Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Bruce W Sims]

[ddeubel]

Bruce,

Great thoughts - great post!

DD

[Charlie Bourque]

I think there needs to be a distinction between the various teaching positions available in South Korea, and its correlation [or lack thereof] to the advertized required credentials.

EPIK/SMOE/GEPIK are not actually hiring teachers. They want "teaching assistants" -- recent graduates with native-like fluency in English -- so they can be used as language models for the students. They might advertize that a B.A. in Eng./Lin./SLT would be an asset, but truthfully it doesn't matter what degree you have, so long as your accent is authentic sounding. And yes, having QTS/PGDE/B.Ed. is also considered an asset; however, it's very unlikely that public schools would hire someone over 35 with said qualifications because they want someone the kids can relate to and that faculty can push around. It's about hierarchy and face; they don't think it's appropriate for a 60 year old American K-12 teacher to be making KRW2.5m/month, having no real teaching responsibilites, and being subordinate to a younger Korean teacher.

Hagwons aren't hiring teachers either; they need someone with a pulse and a fuckload of patience to babysit the kids and entertain the adults. Furthermore, they would rather hire someone who is inexperienced because that would also make them more naive and easy to control. If they had to chose between a recent graduate, or a grizzled old teacher that's been around the industry for 20+ years and know all the little tricks hagwon owners like to pull, rest assured they will take the path of least resistance. A recently graduated 21-year old female with All-American good looks is a better pick for both public schools and hagwons, simply because she matches the position's minimum qualifications required, which means they can also pay her the minimum salary required.

In regards to the question of "what is considered qualified?", there is a huge difference between being qualified to teach K-12 and being qualified to teach second languages. They are completely unrelated to each other. Second Language Teaching is so vast and complex that is a field requiring its own set of qualifications and experience.

To better illustrate my point, I propose the following thought experiment:

To gain "Qualified Teacher Status" in Canada most provinces require teachers to have a 4-year undergraduate degree in at least one teachable subject matter [mathematics, biology, human kinetics [P.E.], French, English, chemistry, etc] as well as having to complete a 1-year "teacher's college", also known as a B.Ed. That being said, you would never ask someone with an undergrad in physics to teach an English Lit. class, much like you wouldn't ask someone with an unrelated degree to teach English as a Second Language. Unfortunately, as it stands, very few universities offer a degree related to SLT.

People need to realize that SLT is it's own field of study, independant from standard K-12 subjects, and requires it's own set of qualifications. At the moment, the only real qualifications that matter are the ones that are specifically SLT-related, such as on-the-job experience and formal training in SLT from an accredited university.

[Bruce W Sims]

BINGO!!!! ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN' RIGHT!!!!!

You knocked that one outta the park, CB!!!

I have been hinting around about this since I cam on-board here and the message that I get flamed with is that "you have no idea what you are talking about; things are different in Korea; just you wait and see when you come".

The fact is that the days of the "Wild, Wild West" are over and there are folks who simply don't get that. The recent thread about changes in GEPIK in Korea, modifications of programs in Japan, increasing guidelines in qualifications for European and Persian Gulf placement all point to the same thing. The people who advertise for TEACHERS really really want TEACHERS.....Educators.....professionals. They will pay for TEACHERS, but then expect that what they are hiring are really TEACHERS.

Just in the short time I have been looking at Korea I have seen an increasing number of communications about how administrators and agencies want measurable changes in student performance. From what I can tell the sticking point is that the "old guard teachers" seem to hold that the standards which rely heavily on grammar and written communication are sufficient. The "new guard" seems to believe that there should likewise be standardized testing for conversant English. The cutting edge is how to formulate performance standards. There was even a thread here about exactly that subject. Now......to understand more about this I WILL have to come to Korea----but THIS is the sort of cutting-edge Educations that gets my juices going. I would LOVE to get in on this ground-floor research since it has implications for ESL all around the World!!

Great post, CB.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[Charlie Bourque]

[withnail]

Good discussion.

There's another point to be made about the difficulty in achieving communicative competence - especially in Korea. It is a point that a lot of hard working uni teachers will not like to admit and it concerns the issue of motivation.

By the time Korean students get through the suneung test and get into their university of choice (or not, as the case may be), the need for English largely evaporates. Doesn't often matter how accomplished a teacher you are or how effective you try to be - they now want, more than ever, an entertainer, a raconteur, a stand-up comic but essentially a dispenser of good grades. The motivation that takes over at university is the need to get a good grade for the sake of their final transcript or to maintain a scholarship.

Nobody wants a C+ blotting their copybook and how can we really prove that Hee Jin was better than Su Min if we allowed both to relax, have fun and try to activate all those years of input.

The kind of classroom methods best suited to fostering confidence in speech, i.e. involving small groups, also necessarily involve a teacher's subjective assessment and are not well tolerated and lead to grade disputes. It mostly comes down to who "seemed" to making the most effort in the criteria of "classroom participation". Performances in oral skits, plays etc are very similar.

If only univerities would experiment with self/peer assessment and make English exempt from the normal "curve" requirements, we might get somewhere.

The whole raison d'etre of "English Fever" in Korea which begins with Tiger Mothers and their kids in the elementary years is really aimed at success in the "Exam hell" of High School seniors i.e. the English component of this test.

Parents and students are almost entirely instrumentally motivated so once this test is over, the decline of real endeavour in so-called "Freshman English" courses in universities is stunning.

I'd say this is true for about 90% of students. There are of course those who actually wish to major in English, improve TOEIC/TOEFL scores etc but this decline in motivation and interest is our dirty little secret because to advertise the fact too much would be like turkeys voting for an early Christmas...

[Bruce W Sims]

We're on a roll, guys.....!

The fact is W N, what you report is exactly the message I got about 4 years ago when I first shared my dream of going to Korea to teach.

As you said, what I heard at the time was it was essentially parents pushing for their kids to do well on the Entrance Exams and after that there was a huge drop in the student's investment in scholastics.

I also concur with the idea of people not wanting to "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs", as it were. There is also the attitude in ESL that "if it works, don't fix it".

On that other point, I'm afraid I have to report a pretty wellknow dynamic. The fact is that when it comes to Education (as a field) there are very few people who will invest themselves in sound research. As a popular poster in my past once stated, "its like pissing in a dark suit: it gives you a warm feeling but nobody notices." Same thing here. One could reasonably develope a gradient of behavioral imperitives for competecy in conversant English. BION its not that hard if one stays exclusively with behavioral definitions. The problem is that it would have to be proven to turn a buck for somebody or it would just be another academic novelty. The story of the originator of SRA Reading Labs would be instrumental in this. Despite the fact that SRA Labs are now considered basic materials for Reading Comprehension, back in the 1950-s nobody could see the point----not with "Dick and Jane" being the mainstay of Reading education. FWIW.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[earthquakez]

Great discussions going on here including from Bruce. I was on my way out of Korea in May to go to another job in another country but I decided to stay because I got a hagwon job that actually uses my experience and skills in the best way possible.

I'm more mellow now about Korea. My take on this whole qualifications debate? I was slagged off in an earlier thread somewhere here for noting that to get a uni job in Korea is a lottery. I was accused of being 'lazy' because I don't have an MA or Phd though I do have two degrees and have taught at companies and higher ed institutions in Japan and Taiwan as well as working at jobs in the UK that many people would like to do.

Until all university teachers in Korea have MAs and Phds in English whether that is language and literature, linguistics or teaching English as a second/foreign language,then I don't see why universities reject applicants such as myself for jobs that require creating a curriculum, teaching young adults, and having the level of English needed for a higher education environment.

My gripe has always been that there are surprisingly high numbers of foreigners teaching English at universities in Korea sans MAs and Phds/higher education institutional employment experience and demonstrable English skills such as editing through previous jobs.

I am happy with my current job and am glad to do it. Re the English teaching assistant notion in Korean public/private schools in the education system, mostly education boards and schools as well as the government here have never bothered to be consistent in their demands of what we are supposed to be doing.

English teaching assistants are just that - yet the schools are happy to suck up all the expertise of people such as myself who have cvs that are more than a few cuts above that of the young graduates who are being recruited to work on E-2 visas.

In sucking up this expertise they have it all ways - surprisingly high numbers of NETS have experience teaching by themselves in the school system. I did because supposedly my Korean English teacher co workers were 'too busy' but they were also paid more than double with handsome bonuses etc to do their job. I think they should have been in the room with me if I was simply a teaching 'assistant'.

I think NETS were never going to win - the Korean education system has a contradictory, self serving philosophy that is underpinned by official resentment of non Koreans. Don't have qualifications other than a BA and extra curricular stuff? The K schools and ed board etc moan about lack of qualifications while they employ you.

Have a very good cv/some qualifications/higher qualifications - they still treat you like an assistant all the while demanding you teach by yourself, prepare multiple curricula and endless lessons for what are often disinterested students who if not being actively encouraged to be disinterested by their Korean teachrs, are still tacitly encouraged to be so.

The answer to all of this is leave the public/private schools in the ed system behind. Don't bother with them. You are getting far less vacation for more work teaching large classes, most of whom don't give a damn about all the time you put in. Good hagwons are the way to go.

[Bruce W Sims]

Agreed..... There is a line at which point we stop talking about WHAT qualifications are modified and step into the world of how those qualifactions are valued and used. From what I have read on this forum so far, the Public School system does not value the teacher but seems to want what and how the teacher executes. Otherwise, why would the co-teachers and administration suck-up teaching materials while keeping the individual that produces those materials at an arm's length. One very clear problem is the professional "mixed message".

In advertising, the recruiters and schools indicate that they are wanting "teachers". Upon arrival the candidate is informed that they will be a "co-teacher" or "assistant teacher". Behaviorally it sounds as though in many cases the "assistant teacher" becomes a "substitute teacher". All three of these situations are very different, but seem to be inter-related according to the agenda of the individual school or situation. In fact it roughly breaksdown like this.

A "teacher" is an autonomous individual who is responsible for designing and implementing the course of challenges that the student is going to follow to accomplish their stated goal.

A "co-teacher" is an integrated member of a team whose collegial effort (IE. "tag team approach") allows each member to play to their strength.

A "substitute teacher" is a person whose expertise allows them to carry-forward the designs of the teacher in the regular teacher's absence.

The sense that I get from reports on this forum is that individuals who apply for a position identified as one thing are consistently blind-sided by expectations commonly ascribed to another situation.

Anywhere near the ballpark?

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[silkhighway]

We're arguing a bit about semantics here. Sure, where I live "teaching assistant" means you are neither responsible for preparing nor delivering a lesson. You're basically an in-class tutor, and you only need a 1 or 2 year college program to become a TA.

There's still hierarchy among "teachers". These days, when someone graduates from teachers' college they're automatically licensed as a level 5 teacher, with levels 1-4 either already having been phased out or in the process of being phased out. I think Level 1s haven't been in the system for at least 30 years or more, but they were teachers straight out of high school. No university degree, no college, no teacher training, maybe a 2 or 3 week prep course or something. My mother was a substitute about 15 years ago with nothing more than a BA. Now, all substitute teachers must be qualified for a teachers license at a minimum, despite being glorified babysitters.

And then you can break it down even further within the school boards. Some school boards, they won't hire substitute teachers who are not "qualified" to teach the specialty area. For example if you want to be a substitute in Grade 7 math, you need to have math on your teachers license. If you want to substitute in elementary school, you need to have elementary methodology training and secondary only teachers need not apply. Other school boards are a lot more lenient about this and will hire whoever is available.

Basically what I'm getting at is qualifications differ and they are often arbitrary, even within the same education systems. It comes down to more about supply and demand, and strength of teacher's unions, than it does actual results. However, for students, the person up in front of the class is the "teacher" and it doesn't matter about that person's qualifications or experience.

[silkhighway]

[Bruce W Sims]

I agree with what you are saying both posts, Silk, and there is a special sort of "duck, bob and weave" that goes on around this semantic. At its core is the common commercial theme of "getting the biggerst bang for the buck" and its the same no matter where people educate.

On one hand people want sound education in accordance with sound educational principles and fostered by well-trained and experienced teachers.

OTOH people want things that are "fast, quick and easy".

The Educational system in most countries around the World (most not all) leans towards the latter than the former.

As I see it, this is fine until someone starts asking questions such as they did here in the US some years back: "why can't Johnny read?". This falls in line with similar questions such as "Whay can't Johnny write", "why can't Johnny get a job", "why can't Johnny keep a job" "Why are so many Johnnies on Welfare" etc etc etc.

If you leave it to the agencies and politicians you will see the 2nd Coming of Christ before the committee and study groups published their findings let alone DO anything about it. After that comes the haggling with Unions who don't care about Education as much as they are concerned with employment.

Answer?

The people who are teachers and wish to teach (IE. Produce a measureable improvement in the competencies of their students) begin to connect with the real power behind the students--- Tiger Mom-s, spouses, and corporate leaders. The people who run the schools are not the power; they are the managers (who mistakenly believe they are in control). In this way a group of "tiger mom-s" who find that their children are not being sufficiently educated will do what mom-s everywhere do: vote with their feet. The only difference is that the teachers need to vote along with them.

Now the question becomes "how important is all of this" and if its not that much of a priority what I have just written will be identified as "an interesting thought" and people will go about their business-as-usual.

No harm; no foul.

Best Wishes,

Bruce

[Bruce W Sims]

[silkhighway]

[Bruce W Sims]