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Vaqueiro
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
Posts: 33
Location: Japan
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 Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:13 pm Post subject: |
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| mitsui wrote: |
I have heard good and bad things.
I heard that teachers who get good evaluations from students can get paid more.
I heard also about bad students that went to either Illinois or California. So while many students go abroad, they are not always motivated to learn English.
But compared to dispatch work, it doesn`t sound like a bad job. It does seem to be a better job for single people. |
What you heard about evaluations is true.
The majority of students who go over on scholarship are successful. Some do go overseas and crash and burn, and some go over and have a little too much fun.
KGU also employs a ton of part-time teachers, and talking with them makes me quite thankful for what I've got. |
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mitsui
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Posts: 1562
Location: Kawasaki
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| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 1:25 am Post subject: |
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The other thing I notice is that they only tend to advertise on TESOL,
which makes me think they just prefer to hire Americans from the US. |
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fat_chris
Joined: 10 Sep 2003
Posts: 3198
Location: Beijing
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| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 6:38 am Post subject: |
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| Vaqueiro wrote: |
| The resume padding here is no different than any other university in Japan, and the proportion of whackjobs and chikan on staff is arguably lower than what one would find at the JALT Conference. Plenty of great people here, along with a couple of shut-in types. Your comment on the lack of quality of research is fair, but I can count the number of groundbreaking, viable presentations I've seen at JALT on a sloth's hand, so that's not something that's limited to KGU. |
True this. Indeed--I have been to five JALT national conferences and I concur.
| Vaqueiro wrote: |
| I like the comment about not having illusions. It's an instructor position for MAs, not a research-oriented position for PhDs. If you don't go in overestimating the "assistant professor" title you're given, and just go with the fact that you're a decently-paid, full-time instructor in a country where positions like that are disappearing by the day in favor of dispatch and adjunct work, you'll be fine. |
This caught my eye. If true, I would be interested in such a position and if I were to go into such a situation, then I would roll in with this attitude and no illusions and do my best with it with a smile on my face every day.
Warm regards,
fat_chris |
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Vaqueiro
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
Posts: 33
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:55 am Post subject: |
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| mitsui wrote: |
The other thing I notice is that they only tend to advertise on TESOL,
which makes me think they just prefer to hire Americans from the US. |
Americans comprise the majority, but there are several Canadians, a few Britons, and some Australians and New Zealanders. |
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Vaqueiro
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
Posts: 33
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 11:07 am Post subject: |
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| fat_chris wrote: |
| Vaqueiro wrote: |
| The resume padding here is no different than any other university in Japan, and the proportion of whackjobs and chikan on staff is arguably lower than what one would find at the JALT Conference. Plenty of great people here, along with a couple of shut-in types. Your comment on the lack of quality of research is fair, but I can count the number of groundbreaking, viable presentations I've seen at JALT on a sloth's hand, so that's not something that's limited to KGU. |
True this. Indeed--I have been to five JALT national conferences and I concur.
| Vaqueiro wrote: |
| I like the comment about not having illusions. It's an instructor position for MAs, not a research-oriented position for PhDs. If you don't go in overestimating the "assistant professor" title you're given, and just go with the fact that you're a decently-paid, full-time instructor in a country where positions like that are disappearing by the day in favor of dispatch and adjunct work, you'll be fine. |
This caught my eye. If true, I would be interested in such a position and if I were to go into such a situation, then I would roll in with this attitude and no illusions and do my best with it with a smile on my face every day.
Warm regards,
fat_chris |
There have been several hired out of China (if your location is current). Feel free to PM me if you're really interested in coming over. I can't get you hired  but I can give you some insight into the hiring process. |
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DTB
Joined: 23 Apr 2014
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2014 4:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Vaqueiro wrote: |
Standardized curriculum: Formerly true, but not anymore. There are now four different English programs, and all are aiming to standardize in different ways. If one believes that standardization from the top down is a positive, this can be good, but the standardization process resulted in a split of the EFL department into a regular and an elite program, the former of which now employs a textbook with Japanese instructions in it. Additionally, the elite program is now expected to compete both with another intensive English program on campus and a new joint program established with the University of North Texas. No pressure. One of the virtues for those of us who started before this restructuring was the high level of freedom (which essentially equates to a level of trust in the teachers), but that freedom is in the process of being curtailed.
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Interesting. I've taught at many schools throughout my career, and I have to say that UNT's IEP was the best I've seen. The admin is very organized and serious. They have very high standards for both the teachers and students. It was not easy... although it made me a better teacher. |
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mitsui
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Posts: 1562
Location: Kawasaki
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| Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2014 12:43 am Post subject: |
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| I applied there but got rejected. I assumed that teachers were older and had a lot of experience. |
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Vaqueiro
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
Posts: 33
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2014 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| DTB wrote: |
| Interesting. I've taught at many schools throughout my career, and I have to say that UNT's IEP was the best I've seen. The admin is very organized and serious. They have very high standards for both the teachers and students. It was not easy... although it made me a better teacher. |
They seem like a solid group of teachers, and I feel for them despite that they are "the competition." They are under a tremendous amount of pressure to raise students' paper-based TOEFL scores to 550 - the magical number required by most mid-tier English-medium institutions - within the span of two semesters (something I'm not sure they were aware of when they signed on). |
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Vaqueiro
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
Posts: 33
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2014 10:47 pm Post subject: |
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| mitsui wrote: |
| I applied there but got rejected. I assumed that teachers were older and had a lot of experience. |
I'm not sure when you applied, but there have not been many new full-time hires over the past three semesters. Some teachers did not get hired until their 2nd-3rd time applying, so it might be worth your time to try again. |
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mitsui
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
Posts: 1562
Location: Kawasaki
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| Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2014 2:10 am Post subject: |
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I don`t remember maybe it was last fall.
The other time was about 2010.
I got two e-mails rejecting me. One was the standard one and the other
was a personal one from the coordinator.
I assume it was because I have not taught in an IEP before.
Perhaps I should have mentioned my success in teaching the TOEIC and helping to raise the scores of the students.
I think I had read of teachers there were older and had spent time in the Gulf. |
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Vaqueiro
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
Posts: 33
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Fri May 02, 2014 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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| mitsui wrote: |
I don`t remember maybe it was last fall.
The other time was about 2010.
I got two e-mails rejecting me. One was the standard one and the other
was a personal one from the coordinator.
I assume it was because I have not taught in an IEP before.
Perhaps I should have mentioned my success in teaching the TOEIC and helping to raise the scores of the students.
I think I had read of teachers there were older and had spent time in the Gulf. |
Quite a few have Gulf experience. A much larger number have done time in Korea. Ages range from early 30s to late 60s. I know that several have worked in IEPs in the States, UK, etc, but I'm not sure about everyone. Again, it's a big program. Overall, though, I can't think of anyone that didn't have at least a couple years' university experience - even just as a teaching assistant - before getting hired here.
TOEIC success is good, I'd say, especially if you have numerical proof and student evaluations to back you up. For their hiring criteria, things like presentations and pubs are good, but those things take a back seat to previous feedback from employers and students. You'll be competing with 25-50 applicants per open position, but most of those people will be upselling publications and research interests to a university that just wants solid instructors. |
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Jagariko
Joined: 14 Oct 2013
Posts: 40
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| Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 8:54 am Post subject: |
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| mitsui wrote: |
| If you have no MA your resume goes straight in the garbage. |
The caveat being that it depends how desperate the university is. For a full-time job, I agree, you have practically zero chance. A friend told me 52 people with MAs applied for the four full-time jobs at his place.
For a part-time job (ie two koma once a week) several places will consider people doing their masters. Off the top of my head, I have just thought of seven people (including myself) who taught uni classes without completed MAs. In fact, one of them told me last week he worked at six different unis in the Kansai area before his MA was finished. Some good ones, some bad ones. |
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Futureal
Joined: 27 May 2014
Posts: 17
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rtm
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Posts: 1003
Location: US
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| Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 9:07 am Post subject: |
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This is a good resource, although the prevalence of term-limited contract positions for foreign instructors has been around since long before the new laws. The new laws have exacerbated this, however. |
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