It's important when you are in a new environment to find as much safety as
possible so you can feel secure and not have so much stress.
You know, moving to another country or even traveling to another country
involves a certain amount of stress. So you want to mitigate that by making
sure you know just what it is that's expected of you as the teacher.
You might want to ask some questions so you can be prepared as much as
possible before you take your first step into your new school environment:
• How many classes will you be teaching?
• How many students in each class?
• What are the age groups?
• If you are teaching adults you might want to know what kinds of materials
you are expected to use.
• Will you be teaching grammar, conversation?
• What does the school like to focus on? (For example at my school although
we do grammar and such we mainly focus on conversation.)
• Will you have to do student evaluations?
• Does the school run on the semester, quarter or no system at all? (I work in
the latter system which means I have to create all of my lesson plans and
choose all of my own books.)
• If you are teaching kids you might want to know what socio-economic
background they are from.
• What about class discipline? Is this a problem in the country you will be
going into? (I understand that kids in Japan are very polite and shy and
give very little trouble in class.)
You might want to find out something about the culture you are going into:
• How do they think.
• What are their values?
• What’s their system of government?
What I'm saying is don't go in cold. Know the environment you are going into
as much as possible. Of course, don't go overboard on this and get obsessed.
You want a certain element of adventure and surprise too.
