Podcast: http://sooyeunkim.podomatic.com/
I had an interview with Mr. Kamil Ward who is a kindergarten teacher at CCLC and working in Korea for 10 years. Actually he is one of our foreign teachers of my kindergarten. Usually foreign teacher go back to their country after working in Korea as an English instructor for 1-2 years. Mr. Ward experienced to work at many kind of school or language institute for 10 years so I was curious what kind of school is the best for children from the point of view of a teacher.
Here are my questions I asked.
1. Please introduce yourself briefly.
2. What’s your teaching experience?
3. Could you tell me about the English program you are teaching? For example, target teaching level, class size, etc.
4. Does your school give teaching autonomy or do you have to follow the prescribed curriculum?
5. Who decides to choose the main textbook? Or do you develop and use your own materials appropriate to your class?
6. What material do you usually use in your class?
7. What kind of material is the most effective to your students?
8. How do you handle the curriculum, if the curriculum does not meet the needs of your students?
9. How do you evaluate your student’s progress?
10. What are your beliefs as a teacher?
11. What do you think teachers’ role in class?
12. What do you think of Korean education for English?
As I mentioned above, I tried to provide set curriculum and let first year of new coming foreign teachers just follow a prescribed text and methods after combining English program with Korean kindergarten curriculum. Because Native English teachers have no experience to teach young learner and no idea about teaching English to children and taking care of them.
As Graves(2000) mentioned, most teachers don’t have opportunities to make their beliefs explicit because the institutions in which they work do not generally ask them to articulate their beliefs nor do they place a value on such articulation. I didn’t have enough time to know Mr. Ward and was curious why he kept working in Korea.
As you know, I'm an owner of private kindergarten. Sometimes I have a hard time with my employees, I mean, teachers. Although I have a MA degree of early childhood education, I don't have much experience to teach children directly and I've worked as an administrator. Through this interview, I realized our teacher tried to make our prescribed curriculum better and put their own idea into it. Also they are struggling to enhance children's language proficiency as much as I am doing.
Except IT problem(actually, I tried to upload MP3 file of teacher interview on Podcast site over hundreds times, but it's not still working), it was a wonderful chance to put myself in teacher's shoes. It’s a good time to know each other as teachers for children.
I think you are very fortunate to have such a experienced native teacher in your institute. As I know, most of the native teachers do not understand Korean culture and they have hard time to get along well with Korean children. The children in your institute look very happy with well organised curriculum. You are the specialist of children's education so you know what is the important thing for each age group. If you feel that your teacher try to make your prescribed curriculum better and put their own idea, I am sure that there will be no class better than that.
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