A Different Global Perspective with James Dittes
Our friend James Dittes returns to share his latest experiences with teaching internationally. When we first met James in 2020 (Teaching with a Global Perspective) he had started an exchange program with his class and a school in Germany. Since our last conversation, James has taken on a new adventure and now teaches English in an international school in Turkey. In this conversation he shares how he approaches teaching in a new country and shares some stories about his classroom. The photo is James at the Gates of Gordion-the capital of Midas’ Kingdom.
Notes and links
MEF International School, Izmir website
Transcript
Scott Lee: Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions and SEL Resource. I am Scott Lee. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and education organizations please visit our website: www.oncoursesolutions.net and reach out.
As we start a new school year, we’ll catch up with the same guest who helped us kick off the 2020-2021 school year, James Dittes. In that episode James and I discussed ways a US teacher can foster an international perspective. Now James is an English/language arts teacher at MEF International School in Izmir Turkey. He’ll share more about his experiences teaching both English and German in the US, as well as his current teaching position; but we started our conversation talking about a high school student exchange program that he led at his former school in Tennessee.
Scott Lee: And regular listeners may remember that we met James in September of 2020, talking about the German exchange program, at his former school so if you could, James briefly, remind us a little bit about, that program,
James Dittes: in 2016, we started, working on a, on an exchange program through an organization called GAPP, G A P P.
And it, it promoted exchange between German and American high schools. And a teacher in the German city of Ingelheim had reached out to me and had asked if my German classes, would be interested in an exchange. And, by all means we were, we eventually arranged three exchanges. So, in 2018 and 2019, which was with the years previous to our prior conversations, 18 Germans had come over to my school in Tennessee and Gallatin, Tennessee had lived with families in my community for three weeks.
And then in each of those summers afterwards, I had taken a group of American kids to Germany. We'd spent three weeks, living with Germans in their community, and then we just spent a week traveling around one group. I took to Munich another group. I had taken to Salzburg, Austria, and then covid hit.
And I think that's when you and I were chatting. It was the original plans for the exchange had been to do it yearly. You know, both the German teacher and I were very, very ambitious and very eager to see this as a, as a yearly, event. And as it turned out the, the 2020, I think we were two weeks away from the Germans coming that year when the entire country and world shut down and, we didn't get to go back. I did one more exchange and that was in the summer of ‘22, which was also my final year, at my high school there in, in Gallatin. But, getting to live and, and observe teachers in Germany, observe students in Germany, boy, you know, it just really made the world seem smaller. And, and, and my job as an educator, you know, seem bigger to see people wrestling, wrestling with many of the same challenges, , that I wrestled with in Gallatin. So, I, I, it really was a life changing experience for me.
Scott Lee: And your role has changed significantly since then.
So, tell us a little bit about that and, where you are now, what you're teaching and, and, and why you ended up, doing what you're doing.
James Dittes: Sure. So, in 2022, that was the year of my final exchange in Germany. After that I left my school in Gallatin. And I, I embarked on really a lifelong dream, and that was to teach abroad. I've been observing in schools abroad in Germany, and I had been on a state department exchange to the Republic of Georgia. And so, I had this real fascination with global education, some opportunities in the United States ended, I went through a really painful personal crisis in my life and made very clear that, it was, it was time to really seek something new.
And so, I applied with a headhunting agency that, that places teachers in international schools and I was lucky to land in Izmir, Turkey. And I've been teaching there for the last two years at a private school called MEF, International School, and there I teach, ELA for grades nine through 12.
I've been through two years and I'm headed back here at the end of the week to, to start my third year.
Scott Lee: Wow. So, we were, we were talking before we started recording, a little bit about, the location, where you are, Izmir, is that correct?
James Dittes: That's right.
Scott Lee: And tell us a little bit about what's close by and what's so interesting about the content that you're teaching ELA connected with the location that you're at.
James Dittes: Sure. So, think about Cal. I always say Turkey is the California of Asia. Okay.
It's the furthest West that you can go on the Asian continent. It has three coasts. It has the Black Sea in the North, has the Aegean Sea in the west, and then the Mediterranean Sea on the south. Okay. So, it's just, it's in this most part amazing location. And so there are three main cities in Turkey.
The one that's most famous obviously is Istanbul and Istanbul is one of the world's great cities. I mean, it's New York, it's Paris, it's, It's Tokyo. It's all of the culture, thousands of years of history, markets, busy, just an amazing place. The capital of course is Ankara. And then of course, Izmir is further south on the coast, carrying on that California parallel.
Izmir reminds me a lot of San Francisco. It's just really busy, active. Everyone in Turkey talks about how crowded Izmir is. And it is, it's 17 million people. If you can imagine. Izmir is a little bit more, it's, it's a coastal city. So I always, think if Istanbul is, is San Francisco Izmir more of Los Angeles.
So, it's a big port city. It's on a huge Bay, the probably about the size of San Francisco Bay. And then within an hour's drive of Izmir, you just have some of the most beautiful beaches and resorts on the Aegean, on the Aegean sea. If you think of Athens, Greece, Athens is on the Western side of the Aegean Sea, but you just go due East and you'll hit Izmir on the other side of the Aegean.
So, if that, if that puts it into perspective and then. As well as having just beautiful beaches, Izmir is also a cultural hub. The Greeks back in ancient times had colonized all of the eastern coast of the Aegean. They had cities up and down the coast. And then later those cities were, again, if you go through the line of history, Alexander, the Great conquered them, the Macedonians held them until the Romans came through.
And so, this area was the heart of history. And so that's another reason why I just really love Izmir in the heart of Izmir, there's a beautiful Roman Agora Columns and the foundations of, of ancient, ancient, temples. I remember the, the principal that was interviewing me, he's, he found out that I like to hike and he said to me, well, "over here, most hikes end at a, at an ancient city or an ancient temple."
In the interview that I just I thought, “okay, yeah,” this is probably over blowing it. But when I hike, I always end up, you know, passing by those, those places. And, I guess the one reason why I had gone to Izmir, I visited Izmir as a tourist once is that it is the home of Homer.
So, the greatest writer in all of history. And I had passed through there to visit the site of Troy, which I've returned to twice since I've been living there. And so, to be able to teach literature in a place that is so rich with history, and mythology. Okay. Right. Here's another really quick, funny anecdote.
I was at a daffodil festival, so I love in Tennessee. I had a yard full of daffodils. The daffodil of course is called the Narcissus and I met a tour guy. And he said, Oh yeah, you know, the spring that Narcissus, looked into. It's, it's right over, it's about five kilometers away. I thought, no, you sure? So, of course, what did I, I, I hiked right over to the spring and, the legends have grown up that, that this is the spring and I, I did look into it and take a selfie and to prove that I'm not a narcissist, but, you know, walking among, you're walking where Alexander the Great , rode through, or these Roman emperors like Marcus Aurelius or, Mark Antony, came through and, and, and also with legend, so many of the Greek legends that we have, you know, come from that.
I can take you to the, to the, to the mountain where Tantalus ruled, before he was sent to Hades to have these, these fruits hang over his head. Or, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Artemis. It was in Ephesus. Well, I can go, I can go on the train to Ephesus, anytime I want and go down and see that, that ruins.
So that, that for me in my imagination is just, yeah, I love it. I really love living there and getting to teach it, getting to take kids there. That's the. That's the icing on the cake.
Scott Lee: Yeah. Eearlier, you described it as, as like teaching Shakespeare in Stratford, that's gotta be so, so interesting.
One of the things that, that I'm curious about, cause I remember, when we last talked, one of the things that you were able to do with your exchange program is you could have your students, exchange letters or do do essays, and exchange those essays with their German counterparts.
And obviously you don't get to, to do that. But can you tell us just a little bit about, the perspectives of the students, how they're similar or different from, what most of us, in America or, for that matter, students in Germany, compared to, your Turkish students, what are some things that are similar or maybe different, or that are interesting,
James Dittes: Good question.
Scott Lee: To share.
James Dittes: Yeah. So when I was teaching in, when I was teaching in Tennessee, 99 percent of my students, percent of my students were Americans. Now I did teach in a suburban high school. So, there was some migration that came in. I had a handful of kids from Illinois or Massachusetts or Georgia, you know, that were coming in.
So it wasn't, it wasn't a kind of monoculture that you might find in a rural high school, but I was trying to explain global ideas. To, to almost a homogenous group of American kids.
And I used to talk a lot about migration. I would talk about my own family's migrations from the different European countries, you know, so that was always a really big theme of mine. But, it was, it was trying to get American kids to realize that there is a world out there. There are opinions that are different and yet this is a world that where you can feel comfortable as well.
So in my classroom in Izmir it's completely, everyone believes that, there's no majority, you know, cultural outlook. So that barrier, that cultural barrier that's so challenging for American teachers, it's already gone. And what it does is It opens up just an incredible, means of learning.
Like these kids are from other cultures, cultures, they speak other languages. And so my challenge as a teacher in an international school then is to knit these challenges together into learning. So, I'll give you an example in my grade 12, the most challenging class that I teach.
Are now rising up into 12th grade. And this is a group where the biggest challenge I've had is that none of them have English as their primary language. I'm trying to think, yeah. And in that class, I have a Korean, I have five Iranians and two Polish kids, and they all speak English well, and most of them speak English well enough to take exams in English and things like that.
And we do have a dedicated ESL teacher at the school as well. My job isn't ESL. It's just ELA. So, I'm teaching literature. And so, those are the kids that I taught the Iliad to last year. And I had this whole IB curriculum that they're learning in the IB. And so, I'd chosen the literature for the IB to center around the Iliad, which again, I'm teaching in Homer's home.
He wrote that book, you know, 20 kilometers from where, where I'm, I'm teaching. And yet it's hard to teach the Iliad. It's hard in a college course, you know, less for kids that are limited English speakers or are just normal 16, 17-year-olds. So, I mean, I would have, when I was 16, I would have been, I would have been a brick, but what I realized was I've got a girl who's come from Korea. I've got two kids who've come from Poland. I've got five kids who've come from Iran. They have epics in every single one of those cultures. And so, what I did was I developed a lesson to say, “Hey, you know, here's the Persian epic, the Shahnameh, this amazing, the Persian Book of Kings, which is just, oh, it's, it's got some of the coolest stories I've ever read.”
Or, Pan Tadeusz is the, is the epic from, of Poland that was written around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, like a lot of Western epics were, Korean epic. And so, what I did was I taught those first. And the kids, they bought in, they're like, “Whoa, this guy really must like Persian culture. I mean, he just taught my country's, most famous book, maybe I'll give him a chance, with the Iliad.”
And so as a teacher, it gives me a chance to, to bring in whatever they, whatever their cultures are. That's where learning is. The bridge is, is I guess it's, I might say to use that, that metaphor in America, I had, the, the challenge was getting the kids into the global.
Into the global perspective here, the challenge is getting the kids from the global perspective into English, English literature or translated English literature as Homer is, but all of the books I teach are in English. I read The Roundhouse Louise Erdrich's book, The Roundhouse last year with a, with a group and, they don't know anything about reservations or American law and, so that, that was the barrier was, was getting them into into my culture for that time. And yet they all understood very, very keenly ideas of injustice of racial, I mean, these are challenges that all cultures have. So that's been, that's been, it's been an interesting reversal that, that I've learned over my two years.
Scott Lee: Yeah. Yeah.
James Dittes: I mean, literature is just, it's a place where we can all talk, isn't it? Right. I mean, it is. When I read this book and, and went out to dinner to chat about it. We would have different perspectives and yet the book, the book is where we meet,
Scott Lee: Right.
James Dittes: that's, that's how literature works in an American classroom. And it might let people know about, ancient Greece.
If it's, if it's a book by there, if it's a book by an Australian author, it might teach us about Australia. And in an international school, the book becomes the medium to both celebrate their culture, but also to, to expand it the way we want kids to expand.
Scott Lee: Right. And you point, as you point out, that's oftentimes, difficult, having been a social studies teacher, trying to teach world history, to American students. Yes, unfortunately sometimes not being able to go deep enough, because the curriculum is, so fast paced especially in world history. Being able to find the time and those connections to, to have the deep conversations, is wonderful.
Do you find that your students in Turkey, do they have a lot of misconceptions about America or about the U S or about U S students?
James Dittes: Yeah, I, I don't,
Well, I'll, I'll start, I'll start with a really funny anecdote. Okay. I, I had in my first year there, I had these two boys that were, that were kind of your typical “C” student boys. One was from Britain. The other one was Scottish. And, I was talking about something and I heard the Scottish boy kind of under his breath go “now.”
And I thought, what is he doing? And then I realized he's mocking my accent. I was drawing. I don't really consider myself having a Southern drawl, but when I say “now,” or, anyway, anyway, I do. And he picked up on that and being the kind of kid that makes fun of the teacher or, you know, wants to kind of be, be a be a jerk. He had, he had picked up on that. So, I, that was really embarrassing to me. And I, every time I say the word “now” and, and anything that ends in that, in that, in that sound, , I always, I always think back to that. I think that the kids typically have more of just an, and they, they know American culture pretty well.
They don't act very shocked or surprised, by the things that I, that I bring up. And I just find that, students are very, very similar, students in Germany, I saw the hardworking, high achieving kids that you'll see in American classroom. I saw the C students and the D students that weren't as motivated.
I, I, I guess I'm, I'm more, of the universalist in that, in that regard. So, I haven't heard too many misconceptions of America. I find the kids that I teach tend to be from, upper middle-class homes. And, and many of them have been to the United States, so they've been to California or they've gone to Disney World or New York City.
And I can't think of any misunderstanding. We do have international days at the school pretty regularly. And I know, I remember one year I got together with some American students and we taught kids how to play baseball, which is my favorite sport here.
I certainly try to represent our country, really well, but I, I haven't seen too many, too many differences. I have a Persian girl right now in this grade 12 class. Who just is one of the most high achieving kids I've ever taught, and you could put her in an American classroom and she'd be in the top 2 percent of physics, science, biology, she's just a brilliant kid.
I guess that's the way I look at, look at all of those kids is, is I do, I do look at their, I will look at their reading and writing. And sometimes I might say, well, she's like, she's writing at a ninth grade level in America. Right. Cause I'm an ELA teacher. Right. I'm a pretty good judge of, of, of the comps between them and their skills and American skills, but I, I don't know of any, of any misconceptions or, or I haven't had any, any surprises like that.
Scott Lee: So one of the things that, we talked about last time, was, what were some things that you thought that American students, students in the U. S., should know more about and we were, we were talking about, at the time, more about German culture, because we were talking about the exchange program.
Do you have any, any other thoughts about what we could do better?, With our students in the U. S. as far as them learning about, other cultures now that you're in really a truly multicultural, environment.
James Dittes: Yeah, that's a good question. You're always trying to bring in those perspectives. I mean, I, I think we do this to a degree, again, I'm going to start as a literature teacher. If you read, I'm trying to think of a, of a foreign novel that, that I've taught in my, in my classes.
Well, if you read the Odyssey, you need to know what the Aegean is. For example, no one's ever seen, you don't go to the beach every day. You don't know what the ocean is like or, or the sea, and so I remember as a teacher there, you know, we would do research assignments, we might watch videos that would show things, just anything that would, would, would bring that in.
And I would encourage American teachers to say, there are there are those global perspectives and those global perspectives are where you learn a lot. Okay. So, here's a really good example. I'll go back to this, this, this, this challenging, this 12th grade class that I have coming up, like these kids have been really tough because I have five Persians.
And of course, in America, right. This has been my enemy, right? Like one of the first memories that I have is of the Iran hostage crisis when their government was taken over. And I will say just as an aside, there's a lot of Persian students. They're almost all girls. These are families that have left Persia and said, “I don't want to raise my child where daughter will, she'll get beaten to death for, , walking on the street without a head covering.”
And of course, Iran, Iran and Turkey are neighbors. So it would be like an American family saying, I'm moving to Canada or Mexico to, to avoid injustice. So. We were doing a unit on how to read a newspaper and headlines, bylines, subheadings, these kinds of things, right? And I said, “every culture has these.”
And so, of course, I went into my spiel. We looked up a Polish newspaper. I couldn't read Polish, but I could tell you what the headline was. I could show you who the author was. And then the Polish kids read the article for me. So, we went to, we went to the Persian website and the Persian website is called Farsi News.
So, Farsi is the name of the language they speak there. And so, I was just scrolling down through the, their homepage. And they had a photo on the page and I said, look, guys, there's a photo. And under the photo is a caption. And it just dawned on me as I was pointing to this photo, there are two girls in headscarves.
One of them is stepping on a flag of Israel and another is stepping on. Oh, that's my country's flag. And I mean, this is really, if I was, if I was prejudiced or nationalistic, they would have found out, at that moment. And so I, I, uh, boy, I'll tell you, everybody was paying attention to every word I said, you know,
Scott Lee: I bet. Yes.
James Dittes: As I did that. And then later I found a funny thing on Twitter that, that showed a map of, I guess they had tried, they'd asked a hundred Americans to find Iran on the, on a world map. And, of course, the dots were like all over the place. Yeah. And I said, I said, “well, if Americans were asked to step on on Iran that we wouldn't even know where to go.”
I always try to, I always try to, you know, kind of. Be humble, be a humble American and not an ugly American, but yeah, there are opportunities to globalize every, every lesson in world history lesson, pull up a poem or video in from German, you know, and I do think like World War One, all of our sources are British in World War One.
I've read German sources. It's not like they tell us that someone else won the war, but these deeper perspectives that we're trying to get kids to learn, they come from looking at both sides of an issue and not just one.
Scott Lee: Yeah. And it's interesting, that you mentioned World War I and the, the British perspective. I do remember just from my own time teaching world history. How hard it was, for my students to understand why things that happened in Germany happened in, the thirties, with the rise of Nazism. And literally, a wheelbarrow full of money is buying a loaf of bread. I mean, what that must be like and just very difficult really to get students to understand for students to understand that perspective.
So, so what's it like, being a teacher? in a foreign country, particularly in Turkey? And, you do a lot of traveling, not just in Turkey throughout Europe.
Tell us a little bit about what that experience is like for you.
James Dittes: Okay. Well, one of the challenges, I think a big barrier that a lot of Americans feel like we face is that for teaching abroad is that, the only countries that speak English where we could teach are the UK, Australia, New Zealand.
And guess what? They have lots of qualified teachers who also speak English. And yet, I remembered on my, fellowship going to a British-American college in Tbilisi and realizing that every city of 500,000 or more around the world will have an academy, a private school that teaches in English.
And so there's a real demand for teachers, out there who can, who are willing to live in places like, like I have a colleague from Australia. He taught in Uzbekistan, then he taught in Ukraine, and now he teaches here in Izmir. You know, wow. You know, what amazing. Cultures, , he, he can talk about, there, there, there is a lot of opportunity there.
And even within Izmir which is almost the size of Chicago, there are two, no, there are three now international schools that, that are serving, either Turkish students or the international population that's there temporarily, business people, military people and things like that. So, so I, I say that to say language is not the barrier.
My Turkish is still very, very basic, I'm learning it and I'm trying to learn more, but it's a very, it's a very challenging language. It's not like learning French or German or even Norwegian would be for an English speaker. So, you don't have to speak the language to, to, to, to teach there.
I do think you need to speak the language to thrive. So that's one thing. I also just. I'm most, the one thing I really appreciate about Turkish culture is just that, being an American teacher, I remember overhearing some, some, parents saying, “Oh, this new teacher, he's from America. Boy, he's going to really teach. He's really going to get these kids writing up to standard.” You know, they, they seem to think that I was the challenging, tough teacher. And I'd never felt that way in my old school. I, if, if you would have asked me, I would have said I'm a little bit of a pushover, but there is some cachet.
To that of being someone who is from the United States, a country that everybody knows about and yet coming to their city and teaching their child. Then the other thing also in Izmir, teachers would get into museums free. There are a lot of benefits. I have a card in my wallet that shows that I'm a teacher at a Turkish school.
And if I want to go to, as I told you, I love going to these ruins. Well, I just walked to the entrance. I showed them the card and, and I get waved in. They also have benefits for like subway fares and bus fares and stuff like that. And the word for, for teacher in the Turkish language is “hoca, hoca.”
And so quite often students will refer to you by your title, and not by Mr. James or Mr. Foster, or, you know, the way that we do that here and the word “hoca,” the best way, the best comparison I would say to that in, in, in our culture is, is like the word “officer.” When you speak to a policeman, you say “officer,” I respect you.
Don't, be nice, be nice in return, And, I really appreciate that. I think that it recognizes, the, the intent that, that we go into education for, not, not to just hijack respect, but we, we have higher goals and, and that's why we choose this career. And, that's why we're working day in and day out with these kids, you know, to, to, to improve it.
So that's one of the things I've really, I do feel a lot more respected, you know, in that culture, than I, than I may have in Tennessee.
Scott Lee: And I'm, I'm guessing that the pay is no better.
James Dittes: No, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's. And
Scott Lee: that, that's not really the point. Yeah.
You're, you're still not, you're still not doing the, you're still not doing it for the pay. You're still doing it for. That's right. For the work. The pay is a lot lower than the state. The reason you got into it.
James Dittes: Yeah. I am able to save a lot more every month than I could for my salary in the States. So, in numbers it's, it's lower, but it's also, if you teach in Mexico or you teach in, in Venezuela, or Turkey, your rent is going to be three or [$]400 a month.
Right. Not a mortgage payment in the States. So it all, it all works out.
Scott Lee: I am, oftentimes fascinated when I talk to people. We've had a couple other guests on this podcast, who have talked about their perspectives teaching or being an administrator in other countries.
And, there is this cultural difference, and, and in a good way, a level of respect that's not always apparent, here in the States, at least in some places.
James Dittes: So, yeah. Again, teachers are lightning rods and, yes, but cultural warriors, see, see us as a barrier to, to what they want to do.
But in Tennessee, I worked, for a time I worked with, an organization called America Achieves, and they really wanted to raise the, the standards, the educational standards in the state. They also wanted to kind of raise the level of awareness, but it was up to, and I would hear legislators in Tennessee telling me this as well, but you have to ask for it or you have to demand for it, or you have to organize for it.
Teaching is a 50 hour a week job. I don't have time to go down to legislative Capitol Hill and testify for this awful against or for legislation. I just saw more and more that the burden. Of, of even advocating for public education in general was kind of laid in teachers laps and, and it was not taken up by, by responsible politicians and community leaders, they, they would just sit back and, and, and wait for, for teachers to do something and then maybe attack it or who knows.
Scott Lee: So, yeah, and, and I'm guessing you still. Or have the 50-hour weeks an awful lot. Oh, yeah. No That hasn't changed
James Dittes: It's it is well, let me say this the work life balance in overseas is way better so I'll just go into my school in particular, but I The amount of time I teach is about 20 percent less per day than, than in the, in the States.
And so, what that means is that unless I'm like in testing season, or unless I've assigned a bunch of essays, I can go home in the afternoon at four o'clock and I don't have, I'm not taking stuff with me. You know, I'm an ELA teacher. I used to have to grade essays every weekend. Right. Typically, at an hour to 90 minutes of grading every evening that I would do it in my home in Tennessee.
Here, and I offered my principal like a club or something that, Oh, I was, I was signing up to do a supervision activity. And she said, “no, no, I don't want you to do that. You're already busy with. You know, X, Y, Z.” And at my, at my last school, I remember at one time I was balancing a full load.
I was sponsoring writer's club, model UN, and then a German club, and that's because I knew that my kids needed this and I knew I was the one to do it, but it did, the work life balance there, you know, is, is much, much better. And so, it, it, it probably in Turkey, I would say it is a 40-hour week, you know, unless tests are coming up or, or, or something like that.
Scott Lee: I really appreciate your time today, James. And I want to, want to thank you for, sharing your experiences, with us.
James Dittes: Yeah, no, you’re welcome.
Yeah, I'll just say too, if you mind, if I plug, Oh, please. Please. So right now I, I have a, I have, I set up an Instagram page and it's called teaching underscore Homeros [@teaching_Homeros]. So that's the Greek word for Homer and I post there a lot.
So, I like I posted vocabulary assignments I've done with the Odyssey. I've posted writing assignments with the Iliad. And if anyone is curious about Homer or what it's like teaching over there, I do keep that up, you know, and because as we said earlier, Izmir is the home of Homer. That's an area that I really, I really wanted to develop a little bit more.
I think one of the things I love about teaching high school is that I tend to be a generalist in the fact that, I used to be the Shakespeare teacher. Okay. And I used to teach the heck out of Shakespeare and I'd take kids to plays and I would have Shakespeare competitions and, ah, I had so much fun.
And then, my school transferred me to American literature and suddenly no Shakespeare, you know? And so, then I became like. The Melville teacher. And I taught Moby Dick and I had all these great lessons on whaling and stuff like that. And then boom, I was teaching German. I have this natural curiosity that I've never, I'm a master of many, many subjects, but I don't have a PhD level interest in any of them.
And so now my, my focus is Homer and I I'm picked up a lot of books this summer in the States that I'm going to bring back, you know, on teaching him. So yeah, teaching underscore Homeros is. It's a great place to reach me on, on Instagram and then on Facebook or if they contact you They're welcome to email me with any further questions
Scott Lee: Okay. Yeah.
James Dittes: Yeah, that'd be great.
Scott Lee: And as always, the “Contact us” page I can forward along anything, to any of our guests.
James Dittes: So good Yeah, look forward to hearing
Scott Lee: all right. I thank you so much. I appreciate you joining us.
James Dittes: All right, you're welcome.
Scott Lee: The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net.
This has been episode8 of the 2024 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. Also, five-star reviews on your podcast app helps others find us. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee producer, a member of the PodNooga Network. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website w w w dot thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee. Please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Twitter is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
