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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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 Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 12:02 am Post subject: A question to those who taught public school |
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I was having a discussion with a friend where I was comparing working at a hagwon and comparing it to many public schools in North America. I don't teach kids right now, but at my first job I did and though sometimes some of the young kids were annoying I thought my job was so easy compared to teaching kids in the inner city, the tough urban kids. It is like comparing someone soldiering in Bosnja and Serbja in the early 1990s when compared to now. There is no comparison, I think. I just can't understand people thinking teaching at a hagwon is that tough. I can understand teaching at some Korean public schools where you might have 38 in a class as some Korean classes do. Or, if you are dealing with an incompetent hagwon owner who puts so many kids of mixed ability in your class and you have no curriculum. I found it so tough to get to across to the kids in the inner city compared to the Korean kids.
I wanted to get the opinion of those who actually were on the front lines of a tough urban school and who can make a comparison. I think a hagwon would much easier in comparison. The worst day at a hagwon is a mild day, in general, at many public schools in the US or rough parts of Toronto, I would say. When I used to teach kids, I wasn't really majorly stressed and didn't find the work tough, and I did work hard.
Any takers? |
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Atavistic
Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: How totally stupid that Korean doesn't show in this area.
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 12:52 am Post subject: |
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I taught in a 99.97% poverty rate school right outside of Atlanta for three years and also did my student teaching (4 days a week for a year plus summer school) in the same area, albeit at a different school. Mixed ability all the way, very high turnover rate.
Hogwon teaching is a cakewalk. |
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thiophene
Joined: 15 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 1:44 am Post subject: |
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| Atavistic wrote: |
Hogwon teaching is a cakewalk. |
That's a relief. I've been GLUED to this damn site reading every negative comment about Korea, the schools, the hakwons, the people, the air, the students, the everything, before I get there. |
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cdninkorea
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 3:14 am Post subject: |
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| thiophene wrote: |
| Atavistic wrote: |
Hogwon teaching is a cakewalk. |
That's a relief. I've been GLUED to this damn site reading every negative comment about Korea, the schools, the hakwons, the people, the air, the students, the everything, before I get there. |
Don't take what you read on this site as an accurate portrayal to what Korea is really like- people usually only post if they have something to say, and usually it's negative experiences people post as a means to let off steam.
Are there problems? Of course there are. But there are problems with my home country too. Are you going to find a lot of things frustrating and confusing when you get here? Very likely. But you'll likely also have lots of good experiences.
Ultimately, most of us wouldn't be here if we hated it. |
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thatwhitegirl
Joined: 31 Jan 2007
Location: ROK
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 3:21 am Post subject: |
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I teach in a public highschool here. And I think it's great. Really. It's an all-boys, academic school. So the kids are fairly intelligent, talented, funny...good kids. And so much more respectful than I had anticipated! I must admit, I really like having them bow to me! Great when walking around town, and a group of teenage boys walk past and respectfully bow and say, "Hello Teacher."
Not every high school is the same, and I would steer clear of middle schools (just don't like that age), but elementary and high schools are fine.
Hogwans...taught at one in China, and it was great. Long hours, and hard work (2 hour classes for 6 year olds?), but the kids were great, and I liked knowing I was helping them. You could really see them progressing. |
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ttompatz
Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Location: Kwangju, South Korea
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 3:24 am Post subject: |
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The problem has never really been the students.
The problem with working in Korea lies in the management that we have to deal with and the stupidity that goes with Korean style (mis)management.
Secondary to that (and still a significant factor) are the hakwon owners who routinely lie, cheat and defraud their foreign teachers of their pay and benefits with continued impunity.
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atomic42
Joined: 06 Jul 2007
Location: Gimhae
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 3:27 am Post subject: |
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True dat, ttompatz.
| thiophene wrote: |
| That's a relief. I've been GLUED to this damn site reading every negative comment about Korea, the schools, the hakwons, the people, the air, the students, the everything, before I get there. |
Don't listen to the haters, they'd be malcontents regardless of location. They'd also rather keep the good stuff buried under the bad because competition might actually make some of them earn their salaries instead of coasting for 8 hours a day. Yeah, there's some bad stuff here, some backward stuff and even some really crazy stuff - but couldn't that be said by a foreigner living in any country and trying to understand life in a new world?
You'll be fine as long as you remember to bring a healthy dose of respect along with your sense of humor and check the PC stuff at the gate when you leave home. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 4:31 am Post subject: |
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| Atavistic wrote: |
I taught in a 99.97% poverty rate school right outside of Atlanta for three years and also did my student teaching (4 days a week for a year plus summer school) in the same area, albeit at a different school. Mixed ability all the way, very high turnover rate.
Hogwon teaching is a cakewalk. |
I also think teaching at a hagwon is a cakewalk compared to teaching in a school with a very high poverty rate in the inner city. Some teachers barely survive the year. I remember at the school I worked at for some years seeing teachers come in to teach and after a couple of months go home and never come back. I had a heck of a time teaching at my school, and I agree that teaching at a hagwon whether it is children or adults is a cakewalk in comparison, and I have taught children in a tough inner city school and at a hagwon. I sometimes can't understand foreigners who can't hack at a hagwon. I mean that's one of the easiest jobs out there. I really scratch my head at people having a very tough time handling it. Of course, how old you are and what life experience you have has much to do how you handle yourself. If you just graduated from university and have it really worked and dealt with the public, you might have a hard time handling yourself. |
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Atavistic
Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: How totally stupid that Korean doesn't show in this area.
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 4:45 am Post subject: |
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I should say the TEACHING is a cakewalk.
I was evicted from my last apartment because my boss didn't pay my rent and fired from my first job because I refused to put up with their utter shit. I've worked in education, I know typical education shit, this was just plain shit.
WORKING at a hogwon can be hell depending on your boss and their management. And that bitch still owes me over 2 million won. |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 5:44 am Post subject: |
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| Atavistic wrote: |
I should say the TEACHING is a cakewalk.
I was evicted from my last apartment because my boss didn't pay my rent and fired from my first job because I refused to put up with their utter *beep*. I've worked in education, I know typical education *beep*, this was just plain *beep*.
WORKING at a hogwon can be hell depending on your boss and their management. And that *beep* still owes me over 2 million won. |
The hard part, I agree, for us veteran teachers are not teaching in the classroom in Korea, but dealing with corrupt hagwon owners. Amen to that, brother.. |
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vox
Joined: 13 Feb 2005
Location: Jeollabukdo
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 6:25 am Post subject: Re: A question to those who taught public school |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
| I wanted to get the opinion of those who actually were on the front lines of a tough urban school and who can make a comparison. Any takers? |
Yeah.
I was in a tough urban school.
At our elementary-junior high, there were 27 students who entered my grade 9 class, and 12 of us graduated. All the rest dropped out or were arrested or expelled. Not one but two 12-yr old girls had aborted pregnancies. My city was one of the last in Canada to have crack available so when I entered high school the next year, some of these zombified kids had moved back from juvenile criminal lives in Toronto or Montreal simply to get as far away from crack as possible. Our French teacher was beaten up in class, our music teacher was shoved in a closet by a gang of kids and denied permission to exit to his car, another music teacher had been punched in the face by a trashy mom, math teacher's car was vandalized when he flunked someone (big boulder through the main windshield) our home ec teacher was threatened with rape/assault by a young criminal who'd hoped to be Canada's representative boxer but couldn't keep his image clean, blah blah blah. You get the point.
As an adult, I was invited back to the neighborhood to try and lead some arts initiatives. Specifically I spearheaded two arts initiatives out of nearby inner city church missions seeking to get expelled kids off the street and into things they could be proud of. By now the area'd deteriorated to even worse (if you can believe that) and I'd no intention of participating in these missions but by the persuasion of co-workers in other arts projects I allowed myself to use art as a means to assault the culture of the neighborhood and I met with some success. But it was a long hard f*cking slog the whole way. Never one day did a class carry itself.
So in short, I accompanied a minister to schools to teach about comparative spirituality (values). I accompanied an African culture mentor to a school to support a heritage arts thing. And I ran a bunch of after school stuff for kids that were kicked out of school almost every week.
And I did hogwans. So I'll speak to your issue.
The people who complain about hogwans are one of two sorts:
1) p*ssies who never did an honest day's work in their lives
2) those misdirecting legitimate angst which should be directed away from the kids and redirected toward the terrible culture of Korean parents and/or the hogwan bosses.
I did an easy hogwan for a year and it was a pretty good year. Had its ups and downs, particularly around the 6 month mark. I taught kindies all day and loved it, did older kids in the afternoons and roughly speaking it was great too. But the parents I did not love. They brought kids who were still learning where and when to pee and wondered why they weren't fluent yet in English. When you get 'em that young, you're not just teaching them English. You're teaching them manners, little bits of social justice, hygiene, class protocol, teacher student relationships, creativity, and instilling positive associations with the act of learning itself. But then they wouldn't practice at home with them. And when the Korean economy dipped, there were all kinds of things wrong with me. And when the economy soared again, all was forgotten. That's the way it was and that's probably the way it is today.
I took a public school gig not because I hated hogwan kids (who are often referred to as spoiled brats but they can be easily controlled and their illusions of refering to authorities higher than you can be easily undone) but because
1) I wanted a situation where I could teach language and only have to think about that and not about whether that new pimple would get me fired as an incompetent teacher;
2) I wanted freedom from worry about administrative corruption, which is the single biggest focus of waegook angst over here.
I am discovering that administrative corruption exists even in the public school system but it does not exist in the administration office where my cheques are signed. It goes on instead at the English language teacher's desk where 'cheong' (a catch-all Korean word meaning compassion but really being a code word for breaking the contract on the premise of favors owed for favors done) is pushed and the only way to hang onto the contract terms is to in fact be as unfriendly with one's co-teacher as possible. Fine.
It's all so much poppycock. Any adult should be able to navigate through that stuff.
Let's go back to the urban school, and the afterschool stuff.
Tried to start an Afro-based choir, complete with movements in sets learned from a pan African choral conference in 1998. They were all pro-neighborhood pride in spirit, but as soon as they got in the room, they were all up and down the stairs, in the balconies, swinging from the banners, it couldn't happen. And then I'd try to get them together to learn and they couldn't stay still for five minutes. These were emotionally starved children and if they couldn't get positive attention, they'd settle for negative attention. The idea of a delayed reward for invested energy given was just totally alien to them. These were kids in their tweens. I eventually eroded my plans down to just getting them to do something - anything - positive together in the context of arts, with no ambition of showcasing it. I probably should have started out that way but I'd no idea how far back they were in their notions of learning. It was just like what you'd imagine herding cats would be like. And I'd had the best sentiments from these kids. You should have seen the way they treated teachers, coaches and mentors who they didn't like. One day I'd had more kids than ever and I thought I'd been doing something right. In fact as it turned out, some older kid in the neighborhood park had started opening fire on a bunch of kids coming home from school at 3:10pm. The kids with their little backpacks and pigtails had all started ducking and running for cover, and eventually had made their way down to our little inner city church. So I had nothing to do with it. Well you can imagine what a place like this does to kids who live there. They're all anxious because everyday is an act of pretending they're not in the middle of hell and all that toughness has to come down for experimentation and who wants to appear vulnerable under those circumstances? And some of these kids attending were the instigators of major incidents (I had one 11 yr old kid in my group who'd pointed a gun at his momma because she tried to lay down the law about something. After he threatened to shoot her, she'd packed up and moved to Toronto and just left him there in the townhouse. He'd been living on bubble gum and cakes and crap like that for 4 months before social services stepped in.)
I'm sure if any Korean kid in any hogwan I'd teach in ever climbed the walls and swung from the drapes when I'd called class to start the Korean parents would beat him so thoroughly he'd think purple was his natural skin color.
The attention span is of course a big determining factor in differentiating between the problem kids in hogwans and the problems of most kids in my inner city school. I'd had some really learning-challenged kids in my hogwan too. Attention getters frustrated by classes in which they couldn't participate and angry at the alienation they endured by the brainy kids. But I terraced the goals, reached into his head and found stuff he could do and pounded home the positive reinforcement of small goals attained.
This was just not possible with kids in my programs back home. The motivators that had my worst Korean student hang on were just not in place for the inner city kid back home. The latter had to be motivated in a totally different way and the content he received, if measured, would undoubtedly be evaluated as less. At least different agenda (like "good stuff happens when you try to apply yourself", whereas with the Korean learning challenged kid it was more like "you see? you've been patient and now discovered that you *can* learn English like the rest of us.)
Totally different sales pitches.
I can go on psychoanalyzing the benefits and detriments of giving choices that are too big to children that are too small. But instead I'll propose that working at the worst hogwan in Korea (administrative factors laid aside) is still not as bad as working at an innercity school like the one I grew up in and came back to years later as a supplemental program teacher. |
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thiophene
Joined: 15 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 6:41 am Post subject: Re: A question to those who taught public school |
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| vox wrote: |
1) I wanted a situation where I could teach language and only have to think about that and not about whether that new pimple would get me fired as an incompetent teacher; |
wtf, how serious is this? I know Koreans can be very image obsessed but wtf. I'm a borderline hippie so image is the last thing on my mind. I'm not a dog or anything (I think  ), just a naturalist, am I expected to adhere to popular (I'm assuming) Korean looks? and if so, what does that look like exaclty? |
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Atavistic
Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: How totally stupid that Korean doesn't show in this area.
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 7:01 am Post subject: |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
| Atavistic wrote: |
I should say the TEACHING is a cakewalk.
I was evicted from my last apartment because my boss didn't pay my rent and fired from my first job because I refused to put up with their utter *beep*. I've worked in education, I know typical education *beep*, this was just plain *beep*.
WORKING at a hogwon can be hell depending on your boss and their management. And that *beep* still owes me over 2 million won. |
The hard part, I agree, for us veteran teachers are not teaching in the classroom in Korea, but dealing with corrupt hagwon owners. Amen to that, brother.. |
Sister.  |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 7:43 am Post subject: Re: A question to those who taught public school |
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| thiophene wrote: |
| vox wrote: |
1) I wanted a situation where I could teach language and only have to think about that and not about whether that new pimple would get me fired as an incompetent teacher; |
wtf, how serious is this? I know Koreans can be very image obsessed but wtf. I'm a borderline hippie so image is the last thing on my mind. I'm not a dog or anything (I think ), just a naturalist, am I expected to adhere to popular (I'm assuming) Korean looks? and if so, what does that look like exaclty? |
Don't go there. I'm sure you'll be fine as you are. |
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rumdiary
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 8:41 am Post subject: |
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| I worked at some very bad schools back home in Long Beach and I agree that hagwons are a cake walk. I've had a few problems with my director but nothing worth mentioning. If you can't hack it at a hagwon you should go home and never enter a classroom again. |
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