Korean Job Discussion Forums

[matthewwoodford]

I've heard people time and again saying how easy teaching in Korea is but it still seems quite hard to me. Call me a wuss but classes leave me drained sometimes. I kind of know what a good lesson will be like and usually know what steps to take to make it a good lesson but some days it just seems like too much effort...Wish I had classes I could swim through like some but it seems more like swimming futilely against the current nowadays. My energy is at a low ebb

So does anyone else find teaching hard? Or really easy?

Matt

[Eazy_E]

Interesting thread. Most newbies assume that EFL teaching is easy because, of course, it doesn't test a native speaker's knowledge of the language.

I teach children at a hagwon and I have found it to be quite a demanding job, partly because I consider it a profession and not a glorified babysitting gig. I really care about whether the kids are learning and I'm still idealistic about the job, even four months in.

I guess the question is whether you want to just go through the motions or whether you want to invent games, pour your heart and soul into it, and really push the students to be independent learners of English. The foreign teacher who I replaced turned all the students into parrots, because he really didn't care about using any other teaching method other than forcing them to repeat the phrases. They didn't use their brains at all and only know what they memorized by rote. I'm still trying to reverse this.

Putting an honest effort into it is really better in the long run, for yourself and for the students.

[the_beaver]

It can be easy or not.

For me it's challenging and occasionally difficult, but that's because of the way I look at teaching. If I'm really tired or uninspired I can coast.

[Mr. Pink]

IT is easy once you get used to it and setup a routine.

It is hard the first little while, as you are still learning.

Also it can be hard if you are teaching a ton of classes.

When I first worked the hawgwon scene, I had a week like this:

8 4 8 4 8 4 (That's 8 classes MWF, 4 TTS)

Teaching 4 classes was so easy, as I could prepare a bit better for those classes and I had a ton of energy.

The 8 classes in a row MWF was hard. I just ran out of energy by class 6. I taught kids and the little ones would just wear me out.

Eventually I got a bit more used to it, but the final solution was cutting back on some MWF classes and going with a 6 everyday solution.

I don't know how long you have been doing the ESL thing, but I think it gets easier with time.