Job Update - Summer 2008

I spent Monday through Wednesday in Taipei going to interviews, checking out the campus, collecting apt. leads, and visiting friends. Overall the trip was very successful, but it was exhausting too. Going to a new place and awkwardly groping around from one area to the next takes a tremendous amount of energy. When it's humid and 90+ degrees out, the weather just saps you by the end of the day. My efforts were rewarded though. I had four interviews and four offers.

An interview generally started with 15-20 minutes of questions about education and experience. Some of the schools had me fill out a special info sheet just for their files. All of the questions were clearly covered by my resume and cover letter. I found the sheets entirely obnoxious and I rewarded them by diligently and spitefully filling in every detail to the utmost of my ability. I probably averaged a half an hour for each sheet. One school had some moderately novel questions that still made me roll my eyes. They asked what I would do for a three hour class and gave me two dainty lines to explain. In list form I came up with at least 10 things and wrote five lines. 10 different things is about the minimum number of activities you could have for kindergarten kids over three hours. They lose interest if anything runs too long.

After that questions session I would do a demo. They'd give me a bit of material and told me about the class. I'd have 5-15 minutes to prepare and then I'd go teach. These are what served me so well. I rocked the demos like Jimmy Page back in the day. The secret is to pour yourself into the classroom. Give it all of your energy and engagement and you'll grab the kids attention every time. Once you've got them interested, teaching them is easy. There's far more to be said about this, but I'll leave it for another time. The demos all went well.

After the demo, the boss and I would go back to the office and discuss terms. Hours, starting date, pay and other expectations. Because I had a number of meetings, I could only take notes and ask questions. I had to defer commitment until after the last of my interviews.

Visiting the different schools, I started to feel like the could be grouped into two models. One set shoots for quantity and packs more students into the classrooms, charges less per student and pays less to the foreign teachers. Other schools go for quality and they control class sizes, charge more per student and pay more to get better teachers. The quality schools are a better environment for the students and the teachers, but they cost more to the parents. Because my interview and demo went well I am glad to say I found a job with one of these quality-oriented schools.

I'm still working on finding an apt. I'll try and pin one down this coming Monday or Tuesday. I'm looking for an apt. near my campus rather than my work. My campus is on the outskirts of town at the base of a forested mountain. It seems much more liveable than downtown Taipei. But everything is made fairly accessible by public transport. Traveling around on this trip, I listened to several hours of lecture on Heidegger by the most famous American Prof. in continental philosophy, Hubert Dreyfus. I found myself following them really well and they have me jazzed for my classes to begin.

That'll have to be enough for now, but I'll come back to excavate the ideas around 'energy in the classroom' a bit later.