Korean Job Discussion Forums

[fromtheuk]

Are you beginning to dislike your co-teacher?

I only have 1 co-teacher and I've worked with her now for about 5 months.

She has returned from 2 weeks break due to pregnancy. She still looks a bit unwell and is regularly spitting into a cup.

My co-teacher recently confessed to me she had deliberately tried to put me under pressure at work and felt bad for having done so.

I taught alone for the last 2 weeks, it went fine.

I am convinced she is bad mouthing me sometimes with other Korean teachers at school. In one of my teacher's class, which actually went ahead, she was blatantly talking to another teacher throughout, looking quite resentfully at me.

She told me at the start of my job most Korean teachers don't want native teachers because their existence involves too much paperwork.

I feel she is moody and immature.

I don't know if she thinks I am unaware of her bad mouthing or simply stupid by virtue of being foreign.

I am always civil but I feel irritated by her nowadays because of the reasons cited above.

When somebody on this forum said good manners are wasted on Koreans, I think this is true of my co-worker.

Even she has said she thinks she is bad!

For all of those people who think exchanging rice cakes and kissing a#$ at every opportunity is the way to go in Korea, I would advise you to try the civil, but professional approach, and see how mature and grown up your co-workers actually are.

Sadly, spoilt children in the workplace, masquerading as adults exist all over the world e.g. if your boss doesn't get exactly what they want/expect from you, they may treat you bad.

I hope to get married in December/January and my co-worker said she wanted to attend it, because she was the first person I met in Korea.

I agreed to let her attend, if it all goes ahead.

Today though I feel different. I don't want her there at all, it's bad enough I have to see her at work.

I think I will conveniently forget to invite her if the wedding takes place and if she ever enquires about it, I will flippantly state I forgot all about her.....whoops...I'm really sorry

[nomad-ish]

i know how you feel, you're bound to get annoyed with anyone after working in such close contact with them for 5 months, but you have to remember she's pregnant and her hormones are probably running wild right now. i'm not trying to excuse her behaviour, but u got to know where she's coming from, if i were you, i'd just try to avoid her whenever i could (obviously u can't in the classroom, but maybe during office hours, after school activities, if she starts talking about u to other teachers, u could always clear your throat loudly and look at them...most will get the idea, etc.)

good luck! maybe she'll go on even more maternity leave

[jinju]

[icnelly]

[livinginkunsan]

Same public school for 2yrs.. and no problems whatsoever. My co-teacher is the greatest.

[nomad-ish]

one other thing, don't worry about not inviting her to your wedding... if she hasn't received an official invite from u stating the date, time, etc. it's not set in stone and she probably won't be expecting one after all this anyways

[fromtheuk]

Well, she was demanding, right from the very start.

My lesson plans for special class were never up to scratch. She wanted me to do more activities, I was asked to never play bingo again in special class, only to be followed by my co-teacher playing bingo in regular lessons!

I was an awful teacher at first, because I had no experience of teaching. My co-teacher said I could play bingo in special class again, because the kids enjoyed it, she simply said I shouldn't play it everytime.

Looking back, I lacked ideas at first, so I sticked to repetitive activities, so she was right to point out I shouldn't do the same thing, all the time.

She also used to say she wanted me to contribute more ideas in lesson plans, which I did, and in fairness, that was resolved.

I learned she gets her P.P.T.'s from a website designed especially for Korean teachers. You just log on, and it has a list of printable activites for regular lessons. I now use it too.

I am not the first foreign teacher they've had at the school, but the previous teacher was female and was very sociable with my co-teacher outside of school, and the last native teacher told me my co-teacher would be very nice.

After the last native teacher left, my co-teacher got married, so we would definitely not have socialized anyway. To be honest even if she was single, I still wouldn't socialize with her. I like to keep work and private life separate.

I don't know what her issue is, my co-teacher is friendly with the Korean male teachers at our school.

I think because I lead a different lifestyle to her and also because I am not very outgoing, she feels unsettled by me in someway.

She has also told me she is jealous of native teachers, the benefits they get.

You're right about the frustration as regards not knowing what Koreans are saying, this issue would be the only motivating factor for me to learn Korean!

I know she must be bad mouthing me, because she has even bad mouthed the vp and principal with me! So, a lowly bug on the Korean food chain like me must have got it's fair share of sharp-tongued criticism, behind my back, from my co-teacher too!

I want to be fair, sometimes my co-teacher has been kind, but because I am very different to her e.g. a Muslim lifestyle, she finds it hard to understand me, so the cultural difference adds to the tension that exists. But that tension exists due to her, as she previously admitted.

She has just walked in and offered me some fruit. She left the room and has now returned looking really unwell. Oh well, horses for courses, each to their own etc.

[englishiscrazy]

in this pulic school for over 6 months but feeling so demoralized
when it comes to korean teachers work: they slack off go to classes late and shop online in their spare periods while they bitch about sooo much work to do.
they continually bitch that they have to work 2 saturdays a month for half a day - but their weekly class hours are less than mine!
recently they've laid down the law that days i had off due to a school holiday (sports, exam...) will count as my holidays so i will get 3 days off over winter -what crap!

Days like this I want to quit and leave this soul destroying job.

[renzobenzo1]

I know what you mean...try sharing an office with 3 other workers who can't speak English....sure they can be kind and say hello, share food and exchange pleasantries...but I know they joke about me in Korean at any opportunity....the worst thing is I don't know what they are saying....usually that's ok because I can just laugh it off....today though my voice was a bit shakey (cultural differences and a few nerves) so the lady right next to me so I could hear, made a joke about it with another teacher...I knew she was talking about me. That's just plain rude. I have a lot of respect for this teacher and found that hurtful. The rest of the day I just sat there trying not to show that it bothered me.
I mean seriously, I would like to see hwo she handles things living a year overseas. I am just trying to do my best. The jokes are getting tiresome.
If I have to be a clown in the classroom sometimes then I don't need to put up with this knd of shite outside the class in my time to prepare between classes.

[xtchr]

[fromtheuk]

I'll be honest, ultimately bad mouthing or general Korean rudeness in public doesn't bother me.

What I do is pretend to act how Koreans appear to me, with a facial expression which looks over the top in it's absurd self-superiority, I pretend to be like I am a Korean who is always on the verge of singing the national anthem.

What amuses me is the Koreans realize I am taking the mick and look really irritated by it. When Koreans try to put me down in public, I just hold my head even higher, and to see them rattled almost every time, is funny.

The truth is Koreans, like most people are not the best thing ever, so when I observe their rudeness, that in itself shows they have poor manners.

I don't know if this has happened to you, but sometimes I have been so amused by how shabby some Koreans are in public, I literally laugh out loud while trying to hold the laughter in.

[renzobenzo1]

[RJjr]

Is she Christian?

[xox]

[kiwigal]

I was terrified of my first male co-teacher who would take me out of the teacher's room and lecture me for 30 minutes on "obeying Korean customs" because I didn't say hello to one teacher who slipped past me in the mornings and I wouldn't give him my Canadian friend's phone number without her permission. (He lived in Canada for one month).
I spent the first 6 weeks here petrified of him. Then, one day in early May, he died. Had a heart attack on his Saturday morning walk!

My new co-teacher is wonderful. She lived in Canada for 18 months is completely fluent in English and is a really lovely, fair woman. I like another Korean co-teacher that I work with very much. The male Korean English teacher has been at my school for 35 years and never comes to my classes. (And they're the lowest classes!) We also have a part time teacher, her classes are a bit of a joke. I have a good system with the other two co-teachers, but the part time teacher just stands at the back cracking her gum and staring out the window. Oh well, the school year ends in only a few weeks!

I think everyone gets a mixed bag.