Notes On A Job Post (9)

I’ve omitted details so that this ad is not immediately identifiable. The purpose of this is to share the thoughts of an experienced teacher (me) – who’s found her own jobs before – on a random job ad. Of course you should investigate any opportunity you’re interested in thoroughly yourself – I don’t mean to slam nor endorse this ad…For more advice and examples see the Finding A Job Table Of Contents.

Note that this ad was posted by a recruiter – you need this information for my comments to make sense, and I think that it is rather obvious that the ad comes from Korea so I did not attempt to remove references to Korea.

SALARY: 3.5MIL
DAYS AT WORK: M-F ONLY
TEACHING SCHEDULE: 9.30am -7.30pm
AGE OF STUDENTS: Kindy – Elementary
FOREIGN TEACHERS AT SCHOOL: 7
OVERTIME RATE: 20 000KRW
HOUSING: Single, furnished
AIRFARES: Roundtrip
ALL SEVERENCE AND MEDICAL INSURANCE OFFERED: yes
ENGLISH SPEAKING STAFF: All
TEACHER PREFERRED: Nth American ONLY. B.Ed or Masters
SYNOPSIS:
This school pays top dollar but the hours are long. The teaching hours per month are about 135 [This is nearly 34 hours a week. They don’t specify how many contact hours, and later refer to prep time, but ask about this – many language school teachers teach 20-25 contact hours per week and this is a full load].

The school has high expectations of their teachers [what does this mean? Presumably more than just working a lot of hours…how are teachers assessed?] but you are compensated for it. This is a regular teaching gig [the informality of the language gives the impression that the author/recruiter is down to earth and knows where teachers may be coming from – is this an accurate image or is this a strategy? I’m not familiar with Korea, so I’d want to know what they mean by “regular” and what it means in practice to the teacher – no assistant? A standard state textbook? Simply that it’s not at a language school?]. I would imagine only those whom have had overseas teaching experience would be happy here [fair enough, and a good sign that they are concerned with teachers being happy. Granted, they don’t want teachers to quit, but I understand that plenty of recruiters are happy enough to just fill positions]. There is a lot of prep time [how much? What do you prepare/do you turn in lesson plans?] here at the school but there is a lot of evaluating to do [I’d want to know more about this evaluating – what do you record and how often? Are you simply filling out forms or writing, giving, marking tests?].
PLEASE BE SURE: this is NOT a babysitting gig for the newbies to cruise throughout the year. A real teaching job. That is why they are paying around $1000 a month more than most schools. [once more, good that they care to issue a warning. The other motive could be to discourage a deluge of applications when new or inexperienced people see the salary]