Korean Job Discussion Forums

[PeterDragon]

I've just been assigned to a school in a designated rural area. I'm the first Western teacher the school ahs ever had, and their crriculum is very inadequate, not consucive for teaching speaking at all.

My school seems fairly open to suggestion, in fact, I get the feeling they're kind of hoping I'll tell them what to do. What are the best places/means to create a new curriculum? I basically have to start these middle school kids from scratch--- they have the speaking abilites of a seven-year old at a hagwon.

What are the best resources for building a curriculum? Can I get into trouble if I buy just one set of curriculum textbooks and photocopy enough for all the students? Where can I go to look for good curriculum books for students at their level, to at least use as a template and source of ideas? Suggestions for this are very valued.

[boyne11]

Make sure you charge them double or triple your salary for creating a brand spanking new curriculum. Otherwise, you're a fool.

[some waygug-in]

Another route might be to use something like "English Time" or "Let's Go".

You could suggest using a series like this as your class textbook or you could just base your curriculum around them and use ideas from them as you need.

I don't know how open they would be to this, but I have heard of cases where schools did agree to this kind of set up.

Just a thought.

[PeterDragon]

[ilovebdt]

Deffo go the text book route.

You can get Let's Go and English Time at any of the large bookstores i.e Kyobo, Young Poong, Bandi and Lunis, Kim and Johnson.

If you aren't near Seoul I am sure your co-teacher could help you order them online.

ilovebdt

[PRagic]

He wasn't joking. You should be paid well over and above for devloping that. Way back when, I did some development for a new kiddie school, but as a consultant, not an employee. I got 5 million plus expenses, and that was cheap. I just didn't have much experience at the time. That was 10 years ago or so, though. Good luck.

[Richard Krainium]

I got a great idea for you. Make photo copies of Magic Time, English Time and Let's Go. Put your name down as the author. Sell them to the students. Get rich quick. After your year is up leave town. Nobody will be none the wiser. After all, isn't that the Korean way?

[Jizzo T. Clown]

This seems to be a widespread problem in Korea. They want you to create everything from scratch then when test time comes they want control over the questions. They use textbooks that are light years beyond the students' communicative levels so when the students see things like "I like red" in English class they don't take it seriously:

"Will this be on the test" if yes--write everything down verbatim, if no, continue talking to classmate in Korean. The perceived goal of speaking activities is to get to the end of the activity in the fastest way possible--by speaking Korean or copying answers. God forbid they have to do what is designed and practice language patterns, etc. with their peers.

Add to this what seems to be minimal support in the areas of classroom management and lesson planning and what you've got is a system that's broken yet doesn't want to be fixed. They try to placate us by having open classes, where we can "share ideas" which are forgotten the moment after a Korean starts speaking.

Oh--use a book and follow it to the letter. If coteachers complain that your classes aren't interesting enough, ask them to help you write out a curriculum that will engage the students. That should send them running for the hills, or at least, they won't bring it up again.

[Leavingkorea]

Teachers teach and base lessons and lesson plans on established curriculum.

Curriculum designers develop the curriculum that teachers will use, as a guide line, for instructing their students.

These are 2 totally separate jobs. They should thus be paid independently.

Let me ad a simple example. If your construction company was hired to build a bridge for a city, would you expect the city on your first day of work to tell you to draw-up all the blue prints too?

[ddeubel]

Curriculum is the "goal" of learning. The content that students will cover and be expected to gain competence and mastery of. It is not a book, a system, a thing.

In fact, curriculum in its largest sense, is the alive portion of the English language. Huge and everywhere, mostly free.

That said, yes, teachers need guidance and especially when new or dealing in specialized subjects, need to have curriculum provided (guidance) by professional curriculum designers. This doesn't mean that they (teachers) shouldn't be adding their own content to the curriculum, putting in their own materials and "two cents" . Too many don't to any significant degree and teaching suffers when there is no personalization towards the teachers own interests/competencies. I think we as teachers should always not just adapt but create curriculum / materials / content for our students. It is our job.

So on a very general level, I disagree with this statement.

[tob55]

If you are going to write, then make sure it is something that translates into usable language for the learners. There is plenty of the sterile, mundane curriculum stuff floating around out there. This is one of the reasons the language le