Teacher Curriculum Interview

Teacher Curriculum Interview


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.

Module # 2 Reading Reflection (Chapter 2 & 3)

This reading is really interesting to me. I’m operating a private kindergarten in Seoul for several years. 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 learners(even anyone) and no idea about teaching English to children and taking care of them. I was always proud of our well made curriculum and teaching guideline manual for English teachers as like Michael Gatto’s director in El Salvador. (Graves, K., 2000, p14) Sometimes I used to treat the teachers who like to try their own things like rude or too much self-confident westerners who don’t follow the school direction. After reading these chapters, I started understanding that they might try to make our curriculum better in the context of their own.

Graves gives us three pieces of advice. 1) To try to get as much information as possible by asking for it specifically or by trying to find others who have taught in that context. 2) To design the course with a similar group in mind, if we have knowledge of such a group, so that we are not foiled when making decisions. 3) To work into our course design process flexibility so that we have more than option at each step of the way. (Graves, K., 2000, p20) It’s really important to define our context in order to design a good curriculum.

In chapter 3, Graves said that our beliefs play a role at each stage of course design. They may not always be present in our thinking, but they underlie the decisions we make. (Graves, K., 2000, p33) Last quarter, I took a course of making various instructional lesson plans. After finishing the course, I realized that I put some storybooks into every instructional plan whenever I began a lesson. I believe that to read a storybook to young learner is very important in order to make children understand the goal of lesson and activity. Beliefs are not necessarily something that teachers can easily articulate or are completely aware of because no schools or no supervisors ask us to articulate our beliefs. But I think that it needs to ask ourselves about our beliefs in order to make our beliefs more explicit. To join this MA program is the process to make my beliefs about teaching more explicit.

Module # 1 First Assignment

(Me, wearing Easter Bunny Costume)

My name is Sooyeun Kim. I’m the mother of 2 kids, 13 year old boy, Weesu and 11 year old girl, Weena and a director of my own kindergarten in Seoul, Korea.

• What is your B.A. degree major, where did you complete it, and when?
My undergraduate degree was Social Work but I did graduate work in Early Childhood Education. I got both of degrees in Ewha Womans University in 1993 and 2004.

• Are you a pre-service teacher and if so, what is your target teaching level?
I worked at education field for construction workers for 4 years then I operated my own business to import children’s toy, carseat, strollers etc. from European countries and the States. When I opened my kindergarten in 2002, I didn’t have any experience to teach young kids and take care of them at all so I entered MA program for early childhood education. Couple of years later, we had reinforced English program for young learners, finally I decided to join TESOL MA program.
I don’t still have a plan to teach students directly but absolutely my interest is to learn an effective and efficient method to teach young kids such as kindergarteners and elementary school students

• If you are currently teaching, what is the school, grade, subject? Are your current and target teaching levels the same or different?
We have 2 kinds of programs for 4 to 7 Korean aged kindergarteners and 1st to 6th graders of elementary school.

• What is your experience with the school curriculum as a learner and/or as a teacher?
I have an experience to learn Montessori for 1 year. It was awesome and helpful to understand children’s behavior pattern and way of thought.
Montessori is not a method of teaching, but a philosophy of life. It is faith in each child as a potential new beginning for humanity. They see the child as creator of the man he will become. Each child has an inner force for his own development that can be observed in his spontaneous activities.
It is the purpose to observe the child’s natural interests and activities and provide for him an environment in which he can develop and learn.
Within the structured order of the Montessori class, the child is free to choose his own projects through the hours of each day. Dr. Montessori believed that self-motivation is the only valid impulse to learning. As each child follows his own inner direction, he works out for himself a personal pattern of learning which fits his needs and abilities. This results in a joy of learning and satisfaction in work. In the Montessori classroom, it is the child who is active rather than the teacher.
I like the child centered curriculum but it’s hard to expect children’s performance in short term.

• What mobile technologies are you comfortable with? Which applications do you use on your cell phone? Have you ever used mobile devices for language learning or teaching?
I need grandma’s glasses so it’s getting more difficult to read text messages on the screen of my cell phone. But I’m familiar with using cell phone, MP3, voice recorder etc.

• What your expectations form a curriculum design course would be?
I’d like to learn how to design good curriculum for young learners then I will make our school curriculum better.