Korean Job Discussion Forums

[shantaram]

I'm finishing my contract and heading back to my country at the end of August. With summer break I actually only have five weeks of teaching left at my public elementary school.

I think I will need to be rehabilitated before entering the workforce again in my own country.

I'm so sick of b*s in this job. My co-teacher is a complete twit. Despite our school being the 'model school' for co-teaching in the district, she cut my role in an open class down to about ten words- a gag involving a roll of toilet paper- and proceeded to massacre the English language in front of about twenty assessors who had come to see co-teaching in action. She justified this by telling everybody at the meeting afterwards how important her career is to her (I'm well past caring) so therefore naturally she should lead the class. Several times during this class I winced with embarrassment- including one time when she grabbed a puppet and proceeded to name it with my name and then mimic my voice with it for a good two minutes! The lady is a complete fruitcake. She even asked me to submit my feedback about the class to her- what I would be saying to the people who had come to watch- BEFORE we had even had the class! She has no excuse for her naivete either- we have now had three open classes, all of which have had the same problems. Before each class I have told her again and again that we are meant to be co-teaching and that means an equal distribution of classtime between teachers, some communication between teachers, and not scripting every single word like a telemarketing script. Nevertheless she stays up until 5 o'clock in the morning writing some godawful rubbish a month before the class, and then counters my objections over the imbalance in roles with excuse upon excuse to keep her monopoly on class-time, and then she proceeds to massacre the class. She even has had me come in late to every open class as part of a running gag- an excuse for her to greet the children by herself and impress the assessors, because the only understandable thing she can say in English is hello. She is such a dunce. I have a great co-teaching relationship with every other teacher in the school except for her, yet she thinks she is the greatest. She tried to take over my English class for teachers- she actually completely ruined them- she tried teaching pronunciation to people who could pronounce the words better than she could herself. I just cannot believe that such a useless teacher was chosen to be the head teacher (not that the role means anything to anybody other than her). I am so glad I am not working with her for much longer. I feel really drained about my experience here as a result of this. This young woman wants to blast off into the stratosphere with her career when she is only in her first year out of teachers' college. Rather than build up experience and qualifications, she sabotages the co-teaching programme to realise her own ambitions. She even admitted to me she had exaggerated her English qualifications to our colleagues. They think her English is perfect (although some have her figured out now) and that she is fluent. Yet she told me she had only studied English grammar and teaching English at university- had never attended an after-school class, and besides that had only studied English at high school. This is so wrong to me. I picked up an article written by another Korean teacher about the public school system and in her article she claimed that Korea is a meritocracy. Korea is not a meritocracy when people like this young woman can pull the wool over her colleagues eyes and make complete mince-meat out of everything people are trying to achieve in the English programme because she is so desperate to impress people. I feel like this:

Note: edited extensively due to keyboard rage rendering script unreadable.

[jinju]

Why did you LET her? You aid she did this 3 times before. Why do you let her do this? Why not emberass her in one of these open classes?

[dmbfan]

Hey O.P.

I (and others) understand. Well, at least you haven't yelled at her for doing something extremely stupid like some people..........oh....wait, that would be me....

Anyway, sounds like a common situation. I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps these people just can't stand the fact that some foreign teachers actually know what they are doing, and it makes the Koreans look really stupid? But, having you be the puppet? That sucks!!!

Well man, you are almost done. You've come this far, so don't turn back now.


dmbfan

[dmbfan]

[ilovebdt]

And nobody at the open class mentioned that she spoke way too much and badly and that you did way too little?

ilovebdt

[Rapacious Mr. Batstove]

Don't you just love it when you come across someone who is so incompetent that they are too incompetent to realise that are being incompetent and think they are doing a fantastic job.

They only way to (help) them is to show them just how terrible they are. I suggest videotaping one of her lessons and breaking it down for her, followed by you telling her exactly what you think of her and her B.S lesson.

Do her a favor and TELL her how much she sucks at teaching. It could be the best fun you're ever had AND who cares how she takes it because you've only got five weeks left.

[jinju]

[dmbfan]

[SeoulShakin]

I like the videotaping idea, because you can pawn it off as being helpful.

Just say "I realize that your career is very important to you, so I wanted to be able to help you along before I leave, etc etc."

Tape the class, then rip her apart... nicely of course, and in a constructive way. Then you can say something to the effect of "Since we are a school that is a model for effective co-teaching, I think the people would be much more impressed if we planned the class TOGETHER and taught it TOGETHER. I appreciate that you want to get further in your career, but I don't appreciate you demeening me in the process. I know for a fact that they are here to see co-teaching in action, and you would look much better in the long run, if they see that you are able to share a workload. Taking it all on yourself, ends up just making you look overly insecure.

Use the video as evidence of what she does wrong. Offer to help her, in exchange for her making the work load more 50-50. Find out what she is most comfortable doing and let her do it. If she feels greeting the students is one of her strong points, let her do it. But let her know that after that, you take over for a bit, and back and forth.

I don't think all hope is lost, but for it to work, you must stand up for yourself, and let her know that you will not stand for being pushed aside and made to look a fool. Tell her that if she tries to do it again, you will have no choice but to speak with the supervisors about not only her disrespect, but what she's lied about on her resume.

[spliff]

[shantaram]

Thanks SeoulShakin and Rapacious. Great ideas. I would like to say my side of the story to her, otherwise I will go back to my country and regret not having done that. Or, I will say it in much harsher terms to the people who handle my contract, and will feel like I have betrayed my school. Or, I just won't care, which I think would be the saddest thing of all- I really don't want to leave feeling apathetic about my experience here.

There was negative feedback from the assessors about the imbalance between teachers, my co-teacher countered it with grandiose nonsense about how important her career is to her. 5 points were up for grabs- she was competing against other teachers in the district. But she should have been co-teaching, given that a) she had chosen English co-teaching as her class for competition purposes, b) our school is modelling co-teaching and she is the head co-teacher and c) people had come from around the district to see co-teaching. However, in her mind, because it was a competition, co-teaching took a back-seat to her getting as much 'on-screen time' as possible.

And jinju, one of the gags the teacher wanted me to perform in class was ask for a roll of toilet paper and say I wanted to go to the toilet (our class, by the way, didn't actually have anything to do with toilets or bathrooms- the toilet roll was an object we were using to explain 'its too expensive'). That was to be my exit. I was going to decline the toilet paper and hold up the lesson plan I was holding and say, "I'll use this instead". But she screwed up her own script and closed the class at a random point, shortly after having put on a deep voice while imitating me with a puppet (and making me sound like a French villain).

[jinju]

Easy way to deal with it would be to pretend you dont understand her pronunciation. Especially if they are Koreans.

"Excuse me, I didnt understand"
"Please repeat, your pronunciation is very difficult to catch"
"What?"
"Huh?"

Also, pick on her grammar.


Just destroy her career. You will feel better. She deserves it too. And for sure tell your supervisors she lied about her qualifications. Do it when she is in the room.

[Letiz7]

Effing hilarious mate. I feel for you...yet can only imagine my withering response if a co-teacher tried that shiite with me.

She used a puppet and mimicked your voice, making you sound like a French villain?! Priceless.

This'll make working in your home country seem like a stroll in the park dude.

[poet13]

What a wonderful rant! I mean that. You have had an issue for a long time, and you expressed it to us very well....unlike so many other rants we have the privilege or reading.

I like the videotape idea. But share. Put it on youtube.
You have one person out of your work team that is a clown. I was going to say *beep*, but shes a lady. Some would be happy it was only one.

I also say put her in her place. I like the idea of, "I'm sorry, can you repeat, I can't understand you." Or repeat what it sounded like she said, or do what it sounded like she said to do, not what you know she meant.

Let us know what you decide to do.

[cbclark4]

Just get her to say thirty three. It's all down hill from there.

Yes, I saw that tree is is very very dirty.

City street? Yes it is on the city street.

On and on.

cbc