Teaching job opening at Shinmin Junior High School in Taichung, Taiwan

November 30, 2007

1 teaching position is opening up in the junior high school after Chinese New Year.

Please apply only if you are currently in Taiwan. Please address an email containing your resume and covering letter to Gary/Patrick for the Junior High. The address is at the end of this post. Please try to minimize the size of your attachments as the school email box is small. (no 3 MB scans of your graduating photo, please!)
I am going to write about our junior high since this is the school for which I am a coordinator, though we also have a senior high which employs about 11 foreign teachers. I will mention this one briefly and refer to it primarily in contrast with the junior program. Our side employs 10 teachers. Although the two are on the same campus and share the same Principal, and the foreign teachers have the same contract, the two are separate entities. The senior high has been around for 70 years, and is decidedly more traditional in its pedagogy and administrative structure and procedures. The ESL program is comparable to other senior high schools in Taiwan with well-established ESL programs. If you want to know more about this side of things, leave me a message here and I will steer you in the right direction.

The junior high ESL program is quite unique. Our students in 1st and 2nd year spend 13 hours a week with their foreign teachers as follows:

6 hours core ESL

2 hours CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning)

2 hours Drama

1 hour Scouting

2 hours P.E.

All of our foreign teachers must teach at least one ESL class.

The other classes are assigned to those teachers who show an interest and aptitude in that particular area. A full schedule ranges between 26 and 30 contact hours per week. We are required to be signed in between 9 am and 4 pm, though signing out during free periods is easy enough. Our students vary widely in English ability; we do try to put them in classes according to their level.

In the core ESL class, we use readers containing short stories ordered in increasing level of difficulty and length. These are used as a standard source for such things as quizzes, exams and vocabulary. They are also used as springboards to generate language “topics”. In other words, the curriculum is fairly loose. Success of each class and progress of the students is greatly affected by the individual design of each teacher. This is why it is absolutely crucial that our teachers have the ability and experience to design and implement sound lessons without too much “hand holding”. This may change in the future, but for now the teacher still reigns supreme on lesson planning and materials. For example, my second year students do two book reports a year, PowerPoint presentations and keep a News Story Notebook from which they have to orally share with the class every so often, in addition to the short stories portion of the curriculum. All of these are my choices.

The CALL class is an attempt to use the computer to learn English, and to use English to learn some computer skills. We use a system called Compass Learning as a “staple”, and supplement this with Internet based activities and projects such as PowerPoint research projects, webquests and an introduction to blogging.

The Drama class for 1st year students consists primarily of preparing their big show. Each homeroom class puts on a 15 minute play which is written by one of us. 2nd year students don’t have a show, so they instead explore drama-based activities such as role-play, skits, making TV commercials, mime, and so on.

Scouting is a class that involves knots, tents, compasses and relative fresh air (if you can call our grassy knolls, central fountain and four basketball courts a source of fresh air).

P.E. is self-explanatory, one hopes.

There is an attempt to integrate these various classes at some points: projects worked on in CALL class get presented in ESL class.

Although this school’s administration and corporate structure is fairly typical, we do have quite a good relationship with our Taiwanese supervisors. There are two foreign coordinators: the ESL Coordinator and the CALL Coordinator. The former is responsible for, well, coordinating the foreign teachers. The Call Coordinator (that’s me) coordinates the CALL program and handles “tech” things. I manage the recruitment mailbox where all applicants must send their resumes for both junior and senior high school, for example.

I would prefer not to get into the numbers of the contract at this stage. What I can say is that the salary is top notch, if one calculates all the perks, which includes:

• CNY paid holiday (usually 3 1/2 weeks)
• Summer paid holidays (usually 8 weeks)
• CNY bonus ( 1.5 times month’s salary…this is nice!)
• Tax rebate (The contract is based on post-tax income. Rebates can be surprising…)
• Opportunity for double time during July (you get your salary plus every hour you work summer school, if you want to stay)

We require our teachers to have at least 2 years in Taiwan, and at least 2 years teaching experience in a junior or senior high. Although exceptions have been made to this rule, we try to stick to it as much as possible.
You must be prepared to come in for an interview and demo lesson on short notice. In other words, you should be in Taiwan already to apply.
The email address to send resumes to is:

recruitment[at]cc001.shinmin.tc.edu.tw

If you want to know about Taichung, ask Michael. I hear it’s pretty nice…Don’t ask me as I have no social life apart from my energetic family and the occasional encounter with my neighbors, who are lovely people by the way.

“I think I’m turning Taiwanese, I really think so.”

Posted in teaching, taiwan