Korean Job Discussion Forums

poeticjustice · Joined: 28 Feb 2009

So my school in all their infinite wisdom has built one of those 21st Century English Labs of the Future (tm) doohickies and needed my advice every step of the way.

I recommended books, board games, knick knacks and several other things that they took me up on. I had been assuming the whole time that I would be teaching all my classes there and possibly moving there as that is what happened with my friends in other public schools who had English labs built.

So, it was finished on Monday. I asked my whitey wrangler, directly, when I needed to move my stuff and/or when I could start teaching there. He replied: "oh, you're not going to be using it. Its for open classes and special English activities. We might let you use it for your Winter Camp."

WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTT?

Let me get this straight... $50k English classroom with state-of-the-art everything is not to be used by the Native Speaker English Teacher? Why the [Mod Edit] not?

I've been complaining about the classrooms on and off, directly and indirectly throughout the entire duration of my one and a half years at this school. Half the TVs break frequently and half are a pain in the ass to set up (I use PPTs religiously), I have to move to 16 different classrooms every week which is more than any other teacher in the school, the student's homerooms are sometimes so messy that it takes me five minutes to get to the podium and another five minutes to dig up all the TV cables to find out which ones work, which ones don't and whether or not I have to just give up and use the chalkboard.

Oh yeah and my co-teachers are allowed to reserve time in it. The same co-teachers who only take the textbook and nothing else to their classes. You know, the ones who don't know what YouTube is or that you can find media on the internet to make your classes more interesting? Yeah, those ones. They get to use it and I don't. Its a media lab FFS.

I'm not sure how much or how often but they all got a copy of the key and I didn't.

This has been a kick in the balls. I know my school likes me because they never criticize me and they let me renew, so I think this might be a consequence of some jerkoff with one too many paperweights on his desk and not a consequence of me putting my giant whitey nose in all the wrong places.

Anyone else in this boat?

blonde researcher · Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:23 pm Post subject:

and...... you are very soon going to find that another new foreigner has been appointed by the school to work the English program in this new classroom.
This is exactly what has been happening in many other English theme rooms built in public schools all over Korea.
The English theme rooms are not part of the EPIK program. They are built from a special funding from another 'giant pot of funds'.
Your school principal is responsible for advertising for, and then hiring the new foreign teacher for working in this room, and he is not allowed to be placing his presently funded EPIK GET teacher there.

Your name is very applicable in this situation..... 'poetic justice'?

JJJ · Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Location: Seoul

We also have one of the new $50K "Engrish Looms". I can only use it for my afterschool classes and camps.

Yeah, it kinda bites but I gave up worrying about stuff like this a long time ago. Nothing I can do. I just do my best and go home when the clock hits 4:30.

It's just for show when the supervisors come for a visit.

Rusty Shackleford · Joined: 08 May 2008

matthews_world · Joined: 15 Feb 2003

Yep, they want to keep it clean and sparkly and show it off in special occaissons.

Unfortuneatly you got the wrong end of the stick.

I'm happy to be teaching all of my elementary classes in mine. Students clean afterwards but I do a lot of it, too as I'm generally like that anyway. Mine's been in operation since summer camp.

Unfortunately, the school spent all of the money on decor and furnishings and we have to wait until next year for the new budget. I have bought a few things out of my pocket.

TheMeerkatLover · Joined: 26 Mar 2009

I use the new $50k English lab daily, in fact I have all my classes there and they are regular classes.

Razz

(do I win?)

Meerkat

xCustomx · Joined: 06 Jan 2006

Mine is under construction and I should be able to teach all of my classes in there by the end of the month. The touch screen monitor and whiteboard cost $20k! I told them to just get a huge 52" TV and spend the rest of the money on books, dvds, cds, magazine and newspaper subscriptions, games, flashcards, computer software, etc. but they MUST have the touch screen. I can see how the touch screen might be useful, but IMO it's a big waste of money and is used more for show than function

DWAEJIMORIGUKBAP · Joined: 28 May 2009 Location: Electron cloud

sara210 · Joined: 20 Jul 2009

Im on the other side of this. I work an after school programme where i work in the new fantastic spangly "English Centre" in a public school and it has more resources and technology than i could ever want, including a mock Bakery, Resturant, Doctors, and book area, computers etc. However i am the only one who teaches in it from 2-7 every day.

All other times the whole centre is empty, no one else in the school uses it, and indeed it can be booked out for special occasions but no regular classes are held here. So they spent all of this money on the centre and it stays empty from 9- 2 every day when loads of kids could be making use of it.

My friend is also in exactly the same job and her centre is empty from 9-2. Using facilities to their full potential does not seem to be the Korean way.

I guess the post about you getting a new foreign teacher soon is pretty accurate!

andrewchon · Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 7:47 pm Post subject:

OP, it's a blessing in disguise. I have my own teaching room. it's the school's computer room. I don't have classes in it any more because once the kids see computers their eyes light up. GAMES! Teacher! Computer games! They're so distracted by the computers, no monkey dance can get them to do anything.

cruisemonkey

poeticjustice · Joined: 28 Feb 2009

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. If it wasn't for the sorry state of all my other classrooms then I wouldn't mind being the school-trotting English monkey so much. As it is, I really could've used a room... any room, that was clean and had stuff that worked like it was supposed to/was organized.

gillod · Joined: 02 Sep 2009

I teach in one of these fancy rooms. The projector is nice, but every kid having a computer = 40 kids pulling the keys off the keyboards, drawing on the monitors, smashing the mice etc etc. I wish they'd reserved funds for more whiteboard markers

gillod · Joined: 02 Sep 2009

JBomb · Joined: 16 Oct 2008

We just got a big facelift to my Elementard rooms and it pretty shoddy desgin, and most of the stuff we would never use to teach with. One of my co's said exactly what I thought "We don't need this, we already teach best." The other one though seems to think that all the wonderful stuff can subsitute for teaching. Going to be fun!