Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Unposter]

I don't have much confidence that any of you could fix the Korean English Education System. I still have not heard you explain exactly what the problem is.

[D.D.]

I did if you read the post about the guy taking legal action against his uni.

[cruisemonkey]

[sulperman]

Wasn't it Guiliani in New York who completely changed the city by cutting down on petty crime? By cracking down on petty crime like turnstyle-jumping in the subway and graffiti it showed people that they had to pay attention to the laws.

At my school, I would stop students from writing on their desks and the walls, which 80% of them do (maybe make them clean every desk if they do it).

I would have a zero tolerance policy for students sleeping in class. Show them that school is NOT a place for sleeping. Who cares how tired they are, let them sleep at the hagwon and home. School should be seen as the main place for education, not a place to rest while you wait to go play or study after school.

Stop students from going crazy during break times. School is NOT a place to run and wrestle and play baseball in the classroom when the teacher isn't around.

By stopping these kinds of infractions, maybe school would be seen by the students more as a real place to learn and study, and a place to be respected, and if need be, feared.

But beyond all that, I would fire teachers for being too boring and not making an effort to make the class interesting. That should be a major requirement for teachers, regardless of whether the subject matter is something easily made interesting, like Social Studies, or something that might be more difficult, like Math. A dynamic teacher makes for easy learning. A robot reciting from the book in front of the class makes the kids want to sleep in the first place. That would involve firing most of the teachers at my school, but so be it.

[ESL Milk "Everyday]

The biggest problem at my school is the fact that the top students in any given class are light years ahead of the lowest-- it's actually a case of some students being unable to tell an 'h' from an 'n' or a 'b' from a 'd', and some students having perfect pronunciation, holding conversations with me, and being able to write whole paragraphs about their interests, and how their day was.

HOW do you teach a class like this? Especially in a 'saving face' culture???

Apparently, the Korean government says "by using rote memorization and stupid songs, chants, and games ie 'fun'... with no tests and no competition".

But then where's the motivation? English isn't fun. I'M not fun. These are KIDS, after all... they don't listen to me if I'm not playing games, or telling jokes, or bribing them with candy or videos... OR if I give them marks. But again, that's not allowed.

Despite what some of you seem to think, I don't think any teacher can go into a classroom armed only with enthusiasm and the English language and win over a group of kids who maybe understand half of what you're saying, and who know that everything that is happening has no real bearing on their immediate lives whatsoever.

In any class, half of them may listen out of a sense of wanting to 'be a good student' or out of habit, but there's no way to get a class of 25 students of different levels and backgrounds focused unless you have some sort of power over their marks... but this leads to competition and given the fact that the rich kids go to hagwons or private tutors, it isn't fair to the others-- whose fragile little egos may get crushed... in direct contradiction to the 'treat them like babies, angels and/or precious little scalliwags' philosophy.

If I had power over their marks, they would care about what I was saying, they would care about the lessons, the activities, and the tests that I take the time to structure, prepare and deliver... they would listen to me when all I want to do is explain some point to everyone at once, without having to shout over about eight little voices who won't stop talking no matter what, or dole out what should be unnecessary punishments, or bribe them with games and candy.

I honestly don't know how any foreign instructor who actually cares about teaching could survive in this kind of system-- it seems like actually caring and trying to help the kids is discouraged by people in very high places... while not caring and doing a half-assed job means constantly being showered with praise (except of course you're being ridiculed behind your back for being the most shamelessly ridiculous clown in the whole school)...

[D.D.]

[cdninkorea]

[Fishead soup]

I'd like to get Andrew Finch to write both the Middle school and the High school texts books. They are communicative and easy to use. I've tried to get the Korean teachers interested in using them to however they only show an interest in the crappy textbook.

[PatrickGHBusan]

The interesting thing here is that many Teachers back in Canada working in Public Schools would have similar or related complaints about how they feel about their jobs.

I was a HS Teacher in Canada before Korea and at my school many Teachers with permanent positions felt frustrated by the students lack of respect, the inability to discipline kids, the low standards of the school boards and provincial education departments....

It could be something endemic to many Public School systems and something related to a generational shift.

Quite interesting anyway.

[son of coco]

Hmmmm, where do you start

Getting rid of the usless symbolism that seems to dictate everything from who's in charge to the half-arsed attempts at initiating an 'English Language Program' and actually concentrate on developing a system that has some substance to it would be a good start. Stop taking little bits and pieces from systems in other countries "because it works there" and have a look at exactly what they do and why it works.

And then:

1) If you're employing teachers with little experience (or even a CELTA Certificate) recognise this and employ an appropriate orientation program to show them what you require from them in their first week at the school. This means lessons to observe and sitting down with them to discuss what's required not just standing them infront of the class and saying 'go'. It might mean they start a week later but you'll get better quality from the beginning (or at least what your particular school requires).

2) I don't care whether not telling someone something until the last minute is culture or otherwise, get organised and let people know what's happening. It's nice to be able to proclaim you're understanding of other people's cultures, but it's also nice to be able to organise things properly and do a decent job. This is the first time I've seen being totally disorganised described as a 'cultural difference'

3) Just as you can't make a half-hearted attempt at integrating yourself into a culture you also can't be half-hearted in accepting your foreign teacher into the school. They're not teachers when it suits you and 'foreign teacher's' (making holidays etc inapplicable) at other times. If you want us to turn up to events tell us about them (this doesn't mean ringing us from the venue), if you want us to teach in the new night-school program which means we'll be at school from 8:30am - 9pm then give us some holidays and don't apply the contract so rigidly in other areas. That way I won't feel compelled to point out what the contract says about teaching hours.

4) The textbook sucks...our school actually changed texts for the first graders but will have to fall back into line next semester. The dialogues are unnnatural and there are mistakes. I made my own dialogues where appropriate once I got into it as the text is a waste of time.

5) Get rid of the 'Open Classes' unless you're going to make them more realistic. They're a great opportunity to meet your foreign mates, but they serve no purpose other than for foreign teachers to listen to an idealised version of what a lesson should be like with prepared students and then watch the local Education Department brief us on how we should teach CELTA-style with 3 times as many students. We also get ot listen to the 50-60 year old Education Department employees argue against any suggested changes thus realising things will never, ever change (a point my mate actually made at the last Open Lesson..it was wonderful!)

6) Make sure the Korean co-teachers are committed to their part of the bargain before it starts. They are needed to help out with the classes and it is appreciated. If they're annoyed because we come here to teach and get free accommodation and so they come to class and do nothing except sit at the back and play on their mobile phones or catch up on paperwork that's not good enough. I can't be bothered spending half the class 'disciplining' Korean students who only understand they're in trouble when a stick hits them square in the middle of the back.

7) Spend some of the money public schools seem to get each year to do up brand new classrooms on resources. I asked for resources this year when they had money left over and my co-teacher went out and bought 10 'How To Teach English' books. Now that may have been a hint, but it was largely useless anyway. I read one page as I don't have time to read 10 teaching books (or the interest) and I would have appreciated something that would cut down the amount of time spent looking for activities on the internet. If you have a pool of activities you can draw from (cards laminated, boards laminated, box of dice and markers etc etc etc) then you only have to do it once and the lesson's plan themselves from thereon in.

8 Treat us like real teachers: This means inviting us to teacher's meetings (English teachers), keeping us informed of what the student's exam requirements are, asking us for our opinion on things related to English teaching. We might start the year a bit clueless if it's our first time round but we're all trying to learn so we should have something useful to add at some stage. Put the (massive) egos aside and try to develop a decent system.

9) While we're attempting to recognise and deal with the cultural differences here, realise that foreign teachers want to feel motivated at work, not just pointed in the semi-right direction and told to start. This means understanding exactly what it is they are trying to achieve so they know what they are working towards. I get the feeling the reason it's so hard to find out though is because nobody really knows.

I think that's it for the moment:

In one sentence, which probably would have been useful at the start, put substance ahead of style and put something in place that works. Like almost everything here, the English system seems to be almost an after-thought that was thrown together the day before it was implemented after someone was given the word to start it at 4pm.

Time to take a breath.

Funny thing is, like another poster mentioned, I tried my arse off here for the first couple of months attempting to get my head around what was required, how best to teach the students, etc etc. In the end though all I got was a different answer each day and nothing I did in class was good enough. So I stopped worrying about it. I decided it's not worth stressing over something that ultimately seems so disorganised nobody knows what they want so it's impossible to get there.

In the first few months our impression of teaching in Korea is forming pretty quickly, and it's a long way back from an ordinary beginning. Now I feel more comfortable in the classroom, but I have 4 weeks left haha I wouldn't be coming back here to deal with the lack of common sense and so on if I didn't have a local girlfriend. As it is, with the job market the way it is I may not have that much of a choice if something doesn't come up anyway.

Oh and

10) Don't just survey the Korean teachers about the teaching program in public schools, it makes us foreign teachers think what we do here is unimportant and that our thoughts don't matter

11) Test the students on at least some of the subject matter from the conversation class. If you sit down and talk about the lesson together beforehand then at least some of the material shoudl be testable. We do it at our school and the students actually listen in class. If only they weren't told beforehand which stuff will be in the exam so they'd think they had to listen in every class.

I realise some of these points are teacher management issues, and the Korean teachers can't be expected to pander to the needs of the Foreign teacher. It's be nice if we could work more effectively together though.

[zipper]

[son of coco]

[ESL Milk "Everyday]

[son of coco]

[PatrickGHBusan]

A lot of interesting comments here and some intriguing suggestions as well.

However I wonder why in most of the cases here all the changes seem to be required of Korean staff and administration or even parents and students. A lot of things are being asked for with regards to treatment of foreign teachers (a lof of it good stuff). But very little is asked of the foreign staff and of what they can contribute as Teachers or co-teachers.

You know, teaching often puts Teachers in situations where they have insufficient resources to do what they want or insufficient support from admin...yet Teachers can still do their best and force change through professionalism...

The cultural divide here requires that both participants cross part of the bridge. Not only Koreans. In fact, in al logic, Foreign staff should do most of the adaptation and most of the learning to understand how things work...this is Korea afterall....

My two cents.

Just my two cents.