I have an interview for an English teaching position at a university in just a few days. Before the interview I’ll need to demonstrate my teaching abilities in a 10-15 minutes mock class (only committee members will be present, no real students). Wondering if anyone out there has some experience or light to shed on questions I should ask/prepare for or how to approach the mock teaching. I’ve been working at the public JHS level for the past several years and the English ability of my students is all over the place. I assume the English level at university is much higher but are some classes still at a basic level?
Also, when I asked about the position’s responsibilities they said:
…as a contract based and teaching tracked faculty, the succesful candidate will be required to teach 16 hours per week as an instructor. There are also other responsibilities to to be fulfilled such as serving as a homeroom adviser to our students in the department, atttending meetings in both the department and the center, and acting as members to several committees in the department, college and university levels etc
For the mock teaching, this seems to be used commonly in hiring here.
If you want the job, I would advise present yourself as calm, organized, friendly, helpful, and not arrogant.
For the position itself as you described it: that sounds like a lot of teaching. I presume you have applied for some kind of project instructor position, and that you perhaps hold an MA and not a PhD at this time?
It will depend on the university. A low ranking university will have accepted students with low scores on English tests
I only worked for one university, and the job was OK until it wasn’t. I did get the impression they were looking for a workhorse and dancing monkey, a sort of buxiban style teacher. If you’re coming from teaching kids and you’re willing to hustle then you’ll do OK in the job. It’s possible they already know who they’re going to hire because somebody knows somebody, so just go in there and have fun and do your best at the interview and what happens happens.
I’ve done mock teaching for uni jobs before (and been successful in subsequently landing the position). They expect a bit more autonomy and innovation from you in crafting a lesson plan than they probably would expect in a JHS where you’re (usually) more kept to a strict lesson plan given to you.
Are the students higher level? Not necessarily. There’s plenty of basic level uni classes. You should inquire directly as to what proficiency level the mock lesson is targeted toward.
10-15 minutes is nothing and will fly by. You could create a lesson following the PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production) methodology, but that time limit might be too short so perhaps a truncated version. If there’s groups, create something fun and thematically or culturally relevant to the students. Introduce the concept to them, let them get in pairs to discuss, and then prompt feedback from them. Ideally they would’ve implicitly expanded upon your initial concepts with each other during their discussions and engages in a bit of input + 1. It’s not a lot of time, but that’s pretty much a standard winner for me. Be careful of too much ‘teacher talk.’
I didn’t see anything too unusual in your contract but I’ve never been asked to be a homeroom teacher which seems more of a HS concept.
This seems rather unprofessional for a university position. Would this be a requirement in your home country? I would just hit on the more attractive female students, call the slower ones stupid, and knock back shots of whiskey at the podium. Any uni that turns me down, well, they’re no fun and I don’t want to work for them uptight sumbitches, anyway.
It is common for students to be assigned faculty advisors, though the “home room” concept is much more a high school thing. Maybe it’s just a weak translation.