Korean Job Discussion Forums

[garykasparov]

About Foreign Teachers

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/opi_view.asp?newsIdx=15165&categoryCode=162

By Brian Deutsch

In response to Kang Eun-hee's article ``Korean English Teachers" published in The Korea Times on Nov. 23, I should say first that she introduces a few important concepts.

However, I feel that her argument has several troubling weaknesses, and the real story is not the cultural gaps between native speakers of English and Korean students, but rather between foreign teachers and their Korean counterparts.

Ms. Kang brings up, for example, the issue of money, and hints that native speakers are paid 45 million won per annum. I am not sure where she got this figure, but I do know that Koreans do tend to exaggerate our income, and that her number is roughly twice what a rookie public school teacher can expect to make.

Even if we do include the housing offered in so many contracts, the calculations still work out to much more than a veteran public school teacher can expect to earn.

Moreover, foreign teachers aren't privy to the same holiday and performance bonuses, and under-the-table cash advances, that frequently pad the purses of Korean teachers, so an objective comparison is difficult.

She also relates a story of an embarrassed student during a Halloween lesson. Many foreign teachers, myself included, know the pain of trying to urge a student to participate only to later find out that he or she has a learning disability.

I will suggest, however, that the cultural gap between foreign teachers and their students is perhaps not so different than the generation gap between Korean teachers and theirs.

I will also suggest that the authority given to Korean teachers (but withheld from foreigners) often instills fear and prompts far more tears than a Halloween lesson ever can.

You won't read many stories about foreigners attacking students with swords, as happened recently in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, nor will you see native speakers slapping, punching, or head-butting their students in the hallways, things I witness between Korean teachers and their students on a regular basis.

Ms. Kang suggests that one cause for the cultural disconnect is that foreign teachers are burdened with a large number of students whom they see infrequently. In my case I have nearly 50 different classes and 1,600 students, whom I see once or twice a month.

Compare that to the tri-weekly meetings between Korean English teachers and their students, and it's easy to see why native speakers are perhaps not as effective as intended. Moreover, when we consider that foreign teachers are, contractually, assistant teachers and are often used as such, the amount of meaningful interaction is even less.

It's also very important to remember that there is no curriculum in place for foreign teachers in public middle and high schools, and little thought is given to how we run our bi-monthly classes.

Our co-teachers are frequently absent from the classroom, are rarely involved in lesson planning, and often say nothing more than ``do whatever you want.''

Were teachers, administrators, and government officials really worried about results or money, they would spend more of both in designing an effective way to integrate foreigners into the classroom.

As it stands now, the foreigner's classroom is a novelty, a gimmick, for as Ms. Kang says, students have had so little time to talk to foreigners.

Finally, Ms. Kang echoes a complaint used far too much, that foreign teachers are a transient population and thus not an effective long-term solution.

Let's please not forget the obstacles in place that prevent long-term employment and which push more and more foreigners out the door. There are ceilings on our salaries and meager financial and professional incentive for post-graduate degrees.

There is no curriculum in the schools and no viable long-term plan for native speakers. And, most recent and most troubling, there is legislation in place that not only increases paperwork and makes it more difficult to work in Korea, but which, quite frankly, insults the foreign community by implicitly degrading us and explicitly calling us unqualified, drug-using pedophiles who are a nuisance to Korean society, as per a recent immigration press release.

It's unwise and unhealthy to always point the finger at the foreign population, especially with such an unintentionally humorous e-mail address.

Foreign teachers were imported, after all, to rectify the glaring deficiencies of Korean English teachers, and even after a decade of exposure, there is much work to be done. For all Ms. Kang's talk about culture, there is a startling dearth of knowledge about the culture of the countries from whence these foreign teachers come.

And, there is a disappointing inability for many Korean English teachers to effectively do their jobs. Considering that Korean teachers lead the majority of English classes in public and private schools, given Korea's low standardized test scores and the general lack of English competence, mightn't we also question the effectiveness of using so many domestic teachers?

There are a bevy of solutions to the problems highlighted both here and in Ms. Kang's piece. I wonder, though, if anyone cares. More conversations on English education take place in this paper than in the schools between colleagues, where they belong.

And lately I have the impression that Korean officials are actually trying to repel all its teachers, and when I read pieces like Ms. Kang's or Mr. Jason Lim's, I wonder if anybody really wants to teach or learn English at all.

Brian Deutsch is an English teacher in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province. He can be reached at [email protected].

[marlow]

Bravo.

I like the talk of salary. Ms. Kang made it sound like foreign teachers are going to bankrupt Korea. Yeah right. At a school with a staff of like 50-80, one teacher's salary makes almost no difference.





Also, Korean teachers need to study more. Forget overseas study vacations paid for by the employer, why not have Korean English teachers open a book for two hours per day? Why can't a Korean teacher just study alone? Why is the employer responsible to re-educate a Korean teacher? I wish I could get a job I wasn't qualified for and then get my employer to pay to educate me.

[wylies99]

This was in response to another letter to the newspaper?
Not bad, but Korean mommies seem to like that Korean teachers whup their kids.

[ddeubel]

garykasparov,

I usually don't post indepth here anymore but to rebutt alot of your own "prejudices" and misconceptions, I'll do so. If only you were Kasparov, you would have produced something far more substantial than just such melodrama.

You rightly state Ms. Kang had her own inaccuracies, and then you continue to add salt to an overly salty soup.

Firstly, I work with Korean teachers training them, giving workshops, communicating with them on several social networks. I have experience working and training teachers in a number of countries. I don't think such a statement as,

[Boodleheimer]

i enjoyed the response, brian.

[garykasparov]

My name isn't Brian Deutsch and I didn't write that article. I wouldn't waste my time writing a response to her article. Furthermore, I don't write articles to the Korean Herald, I just post them on Dave's ESL Cafe. I don't agree with 85% of the article anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, this teacher is talking about a public school setting. I don't know anything about them because I never worked at one. In the hagwons I worked at, there were no more than 12 students per class. To my knowledge, there are thirty (30) kids in some public school classes.

[ddeubel]

garykasparov,

Sorry for not reading "closely" enough and my apologizes for any personal reference to you/your online presence here.....

Otherwise, my response remains and I guess I should have just sent it directly.

DD

[Homer]

ddeubel,

Excellent response...it mirrors what I would have said. I urge you to send it on as a response to the response...

You make several key points based on real experience and facts.

I could not agree more with what you are saying.

In fact, I think the part about teachers duty should be something that all of us read up on because many of us seem to have a grave miss-understanding of what it means to be a teacher.

Good work.

The problem sometimes (most of the time?) with teachers (westerners I mean) here is that they have little or no experience teaching and therefore have no comparison base. They also get overwhelmed by the whole new country-new job thing and quickly see that teaching is hard. Most do their best and learn on the job. Some try to find a way to lay the blame elsewhere.

Your point about curriculum is completely accurate. But when you do not have experience you do not know this....it can be a hard realisation that you will not be "teaching by connect the dots"....

Of course the problem here is in large part an source-entry issue where the requirements to teach here are far too lax and low. This in turn leads schools to hire (hakwons mostly) inexperienced people who most of the time come here to save cash and travel.

Bad combination!

Good discussion anyway.

[Roch]

[Unposter]

I'm sorry Dduebel, while I have always enjoyed your posts, I just think your dead wrong here.

First of all, whether or not Mrs. Kang does her job well or not, she is the one who attacked Native-speaking teachers first, questioning their ability to effectively educate Korean students because of a cultural barrier. She is fundamentally wrong about that as you very well know there is no fundamental difference between Korean English teachers and Native-speaking English teachers as we are all "English Teachers." Mrs. Kang very rightfully should be taken to task for her racist views which damage and prevent all of us from doing a successful job in the classroom.

Second of all, while I am not a public school teacher, it sounds like whether you want to admit it or not, most Native-speaking teachers have not been given a curriculum unlike their Korean counterparts with objectives set by the MOE and basic approaches of how to teach the textbook. I have heard this in many different contexts but usually when Native-speakers ask (and often they do ask in the beginning) what should I teach, they are often not given anything short of I don't know you are the native speaker, underlying one a passive-agressive attempt to sabatoge the native-speaking teacher and two a decentralized, teacher centered approach which leads to significant inequalities in education favoring the wealthy and powerful.

If there is a plan, it needs to be communicated better. And, while well-educated people like you may know what to do, you cannot possibly expect the mixed bag that is English educators in Korea, to know all the nuances. When the Korean government hires people without experience, they should be responsible for some basic training. Sadly, this is just not done properly as you should very well know.

As for the money spent on Fts, Mrs. Kang's original article is quite deceptive. She makes it sound like Fts earn more money than senior Korean English teachers which is just fundamentally untrue. FTs earn less than 2.5 million a month, most much less, which is very comperable to a Korean English teacher of the same experience. The difference is there are a number of additional costs to hiring a Ft other than salary. But this is not explained neither by Mrs. Kang nor you which is not only deceptive but politically dangerous. You seem to want Koreans to think that FTs are leaches on the Korean economy without clearly explaining the real costs.

Obviously, one reason for FTs in the public schools, whether Korean public school teachers want them there or not, is to get them out of the hakwons. In the long run, this should save Koreans money. But this issue is neither addressed by Mrs. Kang nor you. Why?

The reality is that Fts could play a very positive role in Korean education if used properly and if Korean English teachers are willing to work with FTs which Mrs. Kang's article implies most Korean English teachers aren't willing to work with FTs and your defence of her article makes it even harder for this necessity to occur. I hope you realize your short sightedness here.

When the article addresses the issue that Mrs. Kang is not aware of the cultures of the FTs, you misinterpret it to mean that people in general are not culturally aware. But, the writer is trying to say that it is necessary for Kts to understand the the culture of their Native-speaking co-teacher as much as it is necessary for their native-speaking co-teacher to understand Korean culture. You cannot possibly be argueing that that is not ture???

The fact of the matter is that if you re-read Mrs. Kang's article there is an underlying racism, at least hostility toward non-Koreans that needs to be addressed.

If Brian mentions gimmick, it is not becuase he sees native-speaking teachers as gimmicks, it is because Mrs. Kang wrote about native-speaking teachers as gimmicks. Something about once the novelty of the native speaker wears off, what's left? This does not have to be the case. And, a good team of teachers, Korean and non-Korean can certainly make sure this does not have to happen.

Unfortunately, we seem to be living through a time, where their is a lot of questioning of the role of Fts in Korea. That in of itself is not bad. But, when subjective, deceptive news programs such as the SBS specials and racist, deceptive articles such as Mrs. Kang's are the driving force behind such discussions, it is absolutely essential that the foreign community speak out about such practices.

Can you imagine governmental policy being implimented because of a one-sided news report about immigrants? Well, that is exactly what is happening in Korea! It should make people alarmed. Where is there one single fact in any of the discussions about the role of FTs in Korea? It is all knee-jerk reactions predicated upon racist political agendas is what it is. And, people need to speak out about it. But you, Dduebel, Homer too, are giving them coverage to continue their propoganda attack.

You should really think about what it is that you are defending because it is only going to lead to the end of Fts in Korea. If that is what you want, fine, but at least make that point clear when arguing.

Please, re-read Mrs, Kang's article. I don't think she is a blatant racist but I do think her article is racist, minimumly self-centered and self-serving. She doesn't make one legitimate critique FTs in the classroom, other than possibly the cost.

I think if you re-read her article with some critical reasoning you will see that her argument is purposively slanted and dangerous to the foreign community.

[wylies99]

[moosehead]

[quote="ddeubel"]

[Bondrock]

[SHANE02]

I read the response by Brian yesterday, and I think what he wrote needed to be said, and I actually agree with some of it. I also agree with some of what DD said.

The part about the costs to Korea of native speakers needed to be clarified after Mrs Kang's article. Foreign teachers should never be made to feel quilty about cost, or be made scapegoats for bad spending decisions. The fact is that if qualified, experienced teachers cost more money than Korea is willing to spend, they will go elsewhere.

Anyone can see that inexperienced teachers (or rather random degree holders) in a classroom of 30 students, in a new country, with little or no support, is a receipt for god knows what. I think that's why they need a strong curriculum guideline. DD said it's the teacher's job to design the curric. This is just not correct. Implement yes, design no. Curriculum design costs a ton of money, but in Korea it seems to be a job given to English teachers. Why did Brian feel like there is no curriculum? I think that's the bigger problem.

But ,I have never worked in a public school in Korea. i have only read and heard usually negative things about the experience. I will leave the "My co-teacher doesn't show up to class" comment to others.

As for cultural understanding, it is part of teaching anywhere, probably more so in the west. I taught a class at home with six different nationalities. It was interesting to say the least. I think Korean teachers need to understand western culture well in order to teach some parts of the English language. Foreigners in Korea trying to teach English will find a good understanding of Korean culture very helpful in their efforts also.

It has to be said however that Koreans are well known for the "It's a cultural thing, you can't understand it" line which is used to save face.
Also if we are going to go down this cultural understanding road, what's with the public school text books and alike which contain racism?


As for how Koreans can do better with English I totally agree with this idea and always have. To quote DD " I only wish they'd do so more through media/culture and less through the education system."

[Easter Clark]