Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 159 of the Listening Time podcast.
Thank you all for listening.
I hope that this podcast has been helpful for you to help you practice your listening skills in English and And in today's episode I'm going to talk about something a little bit personal for me.
This isn't something that I normally do, and so this is kind of a special episode, but it's a topic that's really on my mind right now.
I thought it would be good to talk a little bit about this.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about my mom in this episode because unfortunately, my mom just passed away.
And so...
It's something that my family and I are dealing with right now and, of course, my mom is on my mind, and I thought it would be good to talk a little bit about how my mom influenced me as a teacher and as a parent.
I'd prefer to talk about those two things here in this episode rather than just talk about all of her great traits and attributes.
I'm going to do a little more of that later at her memorial service when I give a speech there, and so, instead of just saying everything that I'm going to say during her memorial service, I want to talk about how she influenced me in these two areas, as a teacher and as a parent.
So I'm sure that you'll enjoy this episode and you'll enjoy hearing about how great my mom was and the great influence that she had on me in these two areas of my life.
And I want to mention that I would appreciate it if you didn't send me messages with condolences.
Condolences refers to when you tell someone that you're very sorry to hear. about their loss.
I know that that's a really nice thing to do, but I ask you not to send me messages, please.
It's really not something I want to deal with right now, because I feel like obliged to have to respond to all these messages and we have a lot of things that we need to do right now as a family and it's a stressful time and I'd prefer not to receive tons of messages that I feel like I have to respond to.
Please don't be offended by my saying that.
I'm just not able to respond to a lot of messages right now and it makes me feel really bad if a lot of people are sending me messages that are nice and caring and I can't respond to them.
It makes me feel bad and anxious.
So that's why I say that.
But please just know that I appreciate your condolences and your concern.
But I'm OK.
All right.
Don't worry.
And, of course, as always remember, you can access my advanced podcast episodes if you'd like by becoming a Listening Time family member.
The link is down in the description below.
And you can sign up for my US Conversations podcast to practice with my conversations with other English speakers.
That link is also down below as well.
And you have the transcript for this episode in the description too.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let me talk about my mom and the influence that she had on me as a teacher and as a parent.
So let me start with the teacher part.
So my mom was a big reason why I chose the career path that I did.
My mom was actually an ESL teacher.
ESL stands for English as a Second Language.
So for my mom's whole career, she was an ESL teacher in different schools.
I think always at the college level, at the university or community college level.
So she was an ESL teacher and I am an English teacher.
I make content for people who are learning English, so you can see that my mom had a big influence on me in terms of the career that I chose, and I'm very thankful for her that she showed me that this is a good career path.
This is a possibility for people that like this type of work.
She showed me that.
And so that's a big reason why I became a teacher.
And so my mom loved interacting with people from different countries, from around the world.
This was something that... that gave her a lot of pleasure, a lot of satisfaction.
She was really curious to learn about different cultures.
She was passionate about discovering the world around her, different people, different cultures.
This was something that was really important to her.
And she transmitted this to me because I also have this same passion.
I love interacting with people from different countries.
I love learning about different cultures.
This is something that I inherited from my mom.
When you inherit something, this means that that person passes this down to you.
You got this from that person, right?
So I inherited this passion for learning about the world and other people and other cultures from my mom.
So I have her to thank for that as well.
And my mom was just genuinely interested in people.
She really cared about other people and listening to them and learning about their story, the things that they've lived through, the things that they want to share.
My mom was just so interested in talking to people.
Getting to know people learning about them.
She was a great listener.
She would ask you tons of questions because she wanted to listen to you and your story, and This is something that I always Try to get better at.
I want to be someone that is is genuinely interested in the person in front of me that I'm talking to, and I want to show the people that I talk to that I care about them and that I care about the things that they have to say and share.
This helped me have a better connection with my students.
It helped me even make friends with some students.
So there are some students that I've had that I consider a friend, actually.
Like if I visited their city, I would probably hang out with them and we would spend time together because I was able to make that connection with them.
And that's something that my mom did really well with her students and with people in general.
And my mom's students loved her.
And some of them actually stayed with us at our house and spent time with us, especially when I was a kid.
I remember my mom inviting... different students to live with us for a week, for example.
So I can remember different Japanese students that stayed with us when I was a kid and did different activities with us and went places with us.
She had students from other countries that also did this, but I particularly remember some different students from Japan that stayed with us and that was really cool.
That was really nice to see how much my mom cared about her students and how much her students cared about her.
That's a great thing to see and it shows that she was a great teacher.
And my mom loved English.
She loved grammar.
And I love grammar.
So you don't need to look far to find the source of my love for grammar and for English.
That came from my mom.
My mom made me love it.
My mom would quiz me on grammar topics when I was younger and I actually appreciated it.
I liked it.
It was fun for me.
My mom is 100% the reason why I am that way today.
I'm someone that likes grammar, I like words, I love reading.
My mom was exactly like that and she taught me to be like that.
And so, of course, that has really helped me in my career as an English teacher and English content creator.
So I'm very thankful that my mom gave me that passion as well.
And my mom also learned a good amount of Spanish, too.
She could have some conversations in Spanish.
Of course, not really deep conversations, but she could definitely talk to people in Spanish and understand a lot.
And She learned a lot of Spanish living in Mexico for short periods of time.
She traveled to Mexico and studied Spanish there.
And so she's the one who encouraged me to do the same thing, and she planned my language exchange experience in Mexico and she told me that I should stay with a family there and learn Spanish at a school there and have that whole experience.
My mom was the one who encouraged me to do that.
And she planned that for me and signed me up for that program, actually, that I did when I was 19.
And that was how I met my wife, believe it or not.
I met my wife the day after I arrived in Mexico and that's because my mom encouraged me to do this.
She signed me up for it, and I will be eternally grateful for my mom that she did this for me, because that's the reason I have my wife and my family now.
So I'm very thankful for that.
And for all of you who listen to me and my content has been helpful for you.
You can also thank my mom for that, because I probably wouldn't be making this content right now if it weren't for my mom.
I wouldn't have become a teacher, most likely, and I wouldn't have discovered the world of teaching English and the world of languages.
That probably wouldn't have happened if it weren't for my mom.
So I hope that you can also appreciate the influence that my mom has had, even on your English learning.
So that's pretty cool.
And now I just want to talk a little bit about my mom's influence on me as a parent, because I'm a parent.
I'm a father now.
I have kids.
And so there are many things that I want to do as a parent and there are certain traits that I want to have as a parent because my mom had them.
And remember that the word trait just means characteristic.
We use that when talking about a person's attributes or characteristics.
So there are certain traits that I want to exhibit as a parent, because my mom showed me how important these traits are, because she had them.
I had a great childhood.
I'm extremely thankful for that, because I can honestly say that my childhood was full of love and affection and I had what I needed and I had a wonderful mother and she paid attention to me.
That's a really big thing.
My mom really paid attention to me.
She cared about me and about my feelings, and she encouraged me to talk to her.
And this is something that doesn't always happen.
When people are growing up, they don't always feel like their parents really want to listen to them and pay attention to them and want them to talk about everything their feelings and all of that.
And my mom did this.
And I don't remember if I already talked about this in my Mother's Day episode last year or not, but my mom made it a point to have family dinners every night at the same time.
By the way, when we say that someone makes it a point to do something, we're saying that they make sure that this thing is done.
They make sure to do this thing, okay.
So my mom made it a point to always have family dinners every day at 630 pm.
So when my dad would come home from work and my sister and I were hopefully done with our homework, we would all get together at this time and sit down together and talk about our day, share our feelings, share our experiences from school or work, and my mom really wanted to listen to us and hear what we had to say, and this was a really great thing, And I remember that one day I invited my friend to come have dinner with us.
And he got to experience this as well.
And he felt like a part of the family during that dinner.
And afterwards, he told me this before he left.
He said, Connor, you don't understand how lucky you are that you have this.
He said, I've never experienced this with my own family.
And after he said that, I realized just how special it was that my mom organized this every day and that I had this space to share my my thoughts feelings, talk about things that were important to me, talk about my school, my day.
And I really want to do this as a parent.
I want to make sure that my kids have this safe place in our house to talk and know that their parents are listening to them and Care about what they're saying.
I want to make sure that I do what my mom did, So that's a big lesson that I learned from my mom, having her as a parent and Something else that really influenced me.
Something that my mom taught me is to make my kids feel safe and secure, and I always felt protected with my mom.
I always felt like we were all in this big nest.
A nest is the little home that birds make, where they have their eggs and then, when their eggs hatch, their babies are there.
That's a nest.
By the way, the word hatch refers to birds or other animals coming out of the egg.
That is hatching.
So I always felt like I was in this big nest and I was protected by my mom.
Of course, I did a lot of things independently.
My mom allowed me to learn things on my own and experience things on my own.
But I always felt like I had her protection.
I always felt like she was the mama bird, right?
She would protect me in case I needed it. and of course my dad as well.
And that safety, that security really helped me throughout my childhood.
I never felt scared or worried that my family was gonna fall apart or we were gonna be living on the streets or that bad things were gonna happen to us.
I never really felt that, even during hard times, because of course there were hard times during my childhood, but I always felt safe.
I always felt protected.
I always felt like my mom was there in case I needed her.
And I want to make sure that my kids feel the same about me.
I want them to think, okay, I know that dad is there to help.
I know that dad is there to keep us safe and to protect us if necessary.
So that's what I want for my kids because my mom and my dad gave me that.
And another trait that I want to exhibit, because my mom did, is patience.
I want to be patient with my kids.
My mom was very patient with me.
I made a lot of mistakes.
I messed up.
I wasn't perfect, of course.
And my mom knew this.
She didn't expect me to be perfect.
And she knew that, that there would be times when I would mess up and I would have to go through learning experiences.
Let's call them.
And my mom was patient with me through those.
And that's something that I want to do.
I want to be like that.
I don't want to expect too much from my kids.
I don't want to expect them to be perfect, of course.
I want to be patient with them when they're going through a hard period of their childhood or adolescence.
I want to be patient with them and I want them to feel that for me.
And one other thing that my mom taught me, as my parent, is how important it is to build memories with your family.
My mom knew how important this was, and she made sure that my family built tons of memories.
We made tons of memories together because of all the things we did together, the trips we took, the time we spent together, the experiences we had.
This is something that some people neglect as parents.
They don't realize that they're not helping their kids make memories, great memories of their childhood and fortunately, My mom knew the importance of this.
And I have some really wonderful memories of my childhood and of my mother that I'll never forget.
And I'm really thankful for those.
And I hope that my kids can say the same thing about me and about their childhood when they're adults.
I hope that they can say that their father and their mother helped them make wonderful memories as kids that they'll always cherish.
When you cherish something, this means that you really love and care about something.
So I hope that my own family, my own kids, will have tons of memories that they can cherish, even as adults.
I want to make sure that they have this because my mom made sure that I had this.
So I could continue talking about my mom for hours, or for days even, but I'm going to stop there because I'm out of time.
I hope that you can see how big of an influence my mom had on me as a teacher and as a parent and as a human being.
And I thank God for giving me her as a mother.
I'm very grateful for that.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode.
And again, please don't send me messages.
I really appreciate your condolences, but I am really serious about this.
Don't worry about me.
I'm fine.
Okay.
I appreciate your concern.
And I definitely do appreciate that you all care enough to Sometimes send me messages and talk to me privately, like that.
Thank you for that.
But right now, it's not necessary.
But thank you so much.
And of course, remember that you can sign up for my advanced episodes if you feel ready for them.
The link is down below.
You can click on that and become a Listening Time family member.
And I'll also put the link down below to my U.S.
Conversations podcast so you can practice with my conversations with other people.
And you have the transcript for this episode down below as well.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
