Day in the life
No two days working at ISSOS are the same, but each individual role at our campuses has its own working pattern that forms the outline of your daily schedule and responsibilities. All of our roles are fully residential, we also provide meals for our staff teams, and everyone has 3 full days of training as a team before our summer school students arrive.
Read on to find out more about what your days with us could look like.
Campus Management Teams
Programme Directors, Programme Assistants and Head Counselors
As part of the Campus Management team your role will be one of the most varied and vital on campus. Each day you will be responsible for the day to day running and management of the campus as determined by the standards and procedures laid out by ISSOS.
These roles include overseeing all aspects of the summer school programme. While it is hard to predict what may happen on each individual day, you will work full days and will work and build relationships with everyone within the wider summer school team (including Head Office). All of the daily expectations of this role will be explained at the interview stage.
Each member of the campus management team will get a full 24 hour period off each week.
Teaching Positions
Academic Teachers
English, Debate, Journalism, Study Skills, Youth Leadership, B&E and Creative Writing.
As one of our academic teachers, you will spend each morning from 9 am to 12 noon teaching your own class of international students who will be with you for the duration of the 3 week programme.
Your afternoons will be free to complete lesson preparation or any marking you have to do, get ready for any evening programmes you might be involved in, or enjoy some free time.
Your evenings will be spent either with free time or on duty/helping out at our Evening Programmes (up to 3 times per week). Evening programmes are run by the team of counselors, but you are there to assist them and act as an extra set of eyes and ears. There are specific evening programmes in the first and last week that all teaching staff are asked to participate in/attend. In the final week some of our Academic staff will be involved in organising their own specific programme related to their subjects (ie Debate Nights). If you are helping out with our evening programmes these are normally finished by 10.30pm at the latest.
Weekends will be mostly free time, although depending on the campus you may be asked to chaperone one of our cultural day trips. On Sundays we run workshops for our students, which are run by members of the staff team who have a particular hobby or skill that they would like to share. We encourage all of our teachers to run a workshop if it's something you would like to do.
Elective Teachers
Art, Film, Theatre, Photography and Outdoor Leadership
As one of our elective teachers, your mornings will be free to complete any lesson preparation you have to do, get ready for any evening programmes you might be involved in, or enjoy some free time.
You will spend each afternoon from 1pm to 4pm (with the exception of Wednesday afternoons) teaching your own class of international students who will be with you for the duration of the 3 week programme.
Your evenings will be spent either with free time, or on duty/helping out at our Evening Programmes (up to 4 times per week). Evening programmes are run by the team of counselors, but you are there to assist them and act as an extra set of eyes and ears. There are specific evening programmes in the first and last week that all teaching staff are asked to participate in/attend. In the final week some of our Elective staff will be involved in organising their own section of a specific programme (ie Creative Night). If you are helping out with our evening programmes these are normally finished by 10.30pm at the latest.
Weekends will be mostly free time, although depending on the campus you may be asked to chaperone one of our cultural day trips. On Sundays we run workshops for our students, which are run by members of the staff team who have a particular hobby or skill that they would like to share. We ask our Elective teachers to run one Sunday workshop per session.
Counselors and Media Managers
Counselors
As one of our summer school counselors you will be staying with your own dedicated group of international students in the university halls of residence. Your first job of each day will be making sure that your group is awake and getting them to breakfast on time.
Once students are in their academic classes, counselors at each campus meet as a team with their Head Counselors to discuss the day ahead. Unless you are scheduled to be on duty, the remainder of the morning you will have some free time to relax before lunch. If you are on duty you may be asked to assist with a variety of tasks to help the Campus Management team.
As a team, our Counselors are tasked with running a variety of different activities (based on skills/interests) at 4pm each weekday. So, after lunch (while students are in their Elective Classes) you will be getting ready for any 4pms that you are involved with and preparing for the Evening Programme.
After dinner, all Counselors (unless you have an evening off) are then involved in running the Evening Programme, which is overseen by the Head counselors. Evening programmes are normally finished by 10.30pm at the latest, and teaching staff will be on hand to provide extra eyes and ears during the evenings.
You will then return to halls to relax and spend time with your group of students before lights out at 11pm.
Your weekends will be spent supervising all students on our cultural trips and helping to plan and run Sunday Workshops in addition to your normal duties. Each counselor will get one full 24 hour period off each week.
Media Managers
As one of our Media Managers your role will be one of the most varied on campus. Each day you will be responsible for documenting a variety of aspects of daily life at the summer school campus from both the students' and staff teams’ point of view.
You will be responsible for managing your own time, and it is up to you to make sure that you get all photos and video footage that is set out in your role handbook, as well as the social media content required.
Mornings and afternoons will be spent taking photos/video footage of students in class, while evenings and weekends will see you recording memories of fun-filled Evening Programmes, Cultural Trips and Activities.
Each Media Manager will get a full 24 hour period off each week.
Regardless of the role you choose, we know you will have a fun-filled and incredibly rewarding summer working with us.
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