Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Mr. Pink]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[PatrickGHBusan]

OK Janta since you decided to keep the insults going, I will give you one last response...

[theironyrunsdeep]

I just have to give my two cent's worth. My good friend directed me to this thread and I decided to get in with the boys and girls in some fun (NOT). What's with all the cut-throat comments? Holy Molly! Geesh!!
Hey Janta! Or is it Junta? I would suggest that you take a more diplomatic approach. All guns blaring is not the way to go dude. I'm damned sure there are many who agree with you but the hard-line approach is scaring people away man. You seem to be making a lot of enemies.
Chill out dude! Take a chill pill. OK!
PatrickGHBusan! We all know marrying a Korean and getting an F5 visa is the way to go in Korea. Sleeping your way up the ladder is a very admirable thing to do. It's funny how men do it much better than women. It's ironic how you still end up going back to Canada despite all the opportunities "you have created for yourself" (by marrying a Korean). OK! NOT!!! You are truly the poster-boy for a noble cause dude. Still, you seem to forget that only a few have the desire to marry Korean and all those that don't keep on running into brick walls in any attempt to scale the walls and climb the ladders. That's just the way the chips fall no matter how you throw them.
Still, even my friend who married a Korean gets dirty looks for spoiling the Korean woman he's with. Then again. It's not as bad as being called a dirty *beep* just the way his wife is called from time to time while in public with her foreign man.
Don't get me wrong. I love Korea. I love what it has to offer but it's not a place for the long run. The pay is allrite for a single guy like me, but couldn't see myself living on it with such high prices on the long haul. But seeing PatrickGHBusan running to the "high-life" in Canada, it makes me wonder if it's even worth marrying a Korean just to climb the ladder to nowhere and still end up going back to where I started or where I would have been in the first place if I hadn't come to Korea.

[Weigookin74]

[PatrickGHBusan]

Sorry but teaching skills and classroom management skills will be useful to a teacher anywhere he or she works....

Those are tranferable skills with adaptation.

[theironyrunsdeep]

I did some digging and had me some success. The article is still available through ERIC.

Here it is boys and girls:


The "Foreign English Teacher": A Necessary "Danger" in South Korea

by: Paul Z. Jambor

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/recordDetails.jsp;jsessionid=6Ljfrt8ULwffjBV47GyFLA__.ericsrv004?searchtype=keyword&pageSize=10&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=jambor&eric_displayStartCount=1&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=kw&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&objectId=0900019b8042b7ed&accno=ED511524&_nfls=false

[stephorama]

[stephorama]

[T-J]

[stephorama]

[Weigookin74]

[stephorama]

I took off my rose colored glasses years ago.
#1 I will avoid middle school or high school as much as possible.
My training & experience in Early elementary is on purpose - hormonal teens and pre-teens just aren't my thing.

#2 I have no fantasy about implementing American "ways" of teaching in South Korea. I hope that it is indeed OK to let the kids play, goof off a bit and have fun. In the U.S. working in the barrio in an "at-risk" school, the principal and others would pop in and walk around asking my kindergartners what they are doing, do they know why they are doing it, and ask for these lengthy explanations from 5- and 6- year olds who for the most part didn't know why they heck these people were.

The principal would walk around checking to see that the right things were on the walls and ask for explanations about everything.

When I came into work (I worked afternoon Kinder) - as I walked past each kinder class I could hear one teacher finishing the sentence of the teacher next door. Reading from the teachers guide, so exciting!

I wonder which is worse, having a co-teacher who speaks fluent English in the same room with me all day who is doing nothing but trying not to fall asleep or a Korean co-teacher doing the same thing.

I won't even get into my experience working in a private school where parents generally decide who gets fired and whether or not their child gets disciplined for smacking around other students or trashing school property.

My eyes and my mind are open to new and quite different ideas and ways of doing things.

Comedy and visuals are definitely in my bag of tricks - I'll be sure to bring them.

[take a rest]

Sometimes I lay awake at night, picturing this endless chain of Koreans, from 2MB at the top of the political hierarchy, down to Steve the bro at the bottom. All, or almost all of the Koreans in this chain think that actually dealing with ESLers is beneath them/not their responsibility. Some of them think they're above dealing with us (sort like men doing the dishes), some of them feel inadequate, some of them are terrified, some of them are racist, some of them are just angry at the world/their husbands and have no one else to take it out on, some of them think that it shouldn't be their responsibility anyway, and some of them feel like they already have wayyyy too many things to do (in addition to having a family at home with all sorts of pressures from that), and this just adds more weight that shouldn't be added, pushing them ever further to a breakdown.

It's like this chain of endless buck-passing that finally explodes in the lap of the poor, troubled Korean co-teachers, who have absolutely no time, energy or experience with which to make such decisions. So they end up passing the buck yet again to the recently graduated Steve the bro, hoping for a miracle (but probably just not caring, because they're too busy doubling as school nurse/computer fixer/janitor anyway). It's all they can do!

Meanwhile, Steve the bro spends endless amount of time posting photos of himself totally hammered and shirtless at some foreigner bar, and complaining to his friends that he isn't getting laid enough, perfectly oblivious to the fact that he holds the fate of English in Korea in his hands.

[stevieg4ever]

Not in a million years will Korea compete for professional teachers.

Firstly, what do we mean when we use the words 'professional' and 'qualified'? How can someone be 'qualified' to do the job required in most public schools here? I certainly don't know of any institutes that teach people how to make elephant impressions back home (possibly Parliament but that's another debate). The standard of English in this country is so abysmally poor it would be easier teaching a class of animals. Not only are they ridiculously bad at English their motivation levels are poor as well. Nowhere can train or prepare you for Korea.

As Weigookin74 correctly elucidates upon, Western methods are redundant in this country as they simply do not fit the dynamics of the Korean classroom. So it is arbitrary to assert that professionals would be in a better position than we are because of their background.

Thirdly, in all honesty, professional teachers, that is, good teachers are not always wanted here. Nor are they necessarily successful here either. The same goes for people with ESL credentials and experience. The people who are successful here are either 1) those with the lowest expectations, 2) those that adapt to the culture. Korea doesn't want good teachers it wants 'yes' people who will accept any amount of 5h!t thrown at them and still walk around with a big smile saying 'i love Korea, Dokdo belongs to Korea'. The physical job ie the work is less than half the game here; the real challenges are the everyday obstacles that the wider Korean environment [also read working environment] presents day-in day-out.

E.g. we don't write 'i' like this we write it like that; sorry Australian/Irish/British teacher we speak American English do you mind talking with an American accent; I know it says x in your contract but please do y for us.