I am your host, Steve Hatherly.

And I thank you for joining us once again.

I'm very excited today because my guest is Mr. Eric Wesch.

He is originally from South Africa.

He's been in Korea for about 10 years now, in total, teaching English.

But in 2019, that's when Eric decided to start a YouTube channel,

and the channel is called Etacude.

Now, it's an interesting channel because it's about education.

But it's focusing on teachers.

It's a channel that is dedicated to helping teachers become, quote, and I quote from the

YouTube channel, “An unstoppable force in the classroom.”

Mr. Eric Wesch, thank you very much for joining me today.

It's a… it's a real pleasure to meet you.

Hi, Steve.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's… it's a pleasure to be here today.

I've just come from visiting your YouTube channel and watching some of your videos

and we're going to talk a lot about Etacude.

And… and what it is, and what it's for.

But first, let's start by talking about you.

You are from South Africa originally.

Which… which part may I ask?

Well, South Africa is very interesting.

Um you've got Johannesburg, or Johannesburg at the… in the north, and then you've got

Cape Town in the South.

Um the easiest way for me to explain, is that I live about an hour away from Johannesburg.

Okay, very good.

Would that be considered the countryside a little bit?

A little bit, yeah.

It's… it's not a city.

I grew up in a town with a population of 200,000 people so not very big.

Well that's… that's huge.

I really enjoyed it.

It's big, yeah.

Very good.

Uh… what made you come to Korea originally, I wonder?

Well, I started teaching in 2007.

And I taught in South Africa for a couple of years.

Okay.

But, because South Africa is so far away from, well, the rest of the world, I wanted to explore

and see other places.

So, I did some research on countries to travel and to teach at.

And I heard some good things about South Korea.

And then, yeah, just came to South Korea to teach.

And I've been here ever since.

And you learned that all of those good things that you heard before were very very true,

right?

Most of them, definitely.

Were you teaching English as a second language in South Africa, or were you teaching in the

public school system?

I was teaching in the public school system.

And I had to teach a few topics, a few subjects.

Uh one was, uh, English, and the other one was, um, I had to teach some social sciences.

So I've uh I had a few classes, but it were… it was at a public school.

I see.

From looking at your YouTube channel, and reading your channel description, I saw, and

learned, that you've taught almost all ages here in the country.

I have.

Uh, I have.

I'm very fortunate to have taught all ages.

I've taught kindergarten.

I've taught elementary school a lot.

I've taught high school.

And now, currently, I'm teaching at a university.

Um, I've also had the opportunity to work with adults to teach business, and other types

of career related topics, too.

Very good.

Is there any particular age group that stands out to you as your favorite?

Well, every age group has its, uh, benefits and well also its struggles, or its challenges.

And I feel with younger learners, they have a lot of energy, and you can have fun with

them.

But, it's also very draining.

Then with all the students, they are very self-motivated.

But… and you don't have to struggle with classroom management.

But it's sometimes difficult to get them to talk and to be excited about a topic.

So, um, to answer your question, I actually prefer, right now, to teach adults, or students

because they are much easier.

But, every now and again, I like to go and work with young learners because they're so

much fun and uh it's… it's a… we can play so many games, and it's very engaging.

So you were teaching for about seven years in Korea and you're living down in Daegu now

is that correct?

That's right.

Well I taught three years in South Africa.

Five years in Busan, where I taught at a science high school.

I really enjoyed it, very smart students.

And now I'm currently teaching at Daegu.

And I've been here for five years, so 10 years in Korea.

If you're not familiar with the geography of Korea, Daegu is on the South Eastern side

of the country, right?

Great geography there.

I had to kind of check my memory first.

Um, well, like I was getting to, so you were in Korea for about seven years I guess when

you decided to make the YouTube channel called Etacude.

So let's talk about that decision to start a channel in the first place.

And then maybe you can segue into talking about what the channel is actually about.

Well, I'd love to.

Um, you know I've…

I've been teaching for a long time and… and I remember when I first started teaching.

I was so desperate to find answers.

I was so…

I really wanted someone to help me to… to help me, how do I run a class?

How do I deal with students?

How do I make lesson plans?

What activities can I use with my students?

And I remember, I was …this was while I was studying.

I was a student.

Many years ago.

Many years ago, when I was a student.

And I was so desperate for help, and even though I had professors, and other teachers

there, I…

I felt like I still needed more support.

I've…

I felt like, um, they have failed me.

I tried to read books, um, YouTube didn't exist back then.

But I was looking for information everywhere, and I just couldn't find it.

And then, for years, I just had that feeling of I want to give back because I know… how

it was to start without any help.

And for years, I had this feeling, oh I need to try and find a way to… to help other

teachers.

But the problem was… the problem was that I was deathly afraid, and… of being in front

of a camera.

Oh, interesting.

I hated the sound of my own voice.

It's still very bad.

And whenever somebody would take a video, I would almost run out of the room.

And so, at some point, I just realized that, this need for me to try and help other teachers

out there, um, outweighed the… the… the fear of cameras.

And the fear of learning something new.

So, eventually, I just bit the bullet.

That means, uh, I decided to do it.

And I started the channel.

And three years later, here I am not that afraid of video.

Actually embracing it, and learning something new about, um, video and audio, and, um, writing

scripts and YouTube every single day.

Well I guess you are being a great teacher in that sense because you are leading by example.

You are showing your students that, hey, I was afraid to learn something new, but I did

it, so you can, too.

Yeah, definitely.

You know, as teachers, uh, we are supposed to be role models, and I think if we can show

our students that, listen, here is this huge obstacle or, that I have to overcome, or this

wall between me and my goals if you apply yourself, and you work very hard, then you

can cross that wall, and you can achieve your goals.

So especially with language learning, uh, one… one of my greatest skills, I believe,

one of my greatest skills is to try and get my students to talk.

Because as a language learner… as a language teacher our students are very often shy or

they don't want to speak out loud.

They don't want to communicate with their friends.

They are… they… they hate public speaking.

So um, one of my skills is to try and get that out of my students.

Um, I think it's so important to… to show them that you know… there's by… by applying

yourself by trying…

trying new things, uh, you will learn, and you will grow, and there…

there's nothing to be afraid of, only you know, there's only success that will come

in the future.

I think you did a great thing by recognizing that there was a need for a channel like Etacude.

Because I remember, I've been in Korea for 20 years now and I haven't been, uh, teaching

in a classroom for… for quite some time now, but in the very beginning, when I first

came, I could have used all the help that I… that I could get.

And there were no resources outside of like you said, uh, my co-workers and things like

that.

So you had this idea, okay, so I'm gonna make a YouTube channel dedicated to helping

teachers.

But that's a very broad, that's a very broad topic, so how did you decide where you were

going to start?

Well… well that… that's very interesting, um…

Well before I started, I knew that my first video and my first idea won't be perfect.

It won't be perfect, um, and I just decided to start making some videos on topics that

I'm interested in.

And also, topics that I've heard people need some help with.

I started out with, I think, a couple of, um, words in Korean for new teachers to use.

Okay.

Come to Korea.

So I did some even though my Korean isn't very good.

I…

I wanted to share some… some tips and tricks to new teachers.

Those videos weren't very good, but I was…

I was, um, I was so proud of myself for being in front of a camera and trying.

And then after that, um, I started trying new things.

Um, trying to do videos on activities, or if somebody mentioned that they needed some

help with the first day of class, I started making videos on whatever the need was.

And now, I've got all these ideas of videos that I make.

And whenever someone suggests it, I do some research and I try to present something useful

to them.

Well that's great because you have an audience of teachers who are constantly learning themselves

and asking you questions and that helps you create your content, right?

100% Um, one of the things that I do is, for the

past two years, every Sat… every Sunday night at 10 p.m.,

I have a one hour live stream.

Where, um, I've got teachers joining and sharing what's going on in their lives and

in their classes.

I've got English learners coming to the live stream just to chat.

And I get so many ideas from teachers saying, listen, I'm doing this in my class and it's

working.

Or I've got this problem, or what…

what advice would you give?

So for…

I've almost done…

I've done 150…

I think it's 150.

Almost 150, um, live streams of just talking for an hour.

And I've learned so much from teachers, um, out there, you know…

When we're only one person, we've only got one experience.

But I'm so grateful to be able to talk to many teachers and learn from them.

It's true because everybody has a different experience in the classroom, right.

That's really cool you've done 150 live streams.

And that's great practice for you to get over your fear of being in front of the camera

that you obviously don't have anymore.

Yeah, I don't think I've got that fear anymore.

I…

I just realized you know, I just realized that whatever happens, just let go, um, relax,

you know, and do your best, you know, that's… that's all that can be expected of you.

I think so…

So often we…

we…

we think that we're being watched or that we should be better than we are, but you know

I can only be who I am in the moment and hopefully I can do my best, you know.

The channel now is doing extremely well.

Somewhere in the area of what almost 89,000 subscribers now.

I think was what was the number that I saw.

Was that immediate success for the channel, or has it been growing consistently over the

three years?

Three years for a YouTube channel is not really a long time so you've… congratulations you've