Choir Baton Podcast Episode 11. The Journey to International Teaching with Matt Bishop

This week’s episode is an interview with Matt Bishop, music teacher at the Dunecrest American School in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. A year ago Matt was an early twenties suburban middle school choir teacher, having only ever lived in North Carolina and did not even own a passport. What led him to pursue such a drastic change and why? What hurdles did he jump personally and professionally to learn, apply, and accept this position? What is teaching at an international school like, especially a school in the Middle East? How has he grown as a person and musician in the past year?

If you’ve ever wanted to know what the process for international teaching is, Matt walks us through his experience. Or, if you’ve ever felt trapped and unhappy in your current situation, Matt humbly shares his own struggles and how he took control of his life. You will be inspired by Matt’s story and come away with yet another example of how choir can change your life.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------

Matthew Bishop is a lyric tenor, conductor, and teacher.  A native of North Carolina, he holds a Bachelor’s of Music in Music Education from University of North Carolina School at Greensboro.  While at UNCG, he performed as a soloist and chorister with the Schola Cantorum, University Chorale, and Chamber Singers.  He was also the first undergraduate student at UNCG to assemble a choir and program for an undergraduate conducting recital, An Evening of Choral Classics.

Upon graduation, Mr. Bishop became the Choral Director at Holly Grove Middle School in Holly Springs, North Carolina.  His students received honors such as selection for North Carolina Middle School Honors Chorus, All State and All County choirs.  Bishop was also an active member of his Professional Learning Team and served as the All County Chorus Festival Coordinator. He also served as musical director for productions such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas  andAnnie Jr.  Mr. Bishop’s professional memberships include National Association of Music Education, and American Choral Director’s Association.

In August 2018, Mr. Bishop relocated to Dubai, United Arab Emirates to build the Performing Arts programs at Dunecrest American School.  He currently directs Grades 5-10 Choir and Theatre ensembles, as well as an after school Piano Lab. Mr. Bishop is excited to join The Voice Studio at American School of Dubai.

Choir Baton Host: Beth Philemon @bethphilemon | www.bethphilemon.com

Visit Choir Baton Online: @choirbaton | www.choirbaton.com

Choir Baton Theme Song by Scott Holmes

Matt Bishop: I started meeting with him. And that really opened up my life in general. And I don't think I would have been brave enough to take the job if I had not had that therapist to talk me through what this is going to be. So pretty much, my therapy turned into, how can I accept the blessing that I've always wanted? And how can I live my life and be. It was just, it was very, I went from being really miserable and unhappy, to taking charge of my life. I didn't even I didn't have a passport. I'd never gotten on an airplane for an international flight in my life. When I hear it now, like I've had some distance from it. When I hear it now if I hear my voice outside of my own body, I can imagine listening to this and being like, ‘Oh, like, that was just so lucky’, or blah blah, blah. But I can 100% say it wasn't, it was not luck. It was just, if you wake up every day and you want something and you say it out loud enough times, it's gonna happen. But you just have to be ready for it.

Beth Philemon: Welcome to the Choir Baton. A podcast designed to engage with people and stories, ideas and inspirations, stemming from choir. No other art form, no sport, no hobby, no business requires a group of people to execute a communal goal with just their voices. Join me, your host, Beth Philemon, as I interview guests who are singers, teachers, conductors, instrumentalists, and community members. Together, we'll ask questions, seek understanding, and share insight from our experiences in life and in choir. You're listening to the Choir Baton podcast where we want to know what's your story.

I just want to welcome our newest guest of the Choir Baton podcast, Mr. Matt Bishop. Matt, thanks for joining us today.

Matt Bishop: Yeah It's good to be here.

Beth Philemon: And Matt and I met through North Carolina connections. And I think we've met in person maybe once or twice at a music thing. And we’ve had some conversations about different jobs in North Carolina, and all sorts of things. But I was stoked. Last summer he announced that he was up and leaving his middle school position here in Raleigh, North Carolina, and going to work abroad in Dubai at Dunecrest American School. And overseas teaching is a dream of mine. And

I've been wanting to reach out to him, and we’ve finally been able to connect, and I'm so excited to hear about your experience and what led you there. But first, Matt, why don't you tell us a little bit about kind of why you got into choir teaching in the first place and your journey there,

Matt Bishop: It's a good place to start. Oh my goodness, sometimes it feels like I just started, like singing or something like that, like three weeks ago, I swear. So I went through elementary and middle school being very anti-music, anti-performing. I was very into soccer, which in a way, it's kind of like performing, but it wasn't on my radar. It's kind of like, my sister's thing. I had a friend the summer before my ninth grade year who wanted to audition for the Wizard of Oz through community theater, and she didn't want to do it by herself. So I did it with her, sort of just to support her right and they were casting ensemble for singing and ensemble for dancing. And I ended up being called back to dance for like, jitterbug dancers. And there was some singing, as well. And I was probably horrible, but I was somehow cast, and my friend ended up pulling out, and not doing it. So, my family didn't really allow that. They were like ‘You auditioned, so you made a commitment, so you need to do it’, and I ended up doing it. And I would say, probably one or two rehearsals into it, I just, I had no idea what was going on, but I knew I wanted more of it.

And so I really was focusing more heavily on dance and stuff like that. Singing was just something I did on the side. When you're a boy that can even kind of sing in the sound, people really want you to sing, as you know, as a teacher. And that led to my choir director at my high school. She was a part of their production, and she said, ‘I think you should consider just coming over and singing with me after school one day, just us and we'll just see what we can do,’ and I was like, ‘Okay’. I didn't really have any objections. I auditioned for the musical my first year of high school. This is during ninth grade. Then, I didn't officially start singing in choir until I was in 10th grade; first semester of 10th grade. And it wasn't until 10th grade that I even knew what a quarter note was or anything like that. I was brand new, she put me in top choir because she needed male voices. They were going to ACDA in the spring, and the very first song I ever sang in choir was Ave Verum Corpus, Mozart's. I probably sang maybe three notes.

I can literally remember sitting in choir and just not knowing what was going on, but just faking it, right? And I remember going to my mom and being frustrated, and being like, ‘I really want to do better at this, I’m so behind,’ but these people have been singing since they were in kindergarten. I don't know what to do. And long story short, I got myself into voice lessons. I went to Barnes and Noble, and bought a book called ‘How to Read Music’. And I was sort of teaching myself and learning in choir. I would say after a year, by the time I was in 11th grade, I knew this is what I wanted to do. Like I just, I didn't really know if I wanted to teach. I just knew I wanted to be a part of this. And I auditioned. I did like every summer camp I could do, did every honor choir audition I could get myself into, and I just hustled, and I ended up going to UNCG for music education. And after graduating in 2015, I attended the Wake County job fair and

who was soon-to-be my future boss. And that's kind of how I got my interview at Holly Grove. I interviewed. I did a preliminary sort-of phone ‘get to know you’. And then I did an in-person interview there. I started work on July 5 of 2015.

Beth Philemon: That's right, because Holly Grove is a year-round Middle School. Right?

Matt Bishop: Exactly. So I went, I graduated in May, I went to the job fair in May. And just, ‘boom, boom, boom’, it happened really fast. I didn't think about year-round, like it happens so quickly in terms of paperwork and stuff. So I remember I was talking to my mom and I'm like, ‘Mom, I need to get an apartment’ and all this stuff, and I don't have any money. Like, I don't know how to do this. So she, I think my mom - I'm turning this into like ‘How Matt got helped by his mom’ podcast now. 

Beth Philemon: We get by with a little help from parents, friends. It's a group effort.

Matt Bishop: Yeah, my mom works for a family business. She took off work one day in June, and I remember we went apartment hunting. I was like, ‘I need an apartment in two weeks, I have no paperwork to prove that I'm employed,’ so it was very stressful. But long story short, I started on July 5th, 2015, and my last day was June 20th, something - 25th, 26th, of 2018. Yeah, so I worked as a tech-seven twelve-month employee during that three-year period.

Beth Philemon: Wow. Okay, so I have, I totally forgot that that was a year-round school. And I have a couple questions about that. But jumping back real quick, did you still play soccer in high school? Were you still involved with sports? Or did you make the total shift over?

Matt Bishop: Um, I did both my first year. So I played soccer in the fall of ninth grade, and then did the musical in the spring of ninth grade. And after that, I decided to part ways from athletics. And it really was a shame because I didn't want to, I didn't really want to quit soccer, right. But I really wasn't connecting with the culture. And the high school culture of athletics, in terms of just locker room behavior, and bus ride behavior, and sort of like, the kind of conversations that happen in those contexts. I just never connected with them. And I've always been someone that was like, just full ‘tea’ here, I really didn't know it at the time, but I'm almost always going to be more successful if I'm in an environment that's predominantly female. Because that's just how my personality is. And that's just how it is. So I just, I felt like it just was it. I liked the sport and the activity because I had been investing in it so long, but I was really lucky to have parents that really didn't mind, they didn't really care what I was doing as long as I was working on something out of school. So no, I didn't continue soccer. So now I just completely went over to the art.

Beth Philemon: Yes, yes. Welcome. We always need another male voice. I think that's such an interesting thing there to think about. I'm always thinking through comparing arts and athletics, and how and why they're different and similar. And I think, I just think that's a valuable point to make: the culture, in some ways, is similar, but in that context, particularly within that male locker room context, and bus ride and and banter sort of thing, is hopefully very different than that of which choir affords for students, as well. Now, where in North Carolina were you, again?

Matt Bishop: Um, Rockingham County, which is like, 40 minutes north of Greensboro, towards the Virginia line. 

Beth Philemon: So a smaller area too?

Matt Bishop: Absolutely. Very small, very working middle class. My school was very racially and socioeconomically diverse, because we were sort of on that perfect balance where we had a lot of kids who were sort of in a more privileged environment in the Summerfield area. And then, sort of, on the other side of that, quite literally were the kids who were maybe like farmers kids or like tobacco and corn and crops and pig farmers, those are all like very popular jobs where I'm from. Yeah, and so it was a really cool mix. I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back, it was very diverse. Like we would have, in choir, if there were, you know, 50 of us, you would see 10 or 12 kids wearing camo, and you would see some of us wearing our preppy clothes, and you have your ‘artsy fartsy’ kids. 

I didn't realize that at the time, because no one does when they're in it, but for that area, my arts teachers really did a good job of making sure it didn't feel super exclusive. Which is something I really want to do more of with my own teaching. But yeah, so that's why I'm proud. But I grew up kind of going to Greensboro, like Greensboro was the big city where I'm from. And so, when I went to school there, my perception of Greensboro was like, very different from when I actually lived there. But you know, I grew up going to UNCG for camp and for underscores auditions, that was like one of the sites. And being a part of Guilford County Schools, and I did show choir on Fridays in Greensboro, so I would drive myself to show choir for school. That's actually how I met Marshall Johnson, who ended up being my student teaching supervisor, weirdly enough. Anyway, so that's sort of my story. 

Beth Philemon: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, okay, so again, the trajectory just adds to the fact that, I mean, you're in Dubai right now, as we speak. But really quickly, tell me a little bit more about your experience at Holly Grove. Tell us a little bit about, I mean, I know people that are listening like, ‘What in the world is a year-round choir? How does that look on top of it being middle school?’

Matt Bishop: Yeah. Working at Holly Grove was really ‘boot camp’. Like I had to, there was no time for messing around or second-guessing. Yeah, it was hard. I'm just gonna be honest, it was really hard because being a ‘BT1’ is hard enough. And -

Beth Philemon: That's ‘beginning teacher one’ in North Carolina.

Matt Bishop: Yeah. So like, having it be your first gig out of the gate is hard enough, but then being thrown into the schedule where - So my specific brand of year round was ‘multitrack’. So kids are on four different tracks. And each track is ‘in session’ for nine weeks and ‘out of session’ for three weeks for the entire year. So your four quarters of the year, like your four grading periods, essentially, are their physical attendance schedules. So, core teachers who teach primary subjects like science, math, etc. They are attached to their students’ track. But in a multitrack context, elective teachers are on ‘track six or seven’, which basically means we sort of, we teach all our kids and we have to plan and work around those sorts of ‘tracking in’ and ‘tracking out’ dates. So I had to become really organized, really fast, right? And every concept, every assessment I did became based around that schedule. So around the three weeks, sort of in three week chunks, because, let's say if I had a class of track one, and my concert was during their ‘track out’, I had to make sure before they left me that they were ready to perform for their performance. 

But the good thing about it was the culture and the community, parents and faculty members were accustomed for students to be in school when they're tracked out. So it wasn't an issue to get kids to come in for extra performances or to do a dress rehearsal. You just have to be really organized and know how to communicate that six, at least three, but mostly six weeks in advance. So like, we had to have our master calendar at Holly Grove set by July 10th, or something, and most teachers in the states are not even in session, right? So it became tricky, but we made it work. And I 100% would not have been able to do it without my team, performing arts team. There is a machine. They travel every year, they do these big trips, they have success on the state-level, and the county-level, and everything that you do like an honor choir audition or a field trip, there's always that extra layer of considering the year-round schedule. So that was probably the hardest part. For sure.

But what came out of that was, I just, I knew how to plan ahead, which is awesome. And I had great students, I was actually in a perfect time as a ‘BT1’ because the school had only been open for six years when I started, and the choir program only ran for three years under one teacher. And so, I was the second teacher there at a relatively new school. And that is a very nice place to be, because you're not going through the growing pains of opening a new building, but this program is still very malleable. And so anything that I did was new and fresh to them. So I wasn't in a situation where I'm replacing this like, legend, icon. I sort of had a blank slate, and I messed up a lot, but I didn't really let them know, right, so it was good. Like, there's so many pros and cons. If I'm being honest, it honestly feels like one long school year all three years I was there. The hardest thing was just time-off. I had to schedule my time-off and be really particular about that time because I never wanted to miss a performance, or like, miss a rehearsal leading up, so it was tricky. But long story short, I'm so happy I did it. Yeah, because I felt like a sixth or seventh year teacher coming out of that. And like, I just, I feel like now that I'm out of it, I use every tool that I gained while I was there, so that that was the most beneficial experience. Absolutely.

Beth Philemon: I can't even imagine. It's hard enough for a music teacher to schedule time out. Also, because then you don't have any break, like anytime you scheduled time-off you had to do sub plans, which, in a music classroom is always an interesting thing to consider. Well, so you've been teaching there for three years. And then, you know, you kind of get the itch and the urge to do something a little bit different. What led you to consider international teaching?

Matt Bishop: International teaching was really not something I didn't originally associated with traveling originally. But I'm a very ‘bullet-point’ thinker. So when I have something I can't process, I just write it all down. And I met with a friend of mine, this is probably the end of my second year of teaching around that time. And I said, ‘I really need something to change because I'm working too much,’ and I'm burning out, and I don't like feeling like I'm in a relationship, but the job that I have to do, I want to do it. Because of the pressure and because of ‘x, y and z’, I felt like I couldn't separate my emotional state from my physical state. It was very mixed together. Like, I had no compartmentalization of life at that point.

Beth Philemon: That's so wise that you saw that, and recognize that so many people don't, particularly not after their second year of teaching.

Matt Bishop: Yeah, I felt like I was really thriving outward. So on paper, I was really achieving, but I wasn't happy. And that didn't have anything to do with work. It was 100% me. But I was having a unique experience that even my college-mates could not fully understand because no one else was working on my calendar. And what I did is I just wrote down, I just ‘word-vomited’ onto the paper. Like, what do I want to do? Like, when I'm 90 years old, what do I want to do? Be able to tell someone what I did with my life? And like, what's gonna help me want to wake up in the morning and be more excited about life: not just about teaching, like, what's gonna help me do that? And growing up in a very small town, international travel is not something that just rolls off the tongue. Like people don't do that. It’s a big deal. Traveling where I'm from is going to Florida, or going to a big city on the East Coast, like New York City, that's a big deal financially and sort of, culturally. Because where I'm from, everyone knows each other. Everyone is related, sort of, in some kind of way, like through someone, through someone, through someone, and that was always my sphere of understanding. So I knew I wanted to travel, and so I was ready to be done with teaching and go teach English, or go. I just wanted to, I wanted to shock my system because I was no longer present where I was. I started talking to my friend and my career goals were not matching my personal goals. I wanted to travel, but I don't want this. I don't want to have to explain to a future employer why I have a gap in my resume. And then, I also see myself being a graduate student in the future. And I see myself doing all these things, and it just wasn't, it wasn't happening. And I did exactly what I did when I was in ninth grade. I asked my parents if I could take voice lessons, I just got on the internet and just found out how to do it. So this was in like, October, maybe of my third year of teaching, I'm not sure. Let's go with October, and I filled out generic applications online for teaching agencies. A lot of international teachers don't post their positions, but they consult with these agencies to see who's in their pool -

Beth Philemon: Which is a good thing to know, first and foremost. I had no idea.

Matt Bishop: Yeah, yeah. So it's not a - they do post positions, but especially in the Middle East, schools go up every five seconds and everything is faster. Like, there's not this super long, drawn-out HR process to make sure - it's very ‘hurry up and wait’, but when you get to the hurry part, they need everything. So I filled out a bunch, but the one that ended up coming through for me was a website called ‘teachaway.com’, and I found a few jobs that were posted. And, you know, I reached out to some employers, and I heard nothing before holiday break, and I kind of just 100% forgot about it. So that was sort of a thing that happened as a way for me to process my life and to feel better myself. So I went on about Christmas performances, and holiday, and New Year's, and being back at school. And I sort of, I started applying for local jobs, as well for middle and high school, just to sort of get onto a traditional calendar, but also just having some new experiences. Anyway, ‘X, Y and Z’. And actually, the job came about. How I found out about the job was really funny. So in March, early March, I had this stomach virus, and I was just a mess. And I got to the point where I could not keep anything down, and I had to go to the emergency room because I was so dehydrated. I think I knew I wasn't actually that ill. But I was like, ‘If I don't get an IV, then I'm gonna be messed up’. Yeah, I need an IV. So I went to the emergency room. Luckily, my roommate at the time was willing to take me. And by the time I was lucid, and I was finally back to feeling normal, it was like 3:34pm. And I just, I don't even know what's going on. But I showed my friend the email I got from Dubai, and I said, ‘Look at this’. I was like, ‘Is this real? Or is this a joke?’ and it was my now boss saying, ‘Hey, my name's Pat and I am opening a new school in Dubai. And we’re trying to put together a candidate pool and we saw your credentials, and we were hoping to just get to know you first. And then if you know if it's a fit and we will move forward with the interview process’. So I did all that in the morning, and I didn't answer, and then I woke up two days later and I was looking through my email. I was like, ‘Wait, I got a really important email while I was in the emergency room. I need to go back and read this’. Luckily, I was always marked as unread. Always do that, no matter what it is. And yeah, so I didn't tell anyone except for that roommate. I didn’t tell my colleagues, because I didn't want to tell them unless I had news, right. At that point, I had been rejected from, I think four jobs in Wake County. Yeah, three or four jobs. I would get to the last interview, and they just, they would always love me. And like, it was always a good fit. But the answer I always got, because I was a second year/third year teacher was ‘We want someone with more experience,’ and I couldn't accept that because I knew, perhaps it's the entitled millennial in me, but I knew that some of the people who are - I understood where the employers were coming from, so it's an investment, so it's easier to invest in a teacher  with seven years of experience, because they're more likely to stay in one place, they don't move as much. I got it, but I wasn't accepting it. 

Beth Philemon: It's a smaller community. We often know that applicant pool, as well. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Totally.

Matt Bishop: Yeah. So I understood it from an objective standpoint. Like, certain jobs are better for younger teachers and certain jobs are better for teachers with some more grit, and they've been seasons more. Anyway, I started interviewing with Pat, and it was very, sort of, not real. I didn't even know what to ask him, it didn't feel, it just felt like a normal job interview. And I did my best, but I think because it was all through Skype, I didn't really. I wasn't really trying to put on a show, nothing was sugar-coated. I think that's kind of a mark of a seasoned teacher, is that you don't have this sort of, you know the difference between that idealistic college mindset and that realistic mindset. And I did an interview, and I waited two weeks, and then I did another interview, and I waited two weeks, and then exchanged some emails. I knew after the second interview that I wanted it for real. And coincidentally enough, my seventh graders on ‘track two’ that year were singing an Arabic folk song. They didn't ask me for any supplemental materials, but they made a video. Like, I literally hung up from the interview and made a video of me teaching that class an hour later. Yeah, like, eight minutes of me rehearsing that song with them, and like, showing them everything that I can do in 20 minutes, right? And I just sent it to him. And I said, ‘I know you didn't ask me, but I just want to be really clear that I want this’. And ‘bla bla bla bla bla’, and two weeks after, it was like two weeks, two weeks, two weeks, I got another email saying, ‘Please prepare any questions you have for us. We're prepared to make an offer. So just let us know what you need to know to say yes, and we will try to work with you to make that happen’. 

So yeah, it was, because it was all on my computer, it didn't feel as real as a traditional job interview. It was very strange. Because I think, like, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was like, I don't know, like, ’This doesn't feel legit to me,’ is what I was thinking. But then, the more the job revealed itself, at that point, I talked to my colleagues about it, because I knew they would help me make a good decision. And I said, if this job was in North Carolina, like 20 minutes away from me, and they offered it to me, I would not hesitate. I would jump on it. It’s a brand new school, brand new facility. Staff members who have been pulled from every which way to make a good team. I would be an idiot to say no, I literally asked for this. I literally wanted this. So anything that gets in the way is going to be of my own creation, at that point. 

I also really want to be clear, during my third year of teaching, and people don't talk about this, I started seeing a therapist. And I met with him, we'd meet every Sunday morning. I started meeting with him. And that really opened up my life in general. And I don't think I would have been brave enough to take the job if I had not had that therapist to talk me through what this is going to be. So pretty much, my therapy turned into, how can I accept the blessing that I've always wanted? And how can I live my life and be. It was just, it was very, I went from being really miserable and unhappy, to taking charge of my life. It all snowballed so fast, and the therapy in combination with my parents being very supportive, and my colleagues being very supportive. Because they could’ve easily said ‘We don’t want a new teacher to go through this schedule again,’ because they were sort of my therapists for two years, and they were so supportive. They said, “Matt, you’re 24, if I was 24 and I got that offer, I would do it, so you should do it, and you will not regret it.’ Anyway, so now I’m here, I got the offer - I actually pulled this up the other day to show my students, as a joke, but I sent my boss a PDF of maybe 25 questions. And I said, ‘I really don’t feel comfortable accepting unless I have these questions answered,’ I need to feel safe, and I didn’t even have a passport. I had never gotten on an airplane for an international trip in my life, so the international part was more of where my questions lied. I trusted the school, and yeah, so that’s sort of how it happened. When I hear it now, I have some distance from it. Like, when I hear it now, when I hear my voice out of my own body, I can imagine being like ‘Ugh, that was just so lucky,’ but I can 100% say it wasn’t. It was not luck. If you wake up everyday and you want something, and you say it outloud enough times, it’s gonna happen. But you just have to be ready for it. So yeah, I really didn’t feel ready, but I said yes, and got a passport, and yeah, then it all happened. I flew out from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and I got to Dubai on August 23rd, yeah. It’s a Netflix series. 

Beth Philemon: Yeah, wow. It's an excellent Netflix series, if that's been what it is. But I mean, you just hit on so many key factors of therapy. I'm a big believer in therapy, my therapist and I just celebrated our one year anniversary. And I told her it's the longest relationship I've had in a long time, she can't break up with me. But I think it's true, we don't talk about it enough. And that's where it's our role to do that. But also, I mean, truly taking charge of our life. We can't sit around and wait around for someone else to make these changes, and then, when you do take charge of your life, and you put stuff out into the universe, and you wake up every day seeking that, you do have to be ready when it comes to your way. So, okay, so now you're there, you arrive in Dubai. And I mean, what? What, tell me all the things like, I mean, I'm sure you're nervous. And did you just load up a suitcase? You went by yourself, I'm guessing and they usually, part of your package though, right, is a relocation package. 

Matt Bishop: Yeah. So it's, um, there's sort of a every, so the Middle East in particular is 85% ‘expat’ period, it doesn't really matter what the field is, so 85%.

Beth Philemon: Explain it for them.

Matt Bishop: Oh, yeah. An expat is basically someone who makes money outside of the country. So for instance, if I, as an American, that just means I'm here for a long-term stay. So my employer is my ‘quote unquote’ sponsor and your sponsor's name on your visa. So I have a work visa, and it's customary for your employer to handle every bit of government business there is associated with your being allowed to be here. So when they vet for candidates, they typically don't interview people who they already know that can't happen for if that makes sense.

But a country like UAE is very accepting. Every passport is pretty much welcome here. They don't really have any political conflicts that are limiting passports right now, which is really beautiful and awesome. So that makes it very interesting, that makes the pool of candidates very wide, and it makes a lot of people want to come here, so you can do every job, like it doesn't matter. If your job is a hotel, like maid service, all the way up to a CEO. If you're not a native, you have to have a work visa, you have to have a sponsor. And there are certain things legally that they have to provide for you. Now, anything they provide in addition to that is just to sweeten the pot. And I feel that my school does a very good job of that. So my school is under an umbrella of schools called ESOL education. And I believe Dunecrest and they opened another school in Dubai this year called Peregrine. Dunecrest and Peregrine were the seventh and eighth schools, I think, in their family. So, ESOL has schools in Cairo, Egypt, Abu Dhabi, Cyprus, Hong Kong, they have a West Campus in Cairo. So the school itself is new, but the team is not. Everyone that they hired, I think of the 50 or so teachers and leadership that they hired, only six of us were hired as ‘brand new,’ so everyone was pulled from everywhere? 

So they basically started with admin, so we have admin who are coming from Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, ‘X, Y, and Z,’ and then the admin - they sought out their best team members from their past schools. And then, it's just like in Wake County, like you go with those you know first, and then fill-in the holes with it. So like, if you think about, like, a new principal at a big high school in Wake County, they're gonna think about, in their career, who has done the best job, and they're gonna offer it to them first if they're a good principal. Because that's your family. You know you don't have to watch over them which makes your job easier, but for the specialist positions at Dunecrest. I think some offers, I think some seeds were laid, but they were comfortable saying where they weren't, because we have another school in Dubai, as well, that's been open for 10 years. And it would take a lot for them to want to leave. So anyway, I'm trying to get back on track with what I was supposed to answer. 

Beth Philemon: Well, I mean, no. What is it, a K-12 school?

Matt Bishop: Technically, it's K-12, but in the founding year, they opened it K-10. And it's primarily, we're mostly student-heavy from kindergarten to fourth grade. But if you think about it, as a parent, moving your kids schools, it becomes less popular for kids to want to move schools within the same city if they're in 10th grade or seventh grade like so it's a very small team I work with, especially coming from a school that was, you know, 1,300 kids. We don't even have that many kids K through 10. Right. So that was an adjustment. But yeah, so that's that's kind of how it works. So they handle everything, so the apartment, transportation to and from work -

Beth Philemon: So you don't drive to work, are you guys on like, a compound, for lack of a better word? I know some people have had that.

Matt Bishop: Yeah, I think it's super subjective to what kind of relationships your employer has with the government and with the community. But because ESOL has been here for 12, 13 years, and they opened two schools this year, so basically, they send out a survey to you, so you can either take a stipend, or you can take the provided housing and typically. If you think about it from a college mindset, it doesn't sound like the provided housing would be better, but it really is because they get special deals. I live in a one bedroom flat and I would never be able to afford this flat here or in Raleigh. I'm very comfortable here. I only drive because I want to, I don't have to. So for my first semester here, most of us didn't drive. So technically, on paper, my only expenses that I have to pay for are my groceries, and my internet, and my phone, and things like that, but my accommodation is all included.

So that makes it 20 times easier when you're moving abroad, because when you get off the airplane, you have a place to sleep. They've done so much work for you, oh my goodness. My apartment is furnished. Like, I got here. I had towels, and sheets, and they bought us very minimal groceries. Like when I woke up the next day, I got a phone call from my boss saying, ‘Hey, I'm sending someone to your apartment to take you to the grocery store. They give you a little bit of money, in cash, as soon as you land, just so you're not their money, they get you a SIM card, just a tourist SIM card. Like they really take all the guesswork out. And that is essentially why I accepted the job because as someone who's never traveled internationally, sure, those were most of the things that I didn't know a lot about. And I wanted to make sure that I wasn't being taken advantage of, and I do definitely feel like it's been quite the opposite. I feel like I've taken advantage of it, not in a bad way. But you really have to, you have to. Because I feel like when you grow up in a middle class environment, or if you grow up in the south, like there's like an apologetic energy around gifts, you know, like, I really did nothing to earn this, but they give you so much. And you really just have to say ‘thank you so much’, because they just people here expect, they go to the positive first and, like, it's, it doesn't matter what I need. There's somebody at my school, that works at my school, that speaks Arabic, that knows how I can get it at a discounted price. It's very different from what I'm used to at my old school where it was maybe a little sterile at times, with that kind of thing, which is fine, but it's just very different. 

It's a little bit like college because those of us who are single, who took the accommodation, we all live in the same building. Most of us are stacked on top of each other. So like, the art teacher lives directly above me, and a pre-k teacher lives directly below me, and we do dinners and stuff like that during the week a lot. We all became friends really fast because we were all having the same experience. And yeah, so I, just from a business standpoint, I would say to anyone who is looking to teach, always ask. So accommodation packages vary among employers, and I've heard some stories about people who maybe we're not as thorough, and it's just always better to know, so just ask as many questions as possible, and they're gonna respect you more for asking questions. Don't ever feel like an imposter because no matter what country you're in, they're your visa sponsor, and they're required to make sure that you feel safe in this country, where you're an alien, essentially, at first. Because you're not just here to visit, you're here to live. Do you want to be able to put your feet on the ground and, you know, thrive, rather than just sort of stay in your apartment. 

I think it's important to anyone who might hear this now or in the future, like thumbing through your list of episodes, get every single morsel of information you can get from your potential employer. And make sure when you are looking at salaries, that you account for what the day-to-day calculation is for spending in that country, because you may be making less or more in that country, but the day-to-day spending is going to be different wherever you are. It doesn't matter. So that's something I'm happy that I did, these are things that I did, because I had all summer to get ready to come here, but for instance, I make more money here than I made in the States, but it's also a more expensive city to live in. So I still make more, but relatively speaking, I'm on a similar budget, and income tax is tax-free, income is tax-free in UAE which is really nice. Yeah, so that's kind of like, the setup part of it. It's not as hard as I think people would want to believe. They have everything ready for you when you arrive and I'm assuming most schools would do that. But this is, like, the norm, so it would be very abnormal for an International School of any curriculum, British American, Canadian and Australian, it doesn't matter. They should offer this, and it shouldn't be like, it's not a bonus. They have to offer this. 

Beth Philemon: And ultimately, they want you to stay there, they want you to be happy. Because that's less money that they are out each year if they have to replace you.

Matt Bishop: And they get deals on deals on deals. Basically half the apartments in this building are people who are associated with ESOL. You get more taking the accommodation than you would if you had to go out and buy something with you. And I think for families, it makes more sense to take the stipend, like for people with children or whatnot. But I tend to be very thorough, and like I'm always the kind of person that wants the money up front, both literally and figuratively. I need to know upfront what is gonna happen, like, I can't put my feet in an unknown situation, to an extent, when it comes to safety and just feeling secure. Another great thing about international teaching that everyone should consider is the flight accommodations you get. So it's customary for an employer to provide you with a round trip flight every academic year and you can either take that through a booking, they'll book it for you, or you can take that in a stipend. So I flew for 14 and a half hours in Emirates economy, which is a really nice economy. I was very comfortable. I flew direct from Florida and three or four weeks ago, I got my money for my summer flights. So I'll actually actually be using that money for traveling in the summer. So that's something, that if you take a calculator and put together everything that they give you, it's not something you would associate with average teachers. I'm not saying I'm rich, but like in terms of what the sphere of financial situations are with teachers. It’s not what I'm used to,

Beth Philemon: I think ultimately you're treated like a professional. We don't always receive that, unfortunately.

Matt Bishop: No, absolutely. And like, I think that was one of the hardest things for me to do, was to learn how to receive things that I actually deserve. I just feel like someone with a bachelor's degree who travels, ‘X, Y and Z,’ they're gonna get a hotel room and they're gonna make sure they're taken care of. They do a lot of stuff they don't have to do. I also did everything I had to do. For me, as a teacher, that makes me want to put more positive stuff into that business. So when I'm working late, I've worked late more than I probably did in the States. When I sort of get frustrated, or if I get really into my privilege, I have to check myself and say, ‘A year ago, I didn't have 70% of what I have now, and I'm complaining about the coffee machine not working,’ like, what is my life? It's okay to complain, but then I have to check myself and say, ‘I didn't come here for the accommodation,’ but it makes it a lot easier to just focus on what I'm here to do. And then everything else is my business. So that's a brief rundown of the business side of it, but I would say most people my age here are teachers or some version of that. Like as an adult, like an instructor, I would say. Because you always have to look at what the university offerings are in the country you're going to, and Western music, they do have education programs here, but they're not going to be as rigorous as where I'm from. My entire staff that I work under, like the administration at my school, actually, funny enough; the director of my school was a band director. Isn't that weird? And get this; the secondary principal was the band director, as well. They're both band directors.

Beth Philemon: That is crazy.

Matt Bishop: Super, super abnormal. That's something that we share that I really like. One’s from Montana, one’s from Tennessee, originally. And then, the rest of the admin. is from Canada. They have that same standard that an American School in America or Canada would have, but in the sphere of UAE, that standard may not be as high, you know. So yeah, that's kind of the logistical side of it.

Beth Philemon: That’s so fascinating. Yeah, it's just fascinating, and I'm so excited for other people to hear your story, because we as musicians, and as people, but I feel like especially as musicians and artists, because so much of what we do is so creative and such a vulnerable part of ourselves. When there's parts that we don't know, it does make us more nervous, right, such as, like the logistical aspects of things. And so, to hear other people's stories, it's really, really helpful. So tell me about the music that you're teaching, and I know, first year school, so you're building that, but what does that music program look like?

Matt Bishop: Um, the program is very small. I will be transparent in saying that it's really all hands on deck at my school, in terms of the ratio of students to teachers. So there are a lot of requirements from what's called the KHDA, which is basically what we would call the Department of Education or DPI, Department of Public Instruction. It's KHDA here, and any school that opens, it gets a KHDA inspection after their third year of being open. So there are certain things that we have to start doing now to be prepared for that. And there's certain things we have to offer, and certain rules we have to abide by to make sure that that is going to be successful and our school is going to continue to be open after that. So having said that, I am going to be transparent. I'm teaching a few other things that are not music, that are not my specialty. If I was in my past school, I wouldn't be really ‘bitter Betty’ about it, but I knew going into it that it was going to happen. So it wasn't a surprise. But in grades 5 to 10, we have 75 kids. My choral program at Holly Grove was like 110 total, (grades) 6 to 8. Whatever that traditional choir program mindset or image you have in your head, or what I had in my head, is not going to exist here for a while. So I have to keep that in mind in terms of pacing and whatnot. But in terms of music, I'm teaching a combined class of grades 5, 6, and 7, which sounds like a nightmare, but it's not, I promise. I just had to get real creative. And I started out with kind of just doing my normal thing. 

My curriculum team calls it a suitcase mindset, where every teacher sort of brings with them in their suitcase, everything they did at their last school, and 9 times out of 10, that doesn't work in an international school, just because it doesn't work. It's not because the kids are bad, but just because you're not there anymore. So there's so many things that I didn't even know I was doing as a choir teacher in North Carolina that was really only happening there. In North Carolina, in choir, it's customary to, you know, do your warm up, and then you do your aural skills, and every teacher has their version of it, like the standard. If you go into a group of fifth, sixth and seventh graders, and you just overwhelm them with that, and you don't nurture them through it, they're not gonna like you very much. And I think that's a little bit of what happened here. I didn't work on my relationships soon enough. I went right in thinking, ‘Oh, I'm here, I got my visa,’ and like, I'm the T. I'm gonna do it. Yeah. I would say for the first month or so, that just wasn't working. The kids weren't learning, period. When the kids aren't showing success, or showing growth on paper, or in person, that's really on me. So I decided to pump the brakes. And I just focused on one song, and one warm up, and I literally put the music theory on the back burner, which is very hard for me to do. It was very hard for me to do. And I made sure that I knew one to five things about every kid that I knew, like every kid in my class. I wanted to know where this parent was from, where this parent was from, what languages they speak, what do they do when they go home. And that really led me to some more milestone type moments with now in this semester. 

Beth Philemon: Because all of your students are from everywhere, right? They’re all English-speaking, but they're all from around the world?

Matt Bishop: Yeah, it's a really interesting mosaic of nationalities and ethnicities and languages. So typically when a school is named in whatever country, the name of the school is pertaining to the curriculum, so that's something that I think was a little confusing at first. It's like, okay, what's an American school? So these American kids, do they have to have American passport? 

Beth Philemon: Oh, I understand. 

Matt Bishop: So every country where there's a US Embassy, there's going to be an American school. So like, here, that's American School of Dubai. But legally, there can't be another school in this region that has ‘American School of’ as their name. So you'll have American School of Armenia, American ‘wherever there's an embassy’, there's an American School for those kids to go. But when you're doing custom American school, not American School of UAE or Dubai, that just means we're following a standard. Like, the standards and the mindsets that we use are of an American school. And there's a very clear divide between British curriculum and American curriculum here. Just as certifications, like I don't have the certification to teach in British school because I wasn't educated in England or in the UK, so that's neither here nor there. So what that means is that the only requirement for the kids is that you take an entrance exam, and then they do an interview, and then they have to prove English proficiency, for most of them it's easy. 

So I have kids from places I've never even heard of. And the weird thing that I didn't expect with them is a majority of my students have lived here most of their life. So, if they're 14, maybe they lived in one other place, but especially with my younger ones, like 5th grade, they're not natives. But they've lived in Dubai since they can remember because their parents, I would say 50% of the students have one parent that's a pilot, probably with Emirates. Emirates is the national airline here. It's an amazing airline, if you ever had the opportunity to fly Emirates, you should. It's an experience like no other in flight. Like, it's so cool. Some Emirates employees are probably most of the parents, and I would say pretty much most of the moms do not work. One parent is typically American, Canadian, Australian, from New Zealand, somewhere that has a more Western culture. Another parent is going to be from an Arab country, like Lebanon, or Egypt, or, I don't know, like Kuwaiti. You just have your pick of any sort of Islamic country, that's where the other parent is from. We do have a very small Asian population at my school. And then, I have a very small, like, two or three kids who have both parents who are American, but that's very unusual. Because typically what happens is, you know, boy meets girl, boy is a flight attendant, girl wants to move where boy is. So, that's kind of like the love story storyline here. It's just very common, unless your parents are teachers. So most of my kids are bi- or trilingual because they're required to learn Arabic here, it doesn't matter where you're from. They require them to speak Arabic, and to learn Arabic, I mean, and then they also have another language requirement like we would have in America, like French or Spanish. And then, some of them might even speak another language on top of that that you've never heard of, some kind of dialect or some kind of version of French that you've never heard of. 

I'll give you an example. So I have a student, she's the quirkiest student ever, and she's in fifth grade. And I learned all this stuff I'm telling you now because, you know, when you meet an international kid, you ask them where they're from, and then they go, ‘Well,’. So like, one of her parents is from Brazil and the other parent is from Turkey, but when she was born, and when they were together, building their family, they were in China. So she speaks a little Chinese. I think she lived in China until she was six or seven. She's in fifth grade now. So she's like, eleven. So she speaks a little bit of Portuguese, a little bit of Chinese, and she speaks English very well. And then, whatever. So it's very, it's very cool. If you're bored, you can just talk to a kid about what they did over break and what they did over the weekend. And they're gonna say it, they're gonna be so bored when they say it to you, but you're going to be really interested in their life.

Beth Philemon: Because they don't know life any other way.

Matt Bishop: No, they think that life in America is not what life in America is. But it's just like me coming to the Middle East. I had a very filtered Hollywood interpretation of what this was going to be. And they have that precalc, they have that for America. So like when they talked to me about, I have a student who went to her parents, I think she's from some Eastern European country like Serbia? She goes, ‘Have you ever been to Target?’ and I’m like ‘Yes, I've been to Target. It's one of the best things about America.’ She goes, ‘Oh, Mr. Bishop, I went to America and I went to Chick-fil-a.’ Like, it's really funny. Because they're having the same experience, to an extent, that you're having just in reverse. So that's cool. But anyway, back to the music stuff. 

The cliffnotes version would be that we do all of our concerts as a school, so we don't do a secondary music concert and then the primary concert because we don't have enough kids to do that. So we do everything together, and we do it sort of traditional to what we would do in America. So we did a winter festival, winter concert. And before that we did a miniature little 20-minute Halloween thing. And we did like an ‘International Day’ talent show. So that was really exciting to organize, where kids competed in a talent show. It's kind of like an international player. So we do productions and stuff like that, but I'm gonna be honest, the caliber is not that of what I was used to. Because the kids aren't as experienced yet. And they're kind of coming from all over the world. I knew that coming into it. I'm going to be honest, there have been times where I've been talking to my administrator and I'm like, I just, I'm really stuck. I feel like I knew what I was doing. And now I have no idea how to get to where these kids are because I really don't relate to that. Like it's hard to relate to them in terms of the experience they’re having as humans, because they're inundated in privileges and I didn't have that as a kid. So it's just a different sphere of thinking. But then, on the other hand, they're also still the same kids that I taught in America, because kids are kids no matter where they are. So in terms of singing, like, three-part mixed, you know, I don't know Yonder Come Day as the opener for the concert, that would take six months for me to do here. I had to choose to go simple and my new goal became ‘How can I make these kids feel successful around performing?’

Beth Philemon: That's true, that's literally exactly what I'm thinking of. It's a redefining of what is success for you and your kids now.

Matt Bishop: Right, and that that was the biggest adjustment of international teaching, period, point blank. Away from the travel, away from all the other stuff that changed, that was the hardest thing for me to accept, because I like quality. I felt like I was hired because I know how to achieve quality. But quality in a Western music context, especially in the South, is sometimes associated with being a little harsh, being a little cutthroat, being a little ‘Oh, but the choir will forgive me if I'm a little off color today.’ That's not gonna fly here, because people are really nice here. You can’t be flexible with your relationship if you don't have a relationship. So, I had to focus on things that were not musical, in terms of like, how do I get to them? I feel I've done a lot better this semester. I found the balance between like wanting my kids to quote, unquote, ‘like me’, and then also getting into the curricular goals that I have for them, but the pace is slower here. It doesn't matter if it's a school or a business, like, Arab business culture is very slow and relaxed. They're not in a hurry. Everything is ‘halas’ like, ‘halas’ means ‘Oh, it's over, like it's fine’. They're not trying to make a schedule for every little thing. Even though these kids may not be you know, 100% both parents are from an Arab country, that's the culture here. Yeah, it's not like ‘deadline, deadline, deadline,’ ‘we got to perform once a month or the other schools are going to judge us,’ we got to get a forum sight-reading.’ I'm creating a lot, so anything that they have in their head, I'm the person they're looking to for that. Whereas at home, it was really more my colleagues and the people that are in my learning community, it was customary in our choir. And you know how it is, that's just what we've done since we were kids. So that's the norm, but there's very little norm here because we're in a baby country. So I'm building a lot of that, which has been a really interesting experience.

Beth Philemon: Absolutely. I think, honestly, choir is beginning to struggle with this on a greater whole, like, as a whole, of defining success for us, and what does that mean? And for so long, so many of us have viewed success as honor choirs, and ‘all-counties’, and ‘fours’ on this, and ‘ones’ on this, and ‘What are you winning?’ if you will. And I think unfortunately, we're excluding a lot of people from this art form because we're so focused on that stuff, and the relationship building is what it could be.

Matt Bishop: I completely agree. And kids are more, you can't get away with as much anymore, because kids have so much more at their fingertips now. I had a conversation about this with the French teacher the other day, and I said ‘Kids are, whether they are aware of it, whether it's conscious or subconscious, your emotions dictate your actions, so they're gonna follow the feeling of how they felt with you’. So like, that's why some kids may not ever be, quote, unquote, what we would call ‘good at singing’. But if you made them feel good, they're gonna choose to spend time with you, period. Doesn't really matter. And if that means that if you do two concert pieces instead of five, what's more important? That piece, or that kid that’s going to be a ticket buyer in the future? That’s going to be an appreciator, because you know how it is when you talk to parents of the generation before us, the saying that comes out of their mouth is ‘Well, when I was in middle school, my voice cracked,’ or ‘When I was in blah, blah, blah’. My mom told me I couldn't sing. That's the first thing that comes out. So we are making that now. So kids do that too sometimes. And there's an ‘elitist talent’ mindset around singing.

Beth Philemon: Thank you, American Idol. 

Matt Bishop: Yeah. So that's something that we have to, we have to be accountable for, and take charge of. That's been the hardest thing to learn, because I really had to let go of what I thought that was. And I know there will be a place in my future where I will return to that mindset. But I'm going to be able to do so much more now that I've worked on the other stuff too, 

Beth Philemon: Well, yeah, you picked up on, you said something about trying to figure out and define what success is for students at an International School. But I think that's also, at any new place, any new school that you go to. You know, I've taught at four different schools, and that's something l think I could have done a better job at at every single school, and it's now taken me in my fourth and three years into this school to really put my thumb on it, but success looks different in each place. And how does my vision for success and, you know, the school I’m at now has this renowned history of choral music excellence, and I felt like I was finally walking into that place. And it's actually, it's still, it's very different. Success is very different from what it was when the director that was there, two directors technically, but he was there for 22 years or so.

Matt Bishop: Marshall Butler.

Beth Philemon: Yep, good ol’ MB. 

Matt Bishop: You're not him, it's a different time period now.

Beth Philemon: Even then I'm not him, but it's that our kids are different. The kids that he had are vastly different than the kids that I have. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. ‘A’ is that we don't have a middle school choir feeder program anymore. But technology, and this is not a hating on technology, I think, but we're just really having to change a lot of things, and how we teach. You know, when you talk about your warm ups, and like going to the motion, I flashback to when I taught at Centennial. And they hadn't had a choral program there for two years, and I had all these preconceived notions as to ‘Well, we’re a choir, this is what we do,’ forgetting that I hadn't taught choir culture at all, because I didn't really realize they didn't understand, well, in a choir, this is the expectation. And you know, ‘we do this, we do this and we do this,’ and I hadn't considered ‘these are my expectations in choir,’ but not truly questioning, are they the right expectations?

Matt Bishop: I completely agree with all of that. And that's something they couldn't even teach us when we were in college because it was still a very new way of thinking. Because, I call it like, at Dunecrest part of the motto is like ‘a holistic education,’ and we really have to honor that. And I believe in that so much, because in a lot of ways, we are what they're modeling their behavior after, maybe sometimes more than their parents. Yeah. And if you're teaching a kid, if you're only teaching the music muscles, when they leave your program, that's the only thing they're going to take away, per se. But if you teach them, maybe, I don't even know teach is the right word. But if you show them that music is really what's breaking open the bubble to allow you to show who you are as a human, you have to do that yourself. You have to do it yourself first. Like you can't make it your quote, unquote, ‘choir expectation’ then you don't do it, because the kids now are more attuned to that. 

Beth Philemon: For so long, we focused on building good musicians, and not about building good people. 

Matt Bishop: And then they go to ‘X, Y and Z’ and they go to school, and that's how they fizzle out. Because sometimes people fizzle out because that foundation wasn't laid of ‘Oh, this is a humanity thing’. You can't roll with the punches that are being in any art field unless you have truly zero expectations for monetary compensation or applause. Like, that can't be your currency with kids. You can't say, ‘Oh, well, you don't sound good, you won't get applause.’ Your currency should be love. Your currency should be feeling successful for the small things, and then that's going to help them do whatever. If the only definition of success you have is taking a bow, then they're going to be in for a rude awakening when they get to reality, because people aren't waiting to clap for you. People aren't waiting for you to mess up, but like I said earlier, when I got into this, I didn't. I had to change what success meant for myself. And that has to transfer into how you're showing kids what you're modeling for them. So I completely agree, I could talk about this for hours. I’m so passionate about it.

Beth Philemon: Absolutely. Well, you know, we talked a year ago for the first time and I distinctly remember, actually it might have been two or three years? It was, it was in the third year? It was in the spring, and I remember what we talked about, but I remember we hadn't ever spoken. You know, we kind of knew each other through Facebook, and it was our first time to talk and, and I don't remember a ton of specifics about it. Listening to you now, I feel and sense, this evolution of self that you've clearly experienced. And it's so cool. 

Matt Bishop: Thank you, that's really nice to hear, actually. When I put myself in the mindset of what I was thinking when I was seeking that position that you were leaving, I wasn't really, I didn't want that. This is not shade, but like, I didn't want that job because I wanted that job. I wanted that job to leave my other job, you know, and that's not a reason to leave. I think part of why the universe opened up to me with this opportunity is because I didn't feel like I had to have it. But because it was truly in-alignment with what I wanted, personally and professionally, like, when I talk to people now about it, I'm like, ‘You guys, the teaching was really a bonus’. Like, I knew that I wasn't going to come back to my school after that third year, I didn't do it, I wasn't gonna accept that. But that's negative, when you say, ‘I'm not going to accept that, I'm not going to do that,’ that's the negative. When you shift it to the positive and say, ‘How can I turn this into a fill in the blank situation where I can truly have the best of both worlds,’, but also go into it knowing that my problems are going to go with me wherever I go? So I have to be doing this for the right reasons. 

Because you know how it is, like choir directors are not always known for being humble. And as much as we want to say that ‘MPA’, and honor choir, and ‘all-states’, that that's for kids, which it totally is, but it's also stroking our egos. That's for us too. Like, we could just say like more things we can put on our bio, or in a brochure, that's a part of it. That's a part of your motivation. And I was seeking that ego, like, ‘I'm going to work in an art school,’ ‘I'm gonna, because I deserve it,’ and that's entitlement. That's not actually desire. So I remember talking to you, I was in my car. And I truly remember that I was appreciative that you would want to have a phone call with a candidate, and that told me a lot. And I told my colleagues when the position that you have now, when that job opened up, I said, ‘Wake County ain't ready, because this is about to open up four jobs.’ Like I said, because it's a domino effect. When Holly Grove opened up, that was not a domino effect because there was no, there was no feed. I wouldn't say it's the bottom of the barrel, but it's like an entry level job. It was great, but it wasn't like a legacy of choral excellence. When I said that job just opened up, and didn't it open up mid year? The first time?

Beth Philemon: Oh, yeah. The first time it opened up was in between school years. And then it re-opened.

Matt Bishop: Yeah, I said ‘These administrators are not ready, because Apple trucks are about to go crazy.’ Because everyone's gonna apply for that job, but what they're gonna get is the three jobs that are going to come from that one opening. And I'm fairly certain that's kind of what happened. Yeah, ‘cause we had the phone call, and I don't remember a lot about it, but I appreciated how candid you were. In hindsight, that wasn't my opportunity, and if I had been given that opportunity, I may not be here and ‘blah blah blah’.

Beth Philemon: I was very torn, I wanted you to have it, but in my good conscience, I couldn't recommend it to anyone at that point. I think I was pretty candid, probably, about that.

Matt Bishop: You were good, like you were very objective, I would say, and I needed that to pull me out of ‘college idealistic-Matt,’ because I was still in my second year of teaching at that point, and I was using job interviews as a way to cope with being unhappy at my job. I didn't feel like when I interviewed for this job that that was my motivation. But when I was seeking that, in hindsight, it wouldn't have been the best career mode for me, because I think having worked at one school for three years, it was a relationship. That relationship was really hard, and a lot of work outside of work, but also, something else, just going back to the international requirements, most schools do require that you've worked three years in another school, so just keep in mind, and I totally understand why because you are reborn. You go through a ‘beginning teacher rebirth’ when you go international, so I went from being ‘BT3’ to being back to the international ‘BT1’ essentially. So I've always had a positive connotation with you and then I remember, I wasn't sure, because then we somewhat met during Pieces of Gold, I remember.

Beth Philemon: Yes.

Matt Bishop: Yes, that's what it was. And both of us had groups performing near each other in the program, and I was so proud of you for featuring a diverse small men's ensemble, because it would have been so much easier for you to put, like, 50 amazing 8-part harmony choruses out there. Or, I don't know, maybe not. But that was the choice, like that was a choice to feature something different and contemporary. And I'm like, this is what an audience of ticket buyers needs to see. Like, we need male energy on stage that is not this ‘perfect men's chorus university sound’, you know what I mean? It sounded like something that was truly a reflection of where they were in their generation, rather than like, ‘Let's sing Elijah Rock and let's be still,’ which is fine. Like there's nothing wrong with that, there’s a place for that. But it stuck out to me, so I was proud of you for that choice.

Beth Philemon: Thank you. That feels like a lifetime ago. It's so crazy, I'm like thinking back to that whole, Pieces of Gold is no joke y'all. Pieces of Gold is a Wake County celebration of the arts where arts from all the schools audition and then they are put together for this big menagerie of performances and it is a lot of time.

Matt Bishop: Oh girl, this gonna go put me into the emotional wringer.

Beth Philemon: And my friend, I don't know how well you know Derek at Southeast, but he does it every single year, and it always backs up to something else crazy that he's doing. I'm like, ‘Holy mackerel,’ I don't know how he does it, but to each their own. Like they get a hard time about it.

Matt Bishop: It was hard. Like, when I started at Holly Grove, they had auditioned, I think, three times before and they never made it. And I came to Holly Grove, and like, second or third week of school, my colleague, Megan Rightstick, who is a legend, icon to me, she's dance teacher in Wake County. She runs a very successful Dance Studio in Fuquay-Varina, and she's just like, she's really my mentor at this point. I still talk to her regularly. But she pushed me and she said, ‘You know, we've been doing this every year, and we haven't had the choir to do it yet because the kids don't have the skills,’ but they've had the dancers to do it. And we didn't - do you know Nishka Banya?

Beth Philemon: Yes. Big page, 7/8. Love it.

Matt Bishop: So I went in, took my first or second rehearsal with my after school ensemble with two-part Nishka Banya. And the kids were really freaked out, but they did it, and I took 18 tiny, little, ‘mouse-y’ girls, bless their souls, to Pieces of Gold, and they did like a little folk dance, and like, they’re singing mixed meter in Serbian to a really questionable backing track that I made with the clarinetist on my iPhone. Somehow we got in, and they were so excited, because for some of those kids, they had tried out twice, and never made it right. That was my first year. So you know, I was flipping my hair pretty hard, and then my second year, we didn't make it. And I was a wreck, and then my third year, we made it again. So that was the year that I saw you there, and stuff like that like that just primes you. It makes you like, also a big part of Pieces of Gold, I think, is what we were saying earlier about kids feeling successful. Sort of, Ii'm not saying quality isn't important, but context is really important in that kind of show. It's like, why are we here? We're not here to demonstrate, you know, the finest westernized, polished thing. We're here to give you something that's entertaining and that is polished, you know?

Beth Philemon: Absolutely. Well, I'd rather see someone sing with emotion and out of tune, than someone in tune with zero emotion. Because I tell my students all the time, people hear with their eyes. And so often we get so wrapped up in the sound, we forget about the visual aesthetic of what we do, and it's so important.

Matt Bishop: Absolutely. I completely agree and that is, it's tricky because I never want to tell students to not be authentic, but like, you kind of have to act a little bit sometimes. But then when you act, you sometimes feel what you're acting. And as a result, that is also something I've totally struggled with kids, is trying to get them to be present but also, you know, project an emotion that maybe they're not actually feeling at that moment.

Beth Philemon: Well it comes down to a self-confidence thing too, I feel like. I don't know how your students are, but my students are increasingly more and more, or they're less self-confident.

Matt Bishop: I think students now, maybe even more so, when I'm when I was in school. Their level of comparison is a lot higher because of social media. So that sort of builds this narrative in their head that they aren't meeting a certain standard that doesn't exist. Whereas like, I wasn't scrolling on Instagram when I was in high school. Instagram had just started, but it wasn't what it is now. 

Beth Philemon: I didn't even have a cell phone in high school.

Matt Bishop: Oh my gosh, I remember Instagram started to happen in college and like, everyone hated it, and no one used it, and then celebrities started using it, and then everyone was using it for that. But I think that's what you're picking up on. And at least from my perspective, I almost find something interesting about my school is that a lot of kids are coming from a school where I think their teachers did push on them, that sort of traditional choir mindset, that is not always positive. But they had a great experience in theater class, because in theater, they were allowed to escape and be free. So I've used some of that to build a bridge between what they like, and then, what I would love for them to learn. But I'm like, you guys realize that singing a song and doing theater is really the same. It's just a different tool belt. Like it's a different set of skills, but the place it comes from is the same. It's acting, but it's still an extension of something that's free, also. 

Beth Philemon: But the voice is more vulnerable. And I think tying that to it is where a disconnect can happen if we're not careful.

Matt Bishop: I agree. Because your instrument is with you at all times.

Beth Philemon: Yeah, and it's only yours. You can't change your vocal reed out. Well, I've got to draw us to a close here, but I have one last quick question. Tell me the top three things that are unexpected about living in the UAE.

Matt Bishop: Top three things that are unexpected?

Beth Philemon: Or like, a misconception, maybe, that you had.

Matt Bishop: Oh, number one is just, I think growing up, especially in the south, but even in America, I was a child when 9/11 happened. I was in fourth grade, I think, maybe fifth grade, I don't know. But I see it in my head, and I feel like ever since that, my first response when I see a woman in a hijab or if I see a man wearing turban, or if I see, if I hear Arabic, before I came here, that sent a chill up the back of my neck because I didn't feel safe, and that is 100% without a doubt, a false stereotype. Like, oh my goodness, if you're listening to this like, and you see a Muslim person, say hello to them, because Muslim people are taught, outside of religion, but like, the teachings of the law are so beautiful and just so inclusive, and I know every kind of version of Muslim here with my students and with parents, and from the most traditional to the most contemporary sort-of Islamic state of thought. Muslim people are not terrorists, and Arab people are not terrorists, and the people who do that are also white. The people that do that are also black, people that do that are also mixed race or Asian, it's a misconception. And I wouldn't have said that coming here because I thought being here, I was not going to be able to be myself. 

And I'm not gonna lie, like if you look at the laws here, this country is under Sharia law which are laws based on the teachings of Islam. So there are certain things that you can technically get arrested for here that I think are blown out of proportion in the media. So for instance, media attention comes around a lot of people with Emirates in particular, but people are like, ‘Oh, you can't drink there’. Well, you can drink here, you can have alcohol, but you're not allowed to ‘act a fool’ in the street. Like drinking here is only attached to tourism. So you have to do it in a hotel or something attached to a hotel. There are about 2000 hotels in Dubai. So like, it's the tourism capital of the world. That's how they make all their money. So yes, drink here. Another thing that I didn't expect is like, I kind of was expecting to have this weird imposter syndrome where I kind of felt, because not only had I never worked internationally, but I had never traveled, so I felt like I wasn’t part of the club. And I can say without a doubt that people are people wherever you are. 

It doesn't matter if you are here, or if you're in Thailand, or Paris, or North Carolina, or Texas. Everything is the same wherever you are, people want you to be nice. People want you to say hello. People want you to be respectful of their customs and their religion. That's just how it is, that's not subjective to the country. That's just how it is. Now, I'm not saying ‘I'm boarding a flight to Saudi Arabia anytime soon’ because I wouldn't feel comfortable there. But that's because I know enough about Saudi Arabia to know that I probably shouldn't go there. But you educate yourself and don't make assumptions about things that you don't know about. So those are kind of my three things. I don't know, like, if you're a teacher and you feel stuck and you wanted to travel, then I say consider it. I'm not saying you have to do it, but it's not as hard as people think. And I didn't mention this before, but you know how when you go to the BT system, you have a mentor?

Beth Philemon: Yeah.

Matt Bishop: I had the most amazing mentor for my last two years at Holly Grove, and I saw a picture on her wall. And it was her with like, 70 or 80 small little Chinese kids. What is that? Well, she was like, ‘Oh, I did six months in China through an exchange program with Wake County,’ because Wake County offers some stuff every now and then. You know, they send out that newsletter every month, I think. She found out about it through that. So she did that, and another teacher Holly Grove did a few years ago. And I was expressing to her a lot of my concerns about school and she said, ‘You know, you really aren't appreciative of what you have until you go somewhere else and you don't have it, or have it better.’ And she said, ‘When I came back from China, I changed my life.’ And that's another reason I even considered, that's how it even got on my radar. She sat with me and helped me find jobs and helped me weigh political and religious things to take into account where I was looking for jobs. So I firmly believe that the best way to do anything in life is by copying, and asking people who've done it before you. And none of that has to do with your age. So you have to wait until you've been teaching for 10 years and be a master. I'm not a master. I don't ever want to be a master, because I'm always going to be learning. And this experience has it truly served its purpose, and it shocked my system. I have to be present here, because sometimes I literally don't know where I am. You have to, and this is the first time I've ever been this far from my family. 

Like, I've always been within two or three hours of my folks. And you don't really know how to be on your own until you're that far away from your family. So I say, I would 100% recommend it. I think everyone could benefit from it. And even if you don't want to pick up and move and do it full time, find a summer program. This summer, I'm doing a choral conducting institute in Ireland for a week. Like, I'm so excited for that. I literally have no idea what to expect. I don't know anything about the Choir Institute of Ireland, I don't know anything about it. It could be horrible, for all I know. But I signed up for it and I'm going to go. So, it would be more expensive for someone from the US, obviously to travel, but that could give you a taste. Do something like that. Do a workshop, talk to someone who's done it before. It's not this mystical, talent-based thing. People think you have to be an amazing teacher to get here. You don't have to be an amazing teacher. You don't have to be a good teacher, know your pedagogy, but like, the teachers I work with are just like the teachers I worked with in the states. It's not as different as people maybe want it to be.

Beth Philemon: People have to take the chance and believe in themselves.

Matt Bishop: You can't, there's no way to know what it's gonna be. So you can't, you don't know what the outcome is going to be when you sign a contract. So you have to be okay with that. And I told my folks, my parents were a little worried because they're like, you signed a contract for two years, and you're going off to this place you've never been. And I'm like, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘If I hate it, at least I'm gonna be in an amazing city with an amazing airport where I can get out.’ Now, that's not the case. It's customary for teachers to travel and whatnot here. But that's not because Dubai isn't good. That's just because -

Beth Philemon: It’s the European way of life. Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Bishop: But that's really my two cents on it. I'm so happy you asked me to do this. Thank you so much. 

Beth Philemon: I just can't. Like, I just want to be able to send it out right now so people can hear it before I edit, you know, and add in all the things. I just, it's such a great story. And not just that, the experience that you're giving us with ‘how’ and ‘why’ you've gone there is just applicable for anyone, and honestly, it's meant a lot to me personally, as well as encouragement to me in my life and where I'm at right now as well. So, thank you, thank you for sharing, and being vulnerable, and for taking chances in yourself, because then it's inspirational to others.

Matt Bishop: That's so nice to hear. Yeah, like when I put myself outside of it, and I because like, I really wanted to make this a priority because there wasn't a lot of information when I was looking into this. So anything, even if it's one or two people that hear this that actually go through with the process. I feel like that's even more helpful than maybe a YouTube video or something like that. So, yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Beth Philemon: Definitely. 

Special thanks to Matt for taking the time to not just share with us what it's like to teach at an international school, but to also share his personal journey of the work that he had to do to get to a place to even consider this as an option. And then, actually step on a plane, having never been out of the country and take such a huge leap of faith. I hope this episode resonated with you as much as it did with me. And if it did, I would just appreciate it if you would share this episode and the podcast with your friends and colleagues. I think there's so much that we can gain from hearing these people’s stories, and people won't hear it unless you share it with them. And your recommendations mean the world to your friends and colleagues. So send them a screenshot, put it on your Instagram stories, put it on Facebook, tell other people about the things that they can learn from the conversations we're having here. And finally, if you do listen to us through iTunes, I would so love if you would leave us a five star review and write a couple sentences about an episode that really resonated with you so I can see that and learn from that, but also that our interviewees can see that as well. Until next time, I hope that you keep singing, and I look forward to bringing you the next episode of the Choir Baton podcast.