I recently had an interview for a Head of EAL role here in Bangkok. It was for a school called King’s College, which is a fairly new school with a good reputation. I did okay – made it through to a second round interview, but didn’t get the job.
The first round pre-interview task involved submitting a lesson plan. This was the full brief:
Please send a lesson plan and resources for an IGCSE ESL year 10 lesson, based around the topic of ‘Communication.’
My lesson plan went down okay, and I navigated the questions about it well enough to get a second interview. I’m sharing the resources here for others – it could be useful for interview ideas, etc.
Here’s a link to the docs, which include:
The main presentation
Vocab pre-test
Multiple-matching text
Optional reference doc (from previous lesson)
Options grammar doc
Rationale and lesson plan
A few points to consider:
- you’ll probably notice that things are very text-heavy. I’d have jazzed it up more, but this did all take a couple of hours to compile. I thought it was more important to show clear staging/exam strategies development etc rather than spend too much time making things look good
- I included a rationale. They didn’t ask for this, but I always include one. I don’t want to leave too many of my choices to guesswork for the interviewer.
- I’ll be honest, this is the type of resource that I find many generalists drafted into ESL teaching find kinda useful, but I’m not so passionate about teaching in this way. However, I do think it’s useful for some, and I have a bank of resources like this that I’ll share at some point later in the year.
Anyhow, happy interviewing, fellow jobseekers!
Categories: General, grammar, Lesson Ideas, other, teacher development, Uncategorized, vocabulary
ELT Planning 
What was the first and second interview like? And you’re very qualified, I am surprised of that outcome.
Brilliant scheme of work for it though!
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Hi, thanks for the kind words!
For the Head of EAL role, the interviews were mixed. I really enjoyed the first one – it was with the exec principal and she seemed really interesting and interested, plus the Head of English who was really honest about the school and generally very positive. If I remember rightly, they asked quite a bit about how I’d adapt the sample resource, and a few of my planning choices. The other questions were linked to dept priorities and some about the school values – how you demonstrate empathy and kindness. Overall, I felt pretty positive about the school after the first interview for sure.
The second one felt more formal and a bit more like a pitch – ‘how would you run things?’ I’ve shared an idea on this blog for my approach to organising provision and I ran with that – if I’m honest it felt like it totally flunked hahah. Hey ho! The blank faces were a picture and I’d wished they could have buzzed me out like on Britain’s Got Talent!
However, the job went to an internal candidate, so I ended up having a third interview for an EAL teaching role. That one was mixed – I met the person who got the Head job and they seemed pretty sound. Their vision seemed quite different to mine but then they know the context very well so they’ll be much more able to judge what was needed there. I quickly understood how far off my pitch was in interview 2!
They mentioned following a coursebook-driven curriculum, and I’m not a huuuge fan of their coursebook choice so not sure I’d have been the right fit anyway, but I got the sense that I wasn’t what they were looking for anyway tbh.
Overall, it sounded like a pretty good job at a pretty good school, following a more traditional pull-out model of English language provision. I see they’re still advertising for an EAL teacher – good luck if you’re applying!
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