Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wanderingsalsero]

It's not anything I can't handle for the greater good of my own purposes for being here but, just as a comment and a point of discussion.........what's this BS about lesson plans at public schools?

I've been here 18 months now. The first semester the school never said anything about lessons plans. That's the way I remember it. The second semester I think they did(i.e. Korean go-between teacher asked me for them) but I didn't do them so she later said she'd just done them for me.

So here now, at the end of my 6 month contract extension here, they asked (she asked) me for lesson plans for what I'd done this semester.

I'm thinking..........oh great! This whole idea of trying to plan what goes on in these classroom circuses here strikes me as a big joke.

What the hell do they think we try to do in the class times we have? Discuss quantum phisics or Baroque music history? the idea of trying to make lesson plans for 17 year old kids who've been studying English supposedly for at least 3 years but can't even answer a simpler question like, "Where are you going?" is absolutely ridiculous to me.

What a waste of time! Some edu-crat wants a stack of papers to justify his/her job even though their lessons plans obviously do little good as evidenced by the sorry state of most of these kid's English proficiency.

I'm guess I'm going to have to take the general topics I remember that I taught from (www.esl-library.com) and fabricate some bullshit lesson plan to go with it, right?

In my mind, I was hired to talk and try to get the students to talk back......pure and simple. In retrospect, I think I was pretty good at that.

When I first came here, few of the students would raise their hands or answer questions or read or hardly talk at all. I was the first native speaker here so I knew I had a lot of 'ice-breaking' to do and I think I've accomplished that.

The school never even suggested I follow their textbook although I did ask for and get one. And of course, I had no input into the student grades.

All that, to me, indicates that they really didn't care very much about what I did in class. But I hate useless, beauracratic, bullshit paperwork which is what I think lesson plans are.

Are lesson plans something other public high school teachers generally have to do?

Regards,
Art

[nomad-ish]

i'm at a middle school and i have to hand them in afterwards, except this year, my passive-aggressive, annoying, hyperactive co-teacher is making a portfolio of my stuff and telling me the exact format my lesson plans should be in (they're already done and i don't intend to change them for her)

[Cerriowen]

I always have done a lesson plan.

They just started asking for them about 1 month ago though.

It makes the lesson go much smoother.

[espoir]

Ihave to create 5 lesson plans every 2 weeks. It is a pain in the ass because I never go by my lesson plan. I use it only as a rough copy because I will always have to maodify the lesson according to the level of the students in the particular class. But at the end of the year they create a book of all my lesson plans, so I do have to make them all nice, neat and easy to read.

[icnelly]

[Jeff's Cigarettes]

Great avatar there, Espoir....surf Dave's much at work?

[jadarite]

You should do lesson planning for yourself. Doing them for the school is crapola. So, write out what you want to teach and submit that.

I have done my planning online, so the school can look at it whenever they want. Sometimes, I update lesson plans after class so I can use them again with another class (with improvements).

Then, when asked, I just say "Don't you have the address? If not, here it is." It's become a non-issue, but at first they were asking for lesson plans.

[branchsnapper]

Yes, if Espoir could "maodify" the avatar it would be good - the Great Helmsman himself would at least be better than that.

I am asked to do plan only when it is not the regular morning classes, but it is still a pain. An experienced teacher, I think, usually makes a plan which would be a few rough notes, not something full of academic waffle that you could actually submit.

[Ukon]

I had to do them for the first few weeks, but after that they stopped asking me for them....I had a funny feeling they'd pull something similar and ask me for 3 months of lesson plans...

[I_Am_The_Kiwi]

I made lesson plans when i first started in my HS simply for myself so I could keep track of what was going on. These days I dont make them, and simply prepare the materials. No one asks to look at my lessons and no one comes to my classes (most of the time)

I have zero input on grades, though do get to write some exam Qs and check the teachers Qs also.

If i had to write lesson plans for the K teacher to read they would take me longer, because rather than notes etc for myself I would have to write down soo much more info and in a very style to how I'm used to, and in a way that they can read and understand it.

The point of the plans is to help you think about what you are going to teach, aims of the lessons and timing.
These days I can just do it in my head so I dont use em any more.

[Rusty Shackleford]

School inspectors are here next week so just spent the morning typing them up. Luckily there is a teachers' copy of the text book so that helped me out.

Co-teacher just said they in the wrong format. I told her the content was more important and she left me alone. I hope she doesn't read them.

[mnhnhyouh]

I made tons of lesson plans while I was doing my teaching degree, and almost none since. Sometimes I have a couple of points written on a scrap of paper to make sure I covered some easy to forget points.

Here in a public high school I have never been asked for any, and have not made any either. I teach the same lesson 15 times, by Tuesday it is as perfect as I can make it, and any changes I make after that are to keep me entertained, or to adjust the level for the different classes.

h

[BS.Dos.]

I'm at a private academic HS and never get asked for lesson plans. My first semester, fresh of the Cert. TESOL bat, I was pulling lesson plans out of my ass about 5 times per day. I soon wised up to the fact that it's just too much extra work and haven't produced one for well over a year now. I do have to produce 10 lessons plans each semester for my CA classes at my MS though, but this is puerly so that I can get paid for them and they don't expect anything too elaborate. I think they just like hard copies in case the education district people decide to take a look at them.

[wanderingsalsero]

I feel like most everybody else does....i.e. ..........

Lessons ought to be mostly, or just, for my own benefit. I agree with that. I can understand that the regular korean teachers maybe can use lesson plans because they're teaching grammer and structures. But it just seem useless for us to have them because there's such a big difference between the student's conversational ability and their reading and writing ability.

I thinks it's a total waste of time to have a lesson plan for classes on 'hello......where are you from?' and similar basic stuff like most of these kids need practice on. Such a basic task just doesn't require a lesson plan. That's why I said that I initially determined that my primary task was to get the kids to use what they'd already been exposed to in the book.

Most of us over here are not traditionally certified and/or experienced teachers. I mean, we may or may not have teaching degrees (although my undergrad degree is in music education) and we may or may not have actual teaching experience (although I do have a lot of experience in sales training).

When my Korean gal asked me for lessons plans for everything I'd done so far this semester I initially tried to ignore it hoping it would be forgotten. But no such luck. Ok, well.....yeah. I'll do something.

So I gave her a list of my topics and I actually said on the document I prepared that my total and only objective was to get the kids to talk. In my mind that should have been clear and adequate information to anyone who genuienly only wanted to know what I was doing.

But apparently they wanted something more akin to these dumb-ass lesson plans with no connection to reality that the Korean teachers do for the demo classes we (have to) do. Those are the lesson plans I didn't want to have to do.

I hate being told to do something that's (a) totally useless and (b) I don't know how to do anyway. It reminds me of the time my mother insisted I learn how to clean a fish and she finally let me come in after I'd stood outside in the backyard all afternoon and into the evening with a hacked, battered, and bloody dead fish on the picnic table we had out there.

I still think the primary reason the 'administration' asks foreign teachers to do something like this is nothing more than retribution for, in their minds, making too much money for doing too little. It shouldn't be part of our 'job description'. If they want to know what we're doing they should get their butt into the classrooms and find out for themselves.

Of course, in the majority of cases I'm sure they already know what we're doing anyway. Like I said in my initial post, I see zero purpose in a retrospective document describing something that they didn't care enough to tell me how to do or to have any input on grading anyway.

I already know that my Korean teachers think I'm doing a good job in my classes. They've told so. And they've told me that the kids who are trying to learn really like me and my classes.

I suppose the reality of 'the job politics', and especially since there's most always a language barrier between 'us' and 'them' anyway, is to do some sort of lesson plan as I go along. And keep it just in case. I'll be doing that at my next school. It just chaps my rear end to waste time like that.

Most, not all, teachers are all wrapped up, even back in the states, on 'stuff' just to look busy and justify their pay. They're not allowed, and maybe not really even 'able', to do any real teaching in many cases because they don't have enough authority over the students.

I wish I had these kids for more time. If I did, sure, I wouldn't mind putting more time into lesson plans.

That's what I know about that.......!

Art

[icnelly]