I have just been interviewed about some teaching methods and my approaches. I thought this might be of any interest for some parents, students, schools and companies so I share it over here with you.
Please tell me a little about yourself. Help me get to know you better.
· What kind of work / activities are you currently involved in?
Currently I teach English for Tourism & Hotel Management students, Business Computer students and Marketing & Secretary students on college level. This involves classes for beginners as well as for pre-university students. I plan & execute everything by myself. Right now I teach 39 hours / week due to a lack of teaching staff at our college. Besides that I am responsible for training our english competition team that competes in english competitions across the country.
· What would your current employer say is your greatest strength as a worker? What would he/she say your main strength is as a person?
The greatest strength as worker might be that I am very reliable, always on time and almost never absent. Typical German qualities I’d say.
My main strength as a person might be the ability to get along with almost everybody. Due to my experience with many different cultures I rarely come across with problems when connecting with other people.
· Tell me what your best friend would say your greatest attribute as a friend is?
Reliability. I am always there for my friends. i think that is what friends are for.
· Where do you see yourself in the future and on the long term?
Since I just started teaching I see myself improving my teaching skills in the near future. On the long term I would be happy to find a possibility to influence as many students as possible. I would like to make a change.
· What are your experiences as a member of a team? What are the dynamics of being a team member?
Before I worked as teacher I was project manager of different teams in different agencies. Working in a team is a crucial factor in the business world and my time in those marketing agencies taught me how to handle a good times as well as a crisis within a team. If a team works well together, you can achieve your goals quite fast. If one team member is unsatisfied it can harm the whole outcome though.
· Have you ever had the opportunity to be a team leader? How did the dynamics change?
As mentioned above I lead different teams. In marketing agencies, in sports and during my time at the german forces. Those are quite different teams but every team has one thing in common: If you are able to motivate the members and make them aim for the same goal the outcome can be quite amazing and much better than the outcome of a single person.
· Share with me your technology skills. How would you use technology as a teacher?
I graduated in ‘Business Information Systems’ with focus on Electronic Commerce. My secret passion is ‘eLearning” so I spend a lot of time online and educating myself in this area. Furthermore I tend to put a lot of my teaching material online so that my students are able to see it 24/7. Right now I use Facebook (facebook.com/RCheewa and facebook.com/SaschaFunk) & youtube (youtube.com/user/ajarnfarang) for student assignments. Those are great channels to increase the English communication skills of students. They learn without noticing that they are studying.
· Tell me what typically your teaching dynamics consist of and how it encourages student involvement/ learning?
Most of my English classes here have the focus on ‘communication’ so I try to make students talk. My classes are usually very interactive and full of tasks, talking and reading. I hate sitting in front of a class and reading so I am quite active, prefer team or group work during class and let students present a lot of their work.
· Do you think it is important for students to like their teacher?
In some way, yes. There is no need to be best friends but as soon as students hate the teacher, they also might hate the subject and will stop putting much effort in it. As soon as students have fun coming to class, they will increase their learning amount automatically. Nevertheless it is also important that students understand that the teacher remains a person of respect and will never be their best buddy.
· How important is it to communicate with parents? What approach or tools have you found to be most effective with parent communication?
Depends on the parents and the school. I think it is quite good when parents know the teacher so they know who takes care of their kids when they are in school. Even though I like emails and all those things while communicating with parents it is still the best to do it live. Since Thai culture is quite different from most other cultures I got to know I am not sure if this could be done everywhere but over here I already had lunch, dinner or simply an informal meeting with quite a lot of my student’s parents.
· Tell me about your experiences working with second languages learners.
I taught English as second language know for almost one year and I love it. Since I am a non-native speaker myself I can always tell my students ‘if I could do it, you can do it as well’. That is a valid point and motivates quite a lot of them. Furthermore I am aware of the difficulties learning English as a second language can bring up. Native English teacher often forget about those problems. The best moment so far was when one student came to me at the end of last term and said ‘teacher, before you came I always thought I can not speak English and never talk to foreigners….but now I know I can! Thank you so much’ – this student now works at the airport at an airline counter and talks to foreigners every day. Those are the stories that motivate me every day.
· Share with me your experience in implementing differentiation in the classroom.
Monotonous classes are motivation killers in my opinion. That is why I always try to make every class different than the one before (with games, role plays,…). This can’t be done every single time, but should be tried as often as possible. As mentioned above I like to make classes interactive. Furthermore I let students decorate the classroom with quotes or things they like (as long as somehow related to English). Sometimes we even leave the classroom to experience difference.
· Share with me your classroom management methods.
Luckily I have a good connection to all my classes, so there is not much to manage. Everybody is responsible for leaving the classroom in a good condition, we all want to have a good time during class but there is no fun without hard work and in the end the teacher remains the boss since he is responsible for the students.
· How do you deal with difficult situations such as not agreeing with your supervisors instructions?
Usually I talk with my supervisor about difficult situations. Saying that I have to admit that I rarely come across with such situation since i am completely responsible for all my classes myself. My supervisor has total faith in me and my teaching skills so that we actually never have any trouble regarding any instructions.
· How do you deal with discipline issues in your classroom?
I talk about it, tell students what was wrong and how they have to behave. If it happens a second time I will kick them out of class for one lesson. This means they will not have their name on the class list checked which can cause trouble for them if it happens to often. Again I have to say that this almost never happens.
· Are you familiar with alternative/ informal assessments? Please give me an example.
I am not quite sure what an ‘informal assessment’ might be. Alternative on the other hand are assessments I do with some of my tourism management students. They, for example, have to give a tour across the city since they will work as tourism guides after graduation.
· Is this the first time you travel abroad? Which countries did you visit before?
No. I already stayed in Australia, Austria, Spain and Thailand in order to work there.
· How are you going to improve our students language skills?
With all the teaching methods mentioned before. I try to make learning a language fun. Communication is the key to the world and I try to make students understand. Fun is a key ingredient as well as diverse classes and alternative teaching methods. Furthermore students can connect with me almost 24/7 (thanks to facebook and co.) so they will improve their skills without even noticing.
