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mayorhaggar
Joined: 01 Jan 2013
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 Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 11:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Redstanggt01 wrote: |
Ok, so basically my interview is tomorrow. Fortunately, I was able to get time off today to get my questions done. I have all my questions answered except for these.
• The interviewer will surely ask you a number of questions about the relationship you’ll share with your Korean co-teacher. These question group will likely include:
1 How would you approach differences & solve problems between you and your co-teacher
2 How would you deal with constructive criticism from your co-teacher?
3 How would you respond to mistakes made by your co-teacher in the classroom?
4 How would you react in situations where you don’t see eye to eye with your co-teacher?
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This is fantasy land stuff so you just need to find the nicest-sounding answer because when you actually start teaching it's going to be different than what you expected or what you heard from EPIK, because every school and every co-teacher are really really unique. Again don't worry about "keeping it real and being myself" because it will probably just raise red flags if you say stuff like "I don't put up with people disrespecting me" or "I don't like drama so I'd just ignore any problems because it's better not to make waves."
1. This one's tricky because it's so vague and general, maybe think about problems that you've had to solve in previous jobs. At least emphasize you'd do a lot to keep a good relationship with the co-teacher, so that it would make dealing with problems easier.
2. Emphasize that you want to be a better teacher and will take any kind of advice to help you improve, especially if you haven't taught before.
3. DO NOT say you'd bring it up in the classroom in front of the students. Emphasize you'd only make recommendations or criticisms one-on-one, and not in front of any other teachers. Koreans can get incredibly embarrassed when they are criticized by someone who isn't their superior.
4. This one's tricky, maybe say you'd ask questions to try to understand the other person's point of view, and to try to break past being frustrated to solving the issue. Asking your CT questions like "how can we make this better" would be good.
Now onto stuff you definitely don't want to bring up in the interview...
The whole ideal CT situation that EPIK sells you is that you'll be working with a fresh young Korean teacher who's Korean is really great and has plenty of time to sit down with you and plan great lessons where you act as a team and really engage the kids with super-duper entertaining lessons, like the Dean and Martin of the ESL world. There's a lot of this attitude at EPIK orientation, which is really aimed at the small number of elementary school teachers who will go to the handful of wealthy flagship public schools in big cities.
The reality is that your CT's will not really have any time to plan lessons because they're doing so much paperwork. You will probably have multiple CT's and be teaching at multiple schools. (I have 8 CT's at two schools) Your CT may not like you no matter what, or may have really poor English. Your CT may basically use you as a tape recorder, boring you to tears, or the CT may put way too much work on your shoulders.
Again, it will be a completely unique situation because every school and every Korean teacher is different. Drop all your expectations at the door. But, again, in the interview you need to play along with the EPIK fantasy. Who knows, you might get the EPIK fantasy experience. |
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jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2013 12:11 am Post subject: |
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| mayorhaggar wrote: |
The whole ideal CT situation that EPIK sells you is that you'll be working with a fresh young Korean teacher who's Korean is really great and has plenty of time to sit down with you and plan great lessons where you act as a team and really engage the kids with super-duper entertaining lessons, like the Dean and Martin of the ESL world. There's a lot of this attitude at EPIK orientation, which is really aimed at the small number of elementary school teachers who will go to the handful of wealthy flagship public schools in big cities.
The reality is that your CT's will not really have any time to plan lessons because they're doing so much paperwork. You will probably have multiple CT's and be teaching at multiple schools. (I have 8 CT's at two schools) Your CT may not like you no matter what, or may have really poor English. Your CT may basically use you as a tape recorder, boring you to tears, or the CT may put way too much work on your shoulders.
Again, it will be a completely unique situation because every school and every Korean teacher is different. Drop all your expectations at the door. But, again, in the interview you need to play along with the EPIK fantasy. Who knows, you might get the EPIK fantasy experience. |
Like to add, it seems all of the presenters went to those flagship schools. There were a few veterans that kind of asked what if you don't get those ideal schools, and the presenters just shoot them down. I think they need at least one presenter who presents the 'realities' of most schools. Unlikely your CT will even look at your lesson plan before class, computers not working, teachers in the next room asking your CT to quiet down the class, etc... |
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