Korean Job Discussion Forums

jkelly80 · Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Location: you boys like mexico?

Long article, I'm not going to quote it right now, but appears promising:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell

Ekaia · Joined: 31 Oct 2008 Location: Seoul

Malcom Gladwell is cool.
I'll read this article and leave a comment soon.
Thanks for the link. Good stuff!

SeoulMan6 · Joined: 27 Jul 2005 Location: Gangwon-do

Good article! I love the idea of an apprenticeship system.

Some quotes:

"After years of worrying about issues like school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design, many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. But there�s a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like."

"He was talking and moving quickly, which Pianta said might be interpreted as a bad thing, because this was trigonometry. It wasn�t easy material. But his energy seemed to infect the class. And all the time he offered the promise of help. If you can�t, we�ll all do it."

"...investigated whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master�s degree. Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom. "

"Kounin called that ability �withitness,� which he defined as �a teacher�s communicating to the children by her actual behavior (rather than by verbally announcing: �I know what�s going on�) that she knows what the children are doing, or has the proverbial �eyes in the back of her head.� � It stands to reason that to be a great teacher you have to have withitness. "

"They suggest that we shouldn�t be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don�t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree�and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start the equivalent of Ed Deutschlander�s training camp. It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated. Kane and Staiger have calculated that, given the enormous differences between the top and the bottom of the profession, you�d probably have to try out four candidates to find one good teacher. That means tenure can�t be routinely awarded, the way it is now. Currently, the salary structure of the teaching profession is highly rigid, and that would also have to change in a world where we want to rate teachers on their actual performance. An apprentice should get apprentice wages."

EzeWong · Joined: 26 Mar 2008 Location: Seoul

I enjoy Malcom Gladwell's book a great deal. They seem to always have this underlying truth that he can eloquate quite well. I read both Tipping Point and Blink.

I wish I could read this article, link is suppressed by my school though. I have a feeling though it's gonna be like his other books.

My only critism is that he offers too much theory and not enough solutions. Even though I'm very hearty into philosophy for me to read a book about how I should be controlling my intial impressions and being aware of them, with no solutions made the book very dissapointing at the end.

For me, that's like saying there is a magical land full of rainbows and candys, how do we get there? Nobody knows...

Hope the article isn't like that.

Ukon · Joined: 29 Jan 2008

We could just simply have two teachers in the class like the public school english classes....cuts down on bad behavior like you wouldn't believe. Laughing

jkelly80 · Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Location: you boys like mexico?

Korussian · Joined: 15 Sep 2007

Fantastic article! Thank you for sharing. I've also read his books and always enjoy his pieces in the New Yorker.

That link is blocked at my school too, but the standard ways to get around that do work well.

Here is a link to the whole article for those of you for whom it would normally be blocked:

http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true

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For explanation & future reference, you can access any blocked site at school through a 3rd party proxy, such as Anonymouse.

A quick way to do this is to type the following into your browser's address bar:

jkelly80 · Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Location: you boys like mexico?

Unfortunately, I don't think Gladwell's solution will be easily applied to Korea, given his emphasis on apprenticeship. Both because of the short term, somewhat mercenary goals of most EFL teachers here, and the Korean hysterical 빨리빨리 business model. But he does poke a huge hole in the "lack of qualified teachers' ruse that the hagwon owners use to mask their shady business practices.

VanIslander · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 5:02 pm Post subject:

jkelly80 · Joined: 13 Jun 2007 Location: you boys like mexico?

I'm not sure he's saying to kill them, but they are a bit too entrenched at present. I'm all for organized labor, but they have to be busted up a little bit every so often.

My dad's previous job was a broker for retirement packages, and he his company had a contract with the Chicago Public Schools. As such, he did most of his dealings with the long term lifers and found them to some of the least professional and lazy teachers he'd ever seen.

One time he met a client (during class!) to talk about her retirement plan. In between shoveling Cheetos into her mouth, she'd pause periodically and scream "you dirty muthaf****s betta shut the f*** or I'll go upside your head" at the students (that's pretty much verbatim), and go back to ignoring them.