5. Back to blogging: job success!
I feel that first of all I must apologise to my readers for my long hiatus. I was astonished when I recently introduced myself to two new teaching colleagues and they immediately claimed, independently of one another, to ‘know’ my name from reading my ‘web site’ – as I don’t have a web site, I’m guessing they were referring to this blog. Then when I logged into my dashboard here, I found a number of unmoderated comments waiting to be posted. So thank you to everyone for the support and I hope to be a bit more regular in posting from this point forward.
This is a good time to start blogging again for another reason as well: I’ve finally landed my first full-time teaching job since returning to the UK in September 2010! I will start teaching on the Graduate Diploma and International Foundation Programmes at INTO East Anglia London campus on 16th January. INTO is a private network of study centres in partnership with a number of top UK universities (e.g. Exeter, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow) which offers pathways into undergraduate and postgraduate degrees for students who do not qualify for direct entry into their chosen programmes. The London campus is a fantastic purpose-built centre very near Liverpool Street station – I’m looking forward to using interactive whiteboards for the first time!
In my next post I’ll share some pointers on how to get prepared so that you don’t drown on the first day of teaching!
About Sonja Tack
My name is Sonja Tack and I have 12 years' experience of teaching EFL and EAP in the UK, Ireland and Turkey. I'm a perpetual studier; in addition to my undergraduate degree in Literature, I have the CELTA and DELTA qualifications, an MA in ELT and Applied Linguistics, a Postgraduate Certificate in Online and Distance Education, and I've recently finished an MA in Translation Studies! Believe it or not, I intend to go on to my PhD from here, and I'm aiming for a 2013 start. I've also done a variety of short courses in teaching English with technology, classroom research and teacher training. I'm happiest when I have numerous projects to work on at once, and so I decided to blog for the site I've been visiting every day since September 2010 in my ongoing search to find a great academic job.
I am currently the Programme Manager for Presessional and Insessional Courses at the INTO East Anglia London Campus, where I also teach EAP classes. In addition, I do some occasional freelance teacher training for a company called UK TEFL. I've taught on presessional, insessional and extended degree programmes at the University of East London and Imperial College London, and on Freshman English programmes in Ankara and Istanbul. I still love teaching after all this time, and I tend to get quite close to my students. I consider mentoring to be an essential part of the initiation into an academic environment. In terms of research, I'm most interested in applications of educational technology, e.g. blogs, wikis, webquests and social bookmarking for academic research, and effective feedback practices, with a specific focus on written comments.
In this blog I'd like to share with you my experiences of teaching students from over 100 nationalities, studying for various qualifications, presenting at international conferences and publishing my work, and of course, the job search. I hope it will provide some food for thought as well as a point of interaction for visitors from a variety of backgrounds.
Your comments are always welcome!
Hi Sonja,
How’s the job at INTO going? Would love to hear your experience! Also I’d like to get into publishing myself and it would be great to get a run down regarding the steps you took to publish an article.
James
Congratulations Sonja,
It’s good to hear about your full-time teaching job. We welcome you back at the blogging arena. Its surely has great influence which you just witnessed practically in your life. I am waiting eagerly for your nest post as I want to know about INTO. Hope to read you again soon.