Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Kaypea]

I'm having the slightest bit of a challenge controlling students in our public middle school's English Zone.

I'm in charge of the speaking section of the textbook this semester. When I teach in the regular classrooms, which are small and kind of dark, with rows of desks facing me , the students will practice and perform dialogue exercises without much fuss. They will do individual and group tasks without much fuss (design a menu for a restaurant then do a restaurant role play, for example). When this study is finished, I have no problem having them move their desks around so we can do a fun, competitive activity.

But when I teach in the English Zone, it's a different story. Taskwork means goof-off time. Dialogue presentation is difficult, because the room is really big and students' voices get lost in the wind. The only thing that seems to work is competitive games, using the big screen as a focal point.

So, do you guys face similar challenges in the EZ? Is it "ok" to play PPT games each lesson, as long as they're geared toward having each student use the target language at least once..?

To answer my own question, it seems to be. Part of my reluctance to be a games-teacher, I think, was that I was worried that the Korean teachers would think I'm not serious or that they'd resent me because the kids actually enjoy my classes. But, they seem to be happier when the kids are happy and engaged, and I am too... But they seemed fairly happy in the smaller classrooms as well, doing a more traditional study, and I didn't have to pretend to be Quizmaster Flash.

I guess what I'm looking for is real affirmation that I'm headed on the right path as a teacher... that an engaged class is a class well taught. I guess I'm also looking for other stories of frustration with the English Zone, because it is fun sometimes to share our hardships.

The responses I've had so far have been eye-opening, so I've edited this post for clarity so as to facilitate more discussion...

Easy does it. One day at a time.

[Man on Street]

I don't have the slightest clue what on earth you are even referring to

[Nester Noodlemon]

[3DR]

[NYC_Gal]

My school spent 10 million won on the English zone. There's a little "house" with a single sized bed (with the mattress still wrapped in plastic), a 2-chair kitchen set, a cheap sofa, a working sink, and a bunch of cabinets.

The sink's good for washing my fruit and brushing my teeth, but the kids don't use it.

It was a waste of money. The kids get as much out of the room as they would any other.

[AsiaESLbound]

EZ is not thought out well enough and you have some Korean teachers trying to force changes that require more support than is available since they recognize the ill planned short comings. It's a poorly planned disaster wasting public revenues in my opinion, but would be good with better planning, administration, and consideration of necessary capacity to meet both the teachers and students needs. For English education to work, students need more than 1 hour a week with a curriculum that isn't just a listen and repeat with simple vocabulary they already know. It's only 1 hour a week for 5th and 6th grade with 2 hours a week for 3rd and 4th, because we have too darned many classes and students to serve. It's around 14 classes of 30 students composing our grades 3 through 6. This doesn't count the after school program which are small classes without curriculum.

I don't use candy as I have nearly 450 students visiting my English Zone each week. We haven't been doing many games as it's just been Korean teachers directing national curriculum with me being an assistant teacher. It's busy and students usually are 10 minutes early where they are trying to come in when the last class isn't quite out of there yet. I preferred visiting them in their homerooms the few weeks my EF was off limits to be used for some sort of business meetings with a kid free place to do lesson planning. While the EZ is a nicer classroom, the kids see it as a fun place to release their pent up stresses and the Korean teachers tolerate it since they understand where the students are coming from. My lesson planning was only more work for after school classes due to national curriculum assistant teaching being super simple, but is now going to be too much since I have a new EZ co-teacher wishing for new curriculum to split all the classes into high and low levels. My little office room/English library is now going to be a sit on the floor classroom for high level. Since she's rocking the boat by placing all this on me at the last minute using a confrontational attitude, she needs to be walking in the door last Wednesday, her start date, with this new material in hand to put this plan into place. I'll have to check if she even knows about the new national EZ curriculum coming next year and that she should wait for it or I'll just practice conversation and play games with them this semester instead of teaching anything academic like a teacher. It's only going to lead to disappointment since I'll need to be excused from my EZ's busy teaching schedule to take up a curriculum research and development role as to have the time and space to focus on it and being excused from the regular schedule isn't going to happen. I'm probably going to have a real argument this week on my hands. She already tried to tell me on her 1st day, just Wednesday, I wasn't a good teacher and slammed me with this new plan on Friday of me inventing a new duel level curriculum for our EZ. Piss on her. It's going to be conversation and games oriented instead. You just can't do 80 to 200 hours of work when you are teaching 28 hours, lesson planning 10 hours, and talking to people 2 more hours for a total of 40 hours. I don't think she realizes how much time and effort it will require to put a new duel level curriculum into place in a large EZ classroom. I could do it, but the only teaching I could do would be irregularly scheduled experimental classes to test the material. This is like those ridiculous requests many of you get to write books and other large production tasks that are normally done by someone sitting in an office whose job doesn't involve a busy teaching schedule.

The materials used to construct an EZ are cheap quality as one of the wall panels got a big hole punched when a student ran into it to the Korean teachers surprise upon returning from lunch. They have students clean the school during lunch with little to no supervision so they play, fight, and run. There isn't a sink and nor a teachers office, but all 3 computers are in the classrooms. This EZ is one large bright room and one small room; both with leaky ceilings and water damage taking over. It's a new EZ just put into service a year ago, but looks to be only a trend that will be outdated and wore out in only 5 years.

Since it costs a lot of time and money to do this, why not invest in a better curriculum that targets high and low skill level students? Why not have 2 actual classrooms, 2 foreign teachers, and 4 Korean co-teachers trained on how to work with FET's for a large school EZ? This idea of splitting the classes into 2 groups a new co-teacher if mine has is a good one, but needs the curriculum plan and material to be supported as I don't have time to develop it since I'm teaching 28 hours a week and have enough on my plate as it is. How can you ask a full-time EZ foreign teacher to develop a new curriculum in less than a week? Not just one for each grade, but 2 curriculum for each grade level. Don't they have the money to hire people to do an adequate job on EZ curriculum development and administration?

[NYC_Gal]

I teach 2 grades in my older English classroom, and the rest of my classes in the EZ. In the EZ, I have it set up so that there are 4 groups. To motivate, the top group gets a stamp (every month or so they can cash them in for prizes like cooking club, one day no homework, choosing their partner for a week, etc...). To keep the bottom 2 teams from giving up, I make the lowest group sweep the floor. Better than candy, imho.

[CentralCali]

I teach at a boys' middle school and the English Zone was opened with a lot of hype and, you guessed it, expense. On rare occasions, the thing is used. The reason for that is quite simple: there's expensive stuff in there. The boys destroy everything. There's not a classroom in the school without the TV, the air conditioner, the blackboard, or some other equipment damaged or destroyed. There's no way the principal's going to let that happen to the EZ. So, the rare occasions are when there are visitors with status or an after-school class small enough to identify immediately and without argument who broke something.

[Kaypea]

[JBomb]

Mine built one last summer. We got two brand new comps that no one uses. I commandeered one of them for myself because they are better than the school's and got away with it. We got a wack of books that the kids try to mess with during lessons and get yelled at it. We got a bunch of stereos for listening exercises that are never used and are gathering dust along with a ton of EBS DVDs still in the shrink wrap. The books are nice for summer camp, the desks resemble desks rather than kindling, and the room looks like less of a dungeon so it is all right. It still cost the school way too much for appearances sake.

[Kaypea]

I'm making the best of the English Zone today. The computer's broken again, even though they did a major overhaul on it last week. So I've been leading students through their work, using book and worksheet, using listening and speaking (in the normal sense of the words...)

It's kind of nice teaching without the intermediary of the screen/computer. The room is nice, it has big windows... It's not a bad room to teach in, when the technology fails...

[discostu333]

The EZ in my public middle school is a complete disaster too. It's actually the nicest classroom in the school (my school is really dirty and run-down) and the kids see the lessons in it as time off from regular classes. This is made worse by the fact that I have no curriculum to teach.

The desks in the regular classes are 1 kid to a desk. In the English room it used to be 6 to a desk (half the kids faced away from the teacher). I had them change it round but its still 3 to a desk and kids just goof-off / chat with their friends. I insisted this semester that I teach in the regular classroom and lessons are much easier.

There's a big library that never gets used. I came into the room one lunchtime to see kids throwing books around. They'd never dream of doing that in the Korean library. There's a row of 5 computers with English learning software on. Some kids smashed up all the keyboards and mice before a lesson.

Korea makes me laugh, they have these grand dreams about being a big player in Asia, but they still need to get the fundamentals right.

[Seoul'n'Corea]

You are so right. Until Korea fixes the focus of Education away from moronic testing to a more purposeful model, FINAL MARK = 60% in-class task and 40% test. Until this happens the Korean Educational model will continue to slide into a 3rd world ranking. Actually it's almost there.

Actually the EZ in my school has a new touch TV( touch function is kinda crappy) and new 1100W sony Quadraphonic Home theater system. IT interfaces with my personal computer perfectly and I use HD in the classroom. Can't complain there.
I even ended up setting up remote printing and Wireless Internet for the room. I am the rooms tec advisor! When something ain't working the teachers come get me and I fix it.
I don't like desk warming.

[Kaypea]