As said in the title, I need to interview someone who is currently teaching at a university as an English teacher. I’m not entirely sure if a post like this is allowed, but I thought I’d try. The graduate degree I’m enrolled in has an introductory course, and one of the requirements is to interview someone in the field that I’m trying to use my degree for. The questions are:
What are your typical responsibilities and workload?
What do you like the most and least about your work?
What kinds of problems do you have to deal with?
Are there any issues or trends in the career?
How relevant is your work to your degrees?
What is the most effective strategy to enter this career?
I have a little experience in other countries with teaching to a much younger age (have taught 3-7 year olds) but have no contacts that have worked in a university before. Thank you for anyone willing to take a moment and help out
2 comments
Sure, I’ll be glad to help, as well as do an audio/video interview if needed.
What are your typical responsibilities and workload?
Teaching both English Department courses and general English courses for other majors. Attending faculty meetings. Ensuring research output (publishing in peer-reviewed journals 2-3 times a year and attending conferences). Writing books. Applying for grants. Working on FD (faculty development). Managing/helping out the part-time lecturers. Supervising students (for thesis work, etc.), including conducting a zemi.
What do you like the most and least about your work?
I like teaching a lot, and I am glad to be at a point where there’s lot of freedom in deciding how my classes are run. This is maybe university-specific, but my department is collegial, and the university administration and staff are practical, friendly, and seem to be on our side. At 30, I’m the youngest in the department and not that experienced, so the older professors have been really kind and helpful.
There actually isn’t much to dislike. Some people complain that the job never ends, and I am often pulling all-nighters or going to sleep at 3 or 4 AM, even during school breaks. I’ve gotten used to it, and it’s my own choice to put in the extra work to advance my career, but it can sometimes pile up quickly.*
What kinds of problems do you have to deal with?
Students who disappear off the map and part-time teachers facing difficulty with school regulations and sudden changes in course requirements. Especially recently, so I try my best to help.
Are there any issues or trends in the career?
University teaching in Japan has been called a “sunset industry.” It’s getting harder to find good work, and you need increasingly loftier credentials. Many people want to get out of part-time teaching but can’t, especially given the increasing popularity of adjuncts and dispatch companies. (Some teachers actually prefer working part-time at multiple universities simultaneously, though.) Salaries are decreasing, even for tenure-track positions.
How relevant is your work to your degrees?
I advise graduate students on how to conduct research in areas related to my degrees, so it has been entirely relevant. My degrees are in the sciences, so I found a niche related to CLIL and teaching scientific English that has been very helpful for finding work on the side. I have had offers to switch out of English teaching for research-based positions in the sciences, but I don’t want to stop teaching.
What is the most effective strategy to enter this career?
Ah, that’s a tough one, and my advice would differ wildly depending the situation of the person hoping to enter academia and what positions they aspire to. Generally, trying to get teaching experience as quickly as possible, getting a master’s or PhD, and publishing are of course important, though much easier said than done.
A lot of people I know take baby steps while enrolled in a graduate program, something like working as a TA or teaching part-time at an eikaiwa -> teaching part-time at a vocational school -> dispatch teaching at universities -> part-time direct hire at universities -> full-time contracted position at a university. But it’s quite difficult for many to make the transition to university work, and the market is saturated.
* For one arduous semester, I was teaching a total of 15 classes at 3 universities, working as a research assistant professor at a fourth university, taking two grad school classes, and banging out an entire PhD thesis from scratch. And writing and publishing the final two journal papers out of four for the thesis. Without the support of my wife and my family back home, it would’ve been impossible.
>What are your typical responsibilities and workload?
I teach roughly 3 courses a semester and serve on committees. Some is English for other departments; some is English for a special program.
> What do you like the most and least about your work?
least: committee run by madman.
most: teaching things near my own discipline.
> What kinds of problems do you have to deal with?
In the environment where I work, many of the Japanese faculty who teach English are not very good English users themselves but also use (abuse?) people who come from abroad as TAs (not me but graduate students etc).
Also, the program I’m involved in is misguided and there’s no will to fix it.
>Are there any issues or trends in the career?
There’s several trends at work.
In employment, there’s a large number of people getting hit by a change in labor contract law that makes it so that people who are recontracted > 5 years can stay permanently (or on a dubious interpretation 10). This is being met by hard ceilings to avoid this.
In the work itself, MEXT is tightening control of curriculums which reduces freedom for some types of courses that used to be the wild wild east.
Also in the work itself more generally, the college-aged population in Japan continues to decline. This matters because selectivity is getting much worse at most universities, and there’s an excess supply of tertiary education right now. Among several consequences, the government wants (wanted to?) increase the percentage of international students and wants to decrease the number of universities (preferably through mergers).
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>How relevant is your work to your degrees?
That’s an interesting way to word the question. Shouldn’t it be either how relevant are my degrees to my work or how relevant is my research to my work?
My workplace doesn’t depend on any of my degrees (PhD in a humanity), and my workplace doesn’t care about my degrees. I whenever possible use what I research in my work but it’s limited.
> What is the most effective strategy to enter this career?
Assuming “this career” = “currently teaching at a university as an English teacher,” then I’d say connections to people who run universities and their hiring. Less facetiously, it is important to understand that there are a lot of universities in Japan and that filling their English teaching needs (legislated requirement is at least 2 credits of foreign-language communication) is an exercise in balancing this against degree requirement expectations for people teaching at universities.
To state that differently, I was able to pass the screening because I have a PhD, research publications, and university teaching experience. Once I passed the screening, they didn’t care and were at one point asking me to teach a TOEIC-class with a target score of 400.