
Yeah.
I remember watching that for the first time and thinking, I bet everybody's going to want
to be an English teacher because there's a lot of inspiration and power that we can empower
young people.
I have another question for you, Mr. Mark.
Why do you choose the name the Moonlighting English teacher as your YouTube channel name?
Good question.
So I would say it's got a couple of influences.
So that if you don't know the idea of a moonlighting is the idea of having like a second job.
So that was kind of like the initial like direct inspiration.
But then I kind of like the idea and kind of like the motif of like of like moon lights
and the way it kind of like reflects this source of brightness.
And I guess I kind of see it as also a cool metaphor for for art and stories, the way
that it reflects as a Christian, like a creative God that reflects kind of like this greater
source of beauty.
You can actually read there's a little blog that I have attached to the channel.
And I wrote a poem about that that you can you can actually read if you're interested.
I think it's called Moonlight.
So moving on, is there a specific process you go through to choose a work of literature
or cinema?
And what is your process of thought in how you do your analysis once you have chosen
a work?
If you take my classes I used to teach, you'll you'll notice that quite a few of the videos
are actually inspired by things that I taught in those classes.
And I think the reason for that is when when you teach something, you kind of like automatically
have a chance to really grow in understanding it in a deep way.
And so you'll see videos about books like Life of Pi, The Book Thief, The Motorcycle
Diaries.
Yeah, these are all books that I've taught.
I also try to being like a moonlighting English teacher, I also try to have some sort of like
literary angle.
So for example, a few videos back I did a video on the Disney movie Encanto and I tried
I tried to capitalize on its popularity.
And then if you know much about the movie, you'll know that like the main source of inspiration
for that movie was was probably the most famous Latin American author named Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, who I really like and have read.
And so I like that I was able to kind of put a literary spin on that on that analysis.
And some of them are just some of my favorite shows or movies or just things that I've been
interested in and thinking about.
Thank you for that, Mr. Mark.
But what type of themes or questions should the average person someone like myself, a
person who hasn't studied literature or taught language arts classes, what kinds of things
should we be searching for when we read or watch a literary work?
I think the first thing that comes to mind is is just think about what sorts of what
sorts of questions and topics that have interested you in and maybe some of your other classes.
I think that I think that one of the unfortunate things about kind of an education system like
ICS is almost how we kind of relegate classes, especially in like the what you would call
the humanities, how we view like philosophy and history and psychology and sociology is
like these very distinct different things, whereas I don't think, you know, in the real
world, they're really not like they're they're sort of like all a part of all a part of kind
of figuring out what it means to be a human and be a better human and growing our understanding
of who we are as humans.
And so I don't know, I really love whenever in class, whenever a student would make a
connection to to AP Psych or to philosophy and worldview or to, you know, this history
class over here or even to like a science class or something like that.
So yeah, I think I would encourage you to look look for those connections across subject
areas, because I think that that clues us into those like big deep questions that I
think are the most important questions that humans can ask.
Thank you for taking us into a deep dive of literature and story.
As we end the segment, I do have one more question and it's a little bit on the shallower
side.
If you were to write a book or make a movie about a superhero, which one would it be and
why and would you allow your kids to read or watch it?
Deep question.
It's hard because like I feel like I'm not I don't know a ton about like the superhero
universes and obviously there's plenty of movies made about them.
If you can make up a super hero.
English man.
If you can make up a super hero.
That's right.
Yeah.
English teacher, man.
Inspiring students.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, my gut answer probably just makes me think I think hands down the best superhero
movies are are the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy.
Now, like I as an English story guy, they're just the character of Batman is probably my
my favorite in those movies.
I think will always be the best for me.
Yes, I agree.
My six year old cannot watch this.
Christopher Nolan.
Great storyteller.
Yeah, great storyteller.
OK, before we end this episode, I'm going to off script a bit.
OK, I'm going I'm going rogue, but I don't know if you watch this movie before.
It's called Fight Club.
I think a great movie, not ICA is appropriate at all, but still a great movie.
I like the message it has.
I want to see your take on it.
So on your next video, can you do like a do analysis on Fight Club?
I'll think about it.
It was influenced by a novel, but I should I should we should talk later and we should
try to find a new angle.
It's a good old.
OK, with that, you heard it first on this show with Mr. Mark.
Look out Marvel and DC.
Be sure to check out his YouTube channel named A Moonlighting English Teacher.
Grab a bowl of popcorn and a notebook because you will definitely want to take some of your
own notes as you look for intended themes and connecting story elements that make literature
and storytelling such an important part of our lives.
Thanks again, Mr. Mark.
Thanks, guys.
Before ending, we'd like to thank all of our listeners for joining us.
Please stay tuned for more episodes about exciting and engaging topics.
Our next episode will be an important one about college and career advice for those
of you who are close to that next chapter in your life.
Stay tuned.
All music and sound effects are courtesy of Pixabay.com, a vibrant community of creatives
sharing copyright free images, videos and music.
And we are signing off until next time.
We are Students Incorporated because your voice matters.