Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Robot_Teacher]

I won't stand for my shoes to be intentionally hid from me and then seeing a Korean teacher bring them out from someplace in the school in just 1 minute after I spent 10 minutes searching this tiny school for them. This is sorta a more complex situation than simply a case of misplaced shoes so please bear with me on this one.

This caused me to miss a 5 O' clock bus that comes only every 2 hours, but I managed to get a ride out of them after I had a serious talk with the Korean teacher who speaks good English. I demanded the guilty student be found out, I'm going to mass punish by being super hard on them to force them to fess up, and then when the shoe gamer is identified, they must apologize to me, his/her mother or grandmother must visit the school for a meeting and then it's over as if it never happened so we can continue on. She didn't agree to my demands, but replied with, "Oh you must understand Korean culture, we are not hating on you, we are very sorry this kind of thing happened, we have a mental case somewhere in our school." I was like, "Mental cases are everywhere, it's not for you to apologize about, the student needs to be found out to apologize to me, and mental case or not, there's no excuse for this." She says, "Oh, that's simply not true it happening all over Korea, this only happens at our school and it is simply one mental case student and the students don't know those are your shoes." I reply, "Of course they know my shoes as they see me wearing the only big brown shoes that were sitting there and I ride the bus with our students wearing the same shoes when they go to hagwon after school in town." She points at a pair of tiny mens shoes and asks, "Are these your shoes?" I reply, "Nope, you know those are the maintenance ajoshi shoes which are much smaller than mine, so why do you ask?" A Korean teacher standing there runs into the school and comes out just 1 minute later with my shoes. I ask, "Where did you find my shoes?" They both dodged my question.

The Korean teachers wouldn't answer where he found them after I asked 5 times in a row, but only showing emotional body language signs of covering up something they knew. This leads me to believe they orchestrated this to pit me against the students to make me out the bad guy. Why I don't know. She is a super sweet behaving woman at all times who even lived in America for a year and went to uni in Seoul, but I'm going to be just indifferent and hard to work with until she fesses up. I'm going to be sure she feels uncomfortable come Friday by asking her if she found the culprit and when she says no, I will ask her if she had anything to do with the hiding of my shoes and what else she has up her sleeve. I caught a 2 face lier in the act today who thinks I'm not smart enough to recognize it's simply not a student with a mental case, it's a Korean teacher with a mental case. It's the 2 faced teacher I'm talking with who is a mental case in hiding behind an image of being smart, competent, and good looking. Smart and good looking she is, but not competent as she's disorganized, fails to plan for anything, fails to communicate what should be told such as changes, and then plays this shoe game on me. You can bet the lies will sparkle through her pearly whites as she dodges the issue come Friday, becuase I'm going to fight this battle as I'm angry.

I'm EPIK and this one of my schools I go to 2 days a week which is a tiny elementary school in the rural is poorly managed with badly misbehaved out of control students who just act negative and disrespectful as they seem to be bored and unhappy. I try to be nice to them as in not expecting too much due to being disadvantaged country kids, entertain them, sing songs, play games, and even help them understand by translating and using English/Korean dictionaries, but their Korean teacher just says on many occasions, "Our students can't understand you, becuase they're Korean and you're foreigner." I say, "They're low level English due to being country kids and need to build vocabulary and I'm addressing this issue by using Babelfish translation and dictionaries in class which works, but it will take years and they are at a disadvantage by being stuck at their grandparents in the country. They are also very unhappy about that. "

Since last Friday, the students drastically changed and can't stop talking, nor listen, show disrespect, completely insubordinate, won't take a lesson, can't decide on teams for a game, nor let me form teams as they're divided individuals fighting each other now, and just try to read library comic books as much as possible and then drawing things like death, war, and scribbles. This morning one drew a man with a blood tear standing on top of a cliff, another man at the bottom with red ink all over, and a missile in the background.

I'd say Korea is failing these kids by not educating and emotionally supporting them surrounding sensitive issues. I don't talk about such issues as this is not my home country and it's the Korean teachers and parents responsibility to coach these kids, but the Koreans try to ignore the facts of life instead of addressing these issues. They're only cutting their own throats in the process.

Since this school is out of control, can I refuse to continue teaching these students until I get a true answer and an apology as well as emotional support counseling for the students? I can't provide them the critically needed counseling which I'm going to broach with their teachers next time. I'm going to communicate these issues, not only in English, but translated into Hangul on paper to the teachers, office staff, and principal come Friday. They can kiss my butt if they don't like me exposing the negatives, but it needs to be addressed; not ignored. I'm also offended which fuels the fire.

[chris_J2]

I'd invest in a few good padlocks, & get a spare key cut too. Buy some screws also, if need be. All of the lockers (a misnomer) for footwear in Public Schools I've worked at, are wooden, so adding a bolt/screws shouldn't be a problem.

Another option is to put your shoes in the compartment of your schools coteacher. Students & staff know where the coteachers slippers/ shoes are, & rarely (if ever), open their (unlocked) compartment. I've sent you a pm.

[kiknkorea]

[tenchu77491]

An elementary kid that drew a political cartoon! Should have a website designed for that kind of thing.

I also hear he didn't kill himself, it was murder stay tuned for the next episode.

[ChopChaeJoe]

OP, you need to turn it down to about a 2. Posting rants here won't solve your problems. A change in attitude might. You remind me of the teacher the Breakfast Club movie. Just relax. Who knows, maybe you'll find the perp. But viewing everyone in the worst possible light never solved anything.

[some waygug-in]

I had this problem the first year I was here. I initially felt like you do, but decided it was best not to start accusing people. I talked to my co-teacher about it and it took a few days to figure out. Finally it was determined that it was one of the gr6 students who was taking my shoes.

He came and apologized to me with the excuse that he thought the "sandals" were just old ones left at school for anyone to use.

About a month later an order came down saying we all had to put our shoes into lockers across the lobby. After that, I never had the problem happen again.

Good luck.

[gazz]

You should calm down you know. It isn't good for your heart!

1. Take a chill pill - so some kid stole/moved your shoes. You got a lift, and didn't have to wait another 2 hrs for a bus! You sound like a very serious, over the top sort of guy.

The kids do not need any kind of 'help' just because they are drawing pictures of death ect. They are just drawing the events of the past few days. Even if these events hadn't happened I would class it as normal for an elem (esp boy) to be drawing pictures of tanks, death, girls having their hair pulled ect.

2. Why are you letting the kids read mags for your lessons. YOU should be teaching them English and YOU should be controling them!!!!

To assume control you do not have to shout. There are so many different ways of approaching this matter, most of which can be found over the internet.

3. You signed a contract which stated that you would be an English teacher!

So do your job, shut up moaning, relax, enjoy the nice weather and ENJOY the children.

Kids are very good at reading people. If they sense that you are a weak person they will keep tapping away until you crack.

I imagine your body language is very negative, and kids feed off that.

Also you need to motivate them, you can do this again in a million different ways.

Find a game that they like. If they are good they get 5-10 mins at the end to play it. If they are bad no game.

In an ideal world you want the kids to self police themselves. If my groups are noisy/don't listen (its only ever happened 3 times in 9 months )

I just say the name of the game, followed by ' do you want to play?' - well be quiet then please!

Write how long they will be playing it, ie 10 mins. If they talk and don't listen, sit down, look at your watch, shrug your shoulders BUT don't say a word! Let them chatter for up to a minute and then rub off the 10 mins on the board and write 8 minutes.

They will quickly self police themselves then!

If simple thngs like this do not work for you, you really need to leave the country and stop teaching.

Grow some balls!

PS your lucky they didn't crap in one of them!

[TheUrbanMyth]

From now on wear those shoes.

Refuse to take them off as they "might be stolen again"

Let them see how they like that.

Problem solved.

[Xuanzang]

Just wear them and refuse to take them off as the perp could strike again.

[Goku]

Well that sucks.

Being a child rabble rouser myself I can tell you I would have found hiding the FT's shoes a hilarious if not irressitale temptation.

As the old saying goes, "boys will be boys"

But OP, I totally hear where you are coming from. We are foreigners, and even as such, we expect better treatment than they give us. The fact is, if they don't understand what we say, we become a bit of joke.

Look at it this way, imagine if your highschool had a German come to teach. He does not speak any English.

Everytime he demands somethign he would sound like "ACKT un tun mich livan haven...." etc etc...

You have no idea what he's saying. You can only catch 1 or 2 words there.

Well suffice it to say I'd be hiding more than just his shoes. In highschool I would have a 4 year long field day with the stuff we could pull on him. I'm starting to wonder why my kids don't pull enough pranks on me. At their age, I would have viewed me as the prime rib of practical jokes (of course in ways not demeaning).

I know, it's annoying because you show up late and it causes a lot of trouble when they hid the shoes. I would be more if not equally PO'ed. But you have to remember, it comes with the territory of being an FT.

Language is literally understanding. Understanding is the fudamental basis of trust and communication. Without it, the kids can't respect you simply because we are teachers. I only respected 3 or 4 out of my 10 teachers. The fact that we cannot tell them things or make them understand us, would make it impossible for them to respect us.

They aren't singling you out, it's an FT situation that we need to find solutions for.

[yeremy]

A couple of years ago in Gyonggi-do at an elementary school there, I went out to the bank one day and came back to find my in-school slippers missing. I went on a quick search and found that a student's mother had taken them to wear while cleaning a classroom. I politely asked for them back and that was that. I used to keep a second back-up pair in my desk's drawer at the same school just in case. There wasn't much I could do about people wearing them after school hours and on the Saturdays when there were classes, but they were usually returned to the same spot. I also figured out where the likely places they would be whenever they were borrowed and that helped, too.

If your main school has a slipper cabinet with your name on it, no one will take your slippers. That was the case last year when I worked in two EPIK high schools. I kept a second pair of slippers in the drawer of my circulating high school last year. No problem there, but I was able to lock the desk when I left.

It's an odd Korean cultural thing. I would never do it, but people here do sometimes.

[Julius]

I confess I had a little laff at your predicament. Mostly because I was the same way 5 years back when I started teaching. Not only did I not like teaching, I sucked, I was angry at the kids, everything.

For me it took a while, but after all this time I can say, I now love teaching, I enjoy the kids, I enjoy the challenges, I enjoy my coworkers, I enjoy my school. A 101 things that would have set me off years ago and gotten me all angry...no longer do. I think the change begins when you actually decide to enjoy the job and commit to doing it well.

[kiknkorea]

[The Gipkik]

See below

[The Gipkik]

Best thing to do is take your ego, we all have one so don't think I'm making an issue of it, crunch it up into a tiny ball and shoot it by catapult into the cosmos. Then never take what anyone says or does to you, unless it is doing physical harm, seriously again unless it makes your road smoother. That includes the students, when you're teaching, whatever the other teachers say; let it bounce off you like a refracting light beam. This action reaction negation will come back to you and bless you, my son...