Korean Job Discussion Forums

waynehead · Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Location: Jongno

I think mine's pretty ridiculous but I'm sure some of you out there can top it.

It was my first year in Korea, working kindy at a hagwon, which let's just say wasn't for me. The kids more or less liked me, tho, and after a few months of adjusting we got along really well and they started to show some of that amazing progress korean kindies can show.

Anyway there was one mom who we (me and my co-teacher) had always had a problem with. "YJ (her daughter) didn't get enough food, YJ can't see the board from where she's sitting, YJ didn't have a big role in the Christmas play" yadda yadda. The girl was sweet as could be and quite bright but clearly had emotional problems - lots of crying over nothing, even p***ing herself one time. I really cared for her but I pitied her as well.

One day towards the end of my contract we were having a spelling test, and I told the students to take out their notebooks and number 1-10. YJ's notebook was full, she showed it to me, so I asked her neighbor to rip out a sheet of paper that YJ could use for the test. The test was nothing important of course, just a little spelling practice/time wasting.

Well later that afternoon after kindy was finished my co-teacher got a call from YJ's mom, who was LIVID. She couldn't believe that, instead of going down the hall to the equipment room to fetch a new notebook for YJ to use, I had asked her precious daughter to use a scrap piece of paper from a neighbor. I was a horrible person who clearly hated her daughter and had no respect for her at all. She was going to pull YJ out of the school and tell all the other mommies how disrespectful I'd been, etc etc.

My co-teacher was on the phone with her for hours, at first calmly trying to talk the woman down off her ledge. Eventually she (my CT) snapped and started cussing the woman out (YJ's mom had been insulting/cursing her for most of the conversation, which had as I said lasted hours). She then slammed down the phone and collapsed in tears. I never got the full story of what the mom had said, but I'm sure a lot of it was pretty awful.

Eventually YJ's mom chillaxed and YJ finished out the year at my hagwon.

Any other crazy mom stories out there?

Ilsanman · Joined: 15 Aug 2003 Location: Bucheon, Korea

That one some other poster said a while back. Some woman had her child shitting into a cup in Popeye's.

Sadebugo1 · Joined: 11 May 2003

I was once approached by a Korean mom in a McDonald's. My girlfriend and I were having lunch together, but the mom came up dragging her five year old by the arm. Without asking, she plopped him down in a chair beside us and ordered us to "talk to him in English." No preface to this at all. I actually did talk to the child a little because he looked horrified and I felt sorry for him even though his mother was socially inept to say the least.

Sadebugo
http://travldawrld.blogspot.com/

OneWayTraffic · Joined: 14 Mar 2005

That last one I let my wife handle. If they speak English well I ask them if it's polite in Korea to bother stranges like that.

My wife could give an earful of stories about people trying to befriend her or our daughter as a conduit to native English. It desn't work. The kids want to play with my daughter, of course in Korean and I interact pretty much as I would with my kid's friends back home.

joshuahirtle27 · Joined: 23 Mar 2008

I had a mom pull her kid from my school cause I refused to reward him for doing nothing in class.

Xuanzang · Joined: 10 Apr 2007 Location: Sadang

I`ve seen a toddler steering a car in his mom�s lap when she was making a right out of Wolgok Hyundai. Little prince will probably grow up with a golden steering wheel.

Big Mac · Joined: 17 Sep 2005

One mom wanted to pull her kid out of the school because she thought the school had lied to her when they said I was Canadian.

I can't remember what word tipped her off (I think it was "colour.") Anyways, I wrote it on a report card and she looked it up in a dictionary, where it said that it was the British spelling.

She said that she didn't want her child taught by a British teacher and was going to pull her kid out of the school. They spent forever trying to explain to her that we use British spelling in Canada, and that our accent is very similar to the American accent. She finally calmed down.

I still insist on using the Canadian spelling, despite being told again and again by Koreans that I must do it the American way. If I ever work in the United States (which will NEVER happen), I'll change the way I spell. But until then, I just can't bring myself to cave to the imperialists.

jvalmer · Joined: 06 Jun 2003

Donald Frost · Joined: 20 Oct 2008

joshuahirtle27 · Joined: 23 Mar 2008

movybuf · Joined: 01 Jan 2007 Location: Mokdong

I've got two stories, one is my own the other is from my wife.

1)
For a Kindy graduation every class was supposed to do some type of drama to perform for the mothers. I looked around on the internet to find a script that had the right number of students, but I couldn't find anything. So, I just decided to adapt one I had found that had animal characters in it. Fun for the kids, right? So, that day some of the moms complained because they didn't want their children to play animals. OK, fine. So, I adapted a different script that had human characters, some story about a king, queen, prince and princess with some other characters, I can't remember exactly. So, some moms called again and said that all of the girls had to be princesses. So I had to rewrite this stupid thing again so all of the girls could be princesses.

After the graduation every mom dropped the school because they were so unhappy.

2) My wife (shes Korean) has a missing student so she leaves class to tell the secretary at the front desk to call the mom. After the class the secretary says that the mom would like to speak to my wife. So my wife calls to talk to her. The mom begins to yell at my wife because she didn't call her. My wife explains that she couldn't call her because she had a class full of students sitting there. So the mom says something like, "so you care about the other students, but not my son!" The mom goes on and on like this for a while. Then the mom suddenly stops and says "I'm sorry" and hangs up.

These kinds of stories make me happy I'm not a Korean teacher here. They are also what drove my wife away from working in hagwons.

Big Mac · Joined: 17 Sep 2005

the_beaver · Joined: 15 Jan 2003

cdninkorea · Joined: 27 Jan 2006 Location: Seoul

Several years ago, at my first job in Korea, I worked at a kindergarten hagwon in Apgujeong. You probably know the type: super rich parents with moms that have nothing else to do but exercise, shop, have coffee and brunch with their friends, and micromanage every last detail of their children's education.

I was in Korea for about two weeks, no teaching experience, left alone in charge of a class of twenty kindie students. One student pipes up that she's thirsty. So I get her cup, pour her some water from the sink, give it to her and go back to teaching.

Well, you would have thought I threatened to throw her out a window with the reaction of my manager. The mother called, apparently livid that I "had given my daughter tap water!?" My manager freaked out at me, expecting me to know that Koreans don't drink tap water after such a short time in Korea, and explaining that "these people are really rich! You can't do that!"

I lasted six months at that job before getting fired. And it was the best thing that's ever happened to me in my teaching career.

Scotticus · Joined: 18 Mar 2007