Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gorf]

I just felt I had to write this down. I talked with my coworkers about it as we walked home and they all felt I was justified in being upset. I'm not here for sympathy or criticism, I just feel like I can organize my thinking better in writing and be more open and honest with myself when talking about it in a public and anonymous setting, such as this one, in front of my peers.

Essentially, today, after 2 months at my job, the school basically did a "pass the buck" for its own failures and planning and put it all on my head.

For the record, I like my school. The directors are nice, the staff are all very kind to me and I've kept a positive attitude. The students are smart and some of them and I have bonded closely, even in such a short period of time.

Today, however, I was pulled out of our office for a one-on-two chat with the directors. Among their complaints were that I let my kids play too many games, I let them pack up too early, I favor girls over boys and I scared some students into quitting the school/changing classes. They also said I seemed "tired", that I wasn't prepared, that I didn't understand the system, I don't do a good job checking homework, and that I don't understand/want to make my own materials/lesson plans/syllabi.

Allow me to address these issues one at a time.

1. I let my kids play too much. Possibly, but the truth of the matter is that I simply don't have enough material to go over. I have 60 minute classes and I'm expected to somehow make doing 2 pages of a student book, homework correction, and a daily word test fill that amount of time. I end up finishing this in 40 minutes tops, and only when I really lollygag and start asking random tangential questions about the material. I only ever let them play English-based games (Simon Says, Hangman, etc) and never cell phone games or Korean ones. They told me to stop playing games altogether. I can do this, but it just means even more mindless boredom for the kids. I know that being a hagwon teacher is a balancing act between keeping the kids happy (games, free time) and making the parents happy by educating the students, but I simply don't have enough material support from the school to make learning a prolonged experience. Essentially I'm just going to go over the lesson two times with the kids instead of once.

2. I let them pack up too early. Again, a sign that there simply isn't enough to do in the classes. Most of my defense of this point is the same as my last: How can I stop kids from packing up books when they know well enough and I know well enough that they're finished with the material and understand it? My only option is to do what I said above: Go over everything again and make sure that they just don't put their stuff away no matter what. Not a complicated solution, and doable.

3. I favor girls over boys. I honestly have no idea where this one came from. Most of the kids I am closest with at the school (my "God sons" as one other teacher described it) are boys. Apparently, some mother called our school and complained, saying that her son felt like I gave the girls more points (for our reward system) and that I called on girls more. I honestly don't know who it was or who said it, but I can definitely say that I have no bias. The school has a 60/40 girl-to-boy ratio and the boys generally act out more than the girls. I asked my directors how I am supposed to handle this. By calling on boys more? They flat-out told me that it's because I'm a white male that they think I have some kind of "partialness" to the girls. I wanted to call them on this kind of pedophillic accusation, but I know better.

4. The kids that changed classes: I have no idea who or when they changed classes, but they refuse to tell me out of fear that I might do something rash in retaliation. I explained that I'm a normal person and I'd prefer that they told me if there was a problem, and the directors told me that it's the typical "Korean mindset" that since I'm a foreign teacher in charge of their kids that I might hurt them if I found out who it was. Again, a ridiculous accusation, but there's no way I can fight this. If it was a bad student that I had words with, then they began to fear me and changed classes, how is it that I'm the problem? I can honestly say there's very few times when I had to get serious with any of the students and they were all well warranted, such as serious behavior problems and disrupting class or lying to my face and refusing to tell the truth. Again, I can't win on this one.

5. I seem "tired". Well yes of course I do, I work 6 hours with no break, then I grade and make homework sheets and lesson plans and read ahead for the next day and make word lists and word tests and final tests and correct journals and reading logs and I barely have enough time to grab a coffee for 10 minutes throughout the day because I am so overworked. I have also been sick for the past 2 weeks. This is also caused by my coming in "later and later". For reference, during the first month or so I came in around one hour earlier than everyone else each day so I could really get ahold of the system there and make it a smooth transition. I guess now that I come in on time instead of one hour early I'm getting lazy or something. My only remedy to this one is to start coming in to work early again.

6. Speaking of learning the system, I was given one day to learn their incredibly convoluted, ever-changing and complex system with the departing teacher. The bad news is that this one day was a Monday, and the school has a MWF schedule and a TTH schedule, which means that I never got to see what to do during the other 40% of the week. I did my best to follow the manual that the departing teacher left me, but it barely covered what I should do and wasn't much help when applied to the actual classes themselves. Their system is incredibly slapped together. The school's focus is constantly changing, even in the 2 months I've been there. They're introducing new policies and methods every week at our meetings and changing the old ones seemingly at random. The basics are there: Course Books and Story Books, but the way that we're expected to teach them is incredibly vague, though the directors want us to be amazingly specific with what we should do. My coworker described it as "they want us to make a beautiful cake but most of the ingredients are missing, spoiled or we don't have enough of them". The owners only recently began working full-time at the school when enrollment started to drop. This means that they barely understand the system itself, and expect me to ask the other ELTs, who basically tell me "I've been doing it this way" because they don't really know what to do either. My direct boss can't answer a question and instead answers a different question no one asked, and they seem impervious to suggestion or constructive criticism, instead just saying "Yeah... so, uh, can you just do it like this?" They're nice people, but they have no idea what they're doing and blame everyone but themselves for the way that their school is run.

7. I don't do a good job checking homework. Apparently my circling things as being good but still correcting the mistakes confuses the kids and parents, making them think it's perfect but still flawed somehow. This was taught to me by the departing teacher ("the more circles, the better" she said, verbatim") and that the kids don't understand it. However, I literally in every class go over the homework from the night before with the kids and they're allowed to correct it as such. I sign off on their papers to check that they've done it and then we go over it. I simply can't understand what I'm supposed to do. Look at every student's answers, one by one, and correct them? I guess this could be a way to fill time that I'm supposed to be using up, so maybe that's not such a bad idea.

8. Lastly, my confusion and annoyance at making my own materials. I checked my contract and it says that the school will provide me with all the materials needed to facilitate classes. Now I'm being asked to make my own daily word tests and word lists every single day. The problem arose when I finished a book and found that the next book in the series had no word list, tests or final test. I asked and was then told I had to do it. This was weird because for my entire tenure there I and none of the other teachers had ever had to do this, because we don't speak Korean so we can't grade or create half of the test. The people who used to do this all quit because of dislike of the directors and personal grudges with the owners. Now we are in a new term and the materials we had that they were making have run out, leaving us to make out own. We used to have full-time employees who did this but now they're gone and so everyone is in a state of panic, because with all of the grading and correcting and prepping we're now also supposed to find a way to fit in making word lists and word tests every day in our short break times as well. There simply is too much to do and not enough time to do it. Add on top of that, most of the syllabi have been lost or stolen by disgruntled Korean teachers so we now have to figure out and make our own homework lists for every class, every month. We each teach 10 different classes and figuring this stuff out is a major headache, since we have to go through the books page by page and write down the appropriate amount of homework and study material for each class, which takes hours away from the other things we have to do which are more pressing. We were only told on Monday that by Wednesday we needed to have them all done, but at the same time we cannot also grade all of our papers and correct the weekly journals and reading logs on time too.

---

Phew, it's good to get that off my chest, thanks to anyone who read about my plight in the short time I've been at this school. For the record, I have a TEFL cert, better-than-average (I hope) Korean speaking, cultural awareness and understanding skills, plus a year's experience teaching ESL in America, so I'm not exactly a newbie. For what it's worth, I really like Korea and again, I like this school, the kids, my coworkers, and I don't think the work of teaching is difficult or that I'm bad at it, but there's just some severe problems with the system that I can't help without turning every day into a grind and/or acting outside the responsibilities in my contract, which belays the point of having a contract in the first place.

I was warned by the departing teacher in the 7 hours I trained and knew her to be prepared for things to change on a dime, and by god, they have. Up until our meeting on Monday I had no idea anything was wrong, they've just chosen to keep these problems from me to keep me from "getting discouraged" rather than telling me so I can solve them. It's also worrying that this kind of thing is coming at a time when I've heard the director talking about not re-hiring any new native ELTs after my two coworkers leave and using only Korean English teachers. Call me paranoid but it feels a little like they could try to clean house of the foreigners. I will still say that I won't avoid hagwons in the future, as by simply coming to Korea I've got any number of much better gigs waiting for me in the event I am fired for some reason, so I'm not concerned or sweating it. However I always try to do the best I can, and I feel a little like I'm set up to fail, considering what I was given to work with. Either way, starting tomorrow I'm going to be watching the job boards for positions I can apply for quickly in case the hammer does fall.

tl,dr: Not enough time to do everything, not enough training for this weird system, crazy parents and daft directors. The quintessential hagwon experience?

[munybse]

Wow that is long. Forgive me but I didn't read it all. However, the first two can be easily handled by just supplementing the book with your own material. It's not too hard to do and many of us do it.

[some waygug-in]

Yep.

Do your best to glean what you can from the criticism. There may be some areas where you can improve. The things you can't change.... you can't change.


I always had to make extra worksheets to do in class when I worked in hagwons. The kids will be bored to tears if you can't play any games, but do as directed and within a month they will be complaining that your classes are "no fun" or boring.


Basically a no-win situation for you.

[marsavalanche]

Didn't read it all but...

the complaints sound like they're coming from you teaching 60 minute classes. Is that correct? There's no way in he// I'd sign to that.

- Talk about the weather
- Talk about what day it is (Tuesday September 27th 2011--your kids can't say "twenty-seventh" correctly?--there's another time killer)
- Ask kids how they are doing/what they did the past weekend/going to do the upcoming weekend
- Make handouts and hand out stickers to the kids that do the best. Fat pack of stickers will cost you a buck at Emart.

The above should kill at least 15~20 minutes. 40 minutes to cover your homework/daily whatever/book material for the day and that's an hour.

No way in hell I'd sign to 60 minute classes though. My 40 minute classes barely finish ON TIME and I scan the homework and rush them out of class so the other class can get in on time. It's all about managing time. An hour is long as hell but it can be done.

We play a game in my most well-behaved classes (the misbehaved classes know this), and at the end of the week if the kids were good that week. I've never played hangman or simon in class, hated those games as a child so don't see why I'd make them suffer through it. Bought a ball and nerf gun at daiso--3000won total. My kids throw around a ball in class and shoot toy darts at the board. We also play games on the big screen in class that took a 5 minute google search. I don't think playing games at the end of the week will tick off your directors too much. But I will add simon says and hangman are lame as hell and never understood why so many teachers play that with their kids.

[shifty]

Your directors are far too critical. When you think of their own poor performance, it's a bit hard to take.

If they call you in again, look at them glazed-eyes and don't argue.

The problem is that they are going to make a frankenstein of your classes with too many unnatural and forced maneuvers. You're going to hate yourself and hate them.

For a start make your spelling tests nice and long, with plenty of generous intervals between words. Don't prepare the lists before class. Rather as you teach the book, circle the words that you deem important. It's easy enough actually to do it on the spot in the test.

The spelling tests shouldn't be a constant length, but increase with past chapter words finding their way in again. Until it's a gargantuan test that eats up 30mins at coservative estimate. Then self check, there's another 10 mins.

You should be positive about the no-games rule. It lets you off the hook for dreaming up red hot games, always a source of stress. Everytime the students wail for a game, you talk long and hard of the directors forbidding it.

Teach the directors how to approach you, with a dash of foreboding. Don't let the tail wag the dog.

[Gorf]

Thanks for the kind words. For the record, the kids love the bejesus out of Simon Says and Hangman for some reason. It's been that way since before I got here. The main reason I play games is because I have so little material to cover that once we're done some kid will go "GAME" and then pack up, which becomes contagious, and then we're 20 minutes from the end of the class and the kids have their backpacks on and are noisy and all trying to debate who gets to be "Simon".

Some classes are 55 minutes, some are 60, and there's two that are 80 minutes on T-TH. Again, those classes have MAYBE 4 pages of actual Student Book material. I'll do my best to stretch out the "what did you do yesterday" stuff.

Shifty - The idea sounds good on paper, but I'm expected to have made all the word lists to hand out to the kids by the day before we start a new Story Book. The tests have to be 20 words long each and are to be done in 5 minutes at the beginning of class. The reason I have to make them, as I pointed out in the post, is that the guy who made all of the ones for last term quit before starting this term's so the director had her daughter make them for the first book, but then left. I was told on Friday that I was supposed to do them for the other 3 books we're reading this term. I, however, never knew that she only made the first book's word list and tests, so I had assumed someone was making them all, as no one has ever had to do this before. My directors slammed me for not looking ahead enough, supposedly I should have known I needed to make my own materials for something I've never seen or never done before. Technically I should have handed them out on Monday but the 1.5 hours I had to do it on Monday morning simply isn't enough to make 8 days' worth of word lists and word tests and do everything else I have to do on a daily basis.

Oh yeah, and my director said she'll be watching my classes tomorrow or something. Could be good for her to see how hard it is (for all of us, everyone feels this way) but it might also be just a way for her to criticize me more. Either way I only hope to god that the kids get the idea and are on their best and don't pack up early or try to get me to play games.

[shifty]

Oh, I see. Sorry, I should have picked it up from your first post.

Well, that's ridiculous. Your classes are too long in any case, the students can't properly concentrate for such a lengthy period. You're gonna have to consider leaving that place.

Didn't the previous teacher give you any inkling before you started?

Another thing that's curious about hakwon directors; the suggestion to phase out native speakers. Once I had a director who darkly announced that he was going to hire a gyopo next time. A few months later he exclaimed his surprise that the first question posed by parents is whether there is a native speaker. This from someone associated with hakwons for 15 years already and now only discovering such a fundamental.

So you needn't place too much faith in your overseers' judgement.

[barbaricyip]

For the first half of the rant, I thought you might be talking about my old school! Then I realized you only had a five day week. Small favors, huh?

A method my girlfriend and I were instructed to use in lieu of the ever-confusing Big Red Circle was to instead scribble the date of homework completion somewhere on each homework page. You can add your initials, if you're feeling ambitious.

Frankly, the hard time you're getting from your director stinks of scapegoatting. Just keep doing your best to make sure they have nothing legitimate to complain about, and you can go anywhere you please with a clear conscience, even if they never stop giving you a hard time about the bull hockey.

[thegadfly]

Gorf,

Since you prefaced your post with the fact that you were ranting, and everyone needs to vent sometimes...sorry, that sucks that you were not given clearer feedback about what to do differently.

If your school has a computer with Internet access, a printer, and a photocopier, you have all the "resources" you need to pull enough stuff for any/every lesson. Two pages in the textbook about irregular verbs? Do a Google search for irregular verbs + lesson plans and/or worksheets, and you should find tons of stuff. Repeat for whatever you seem to be lacking.

How many students are in your classes? Another thing you could do, instead of hangman, is establish some routine speaking assignments. For example, model an interview -- you have each student ask you a question, which you answer in a sentence or two (or more). Have the students take notes about the questions and answers, and if you assign writing homework, you can have each student write 5 sentences/ a paragraph about you, based on the interview. If they do not do written homework, you can have students answer questions about you, after having listened to the interview, to work on reported speech, changes in tenses, and changes in person ("thegadfly, do you like bundaegi?""No, I do not." "Does thegadfly like bundaegi?""No, he does not.")

If you have 5 students, everyone asks 2-3 questions. If you have 10-15, everyone asks one question. If you have more than 15 students, you can still do the interview, but once you hit 30, it is hard to manage without breaking them into smaller groups. I think 15 students is ideal for this, but some folks like smaller groups with multiple questions.

Once through takes about 20 minutes.

Then, the next time you have class, you pull up a student, and he or she is asked the questions -- everyone has to ask NEW questions, and no one can repeat a question. You ask a question too. Preparing lists of questions is also homework for students.

If you have 15 kids in a class, that is 16 class meetings worth of interview work -- if your classes meet 5 days a week, that is 3 weeks worth of lessons AND homework, on a variety of topics, with ample opportunity for you to notice some teachable moments, fill your class time with something educationally sound, get your students generating their own language, and help everyone feel like more is getting accomplished.

When those three weeks (or more, if you don't meet 5 days a week) are over, move on to a new speaking activity. Then another. And another. My own classes meet twice a week, and I have about 10 months' worth of speaking activities, with note-taking in class and writing HW. I still need to get the last two months' worth of activities, to have a solid year, but I keep trying.

There -- a specific, educationally sound suggestion that takes comparatively little preparation, addresses a myriad of speaking, listening, and writing skills, can be modified to nearly any age and level of ability (I have used it with as young as second grade elementary school students, and with students who can not write in English yet -- I had the pre-English-literate students draw a picture for homework of something they had heard, and then briefly explain what the picture meant, when they came to class next), takes approximately 20 minutes of class, and may work toward solving some of the complaints levied against you.

Cheers.

[calendar]

[calendar]

P.S. Don't expect me to side with FTs especially when they vent. Since this is Korea and you are employed by Koreans, they have the right to run their hagwons, schools and so on as they see fit. Doesn't matter if you agree or not. They are the bosses, you are the employees and your job is to obey and follow your contract.

If you want to be the boss, then open your own school, pay all the utilities, pay all the salaries, recruit students, talk with the parents, pick the curriculum and class time, essentially put your money where your mouths are and take all the risks. Being a kibbitzer is easy, doing the job is difficult especially when you know students will leave on a moment's notice if something is not right.

It may not seem reasonable to you but guess what, there are many, many unreasonable employers in the west who make hagwons look like a picnic. Try working in the garment district of New York and see if you can tell your employers they do not know what they are doing.

Education is subjective in many areas and too many FTs take advantage of this and complain yet refuse to take the risks themselves. The good thing about TJ and some other posters on here, who own hagwons, is that they took the risks and know how difficult it is to run a school or hagwon especially with whiny FTs.

I do not always agree with them but you can respect them for doing that.

[northway]

There's as much material as you make. Considering they're learning a foreign language, there is always material to go over, even if it doesn't directly relate to the class. Do grammar and speaking lessons with the extra ten minutes you have in lieu of playing games. You really don't even need to prep for such activities, just think about what they're doing wrong and fix it.

[edwardcatflap]

It�s not your fault or the length of the lesson, it�s probably down to your lack of experience and training. Maybe you just taught adults before in the US but even if you didn�t, a year is not a lot of experience in kids� teaching. I�ve taught 6 year olds for hour and a half lessons from a single page in a book and myself and the other teachers at that school had no problem. The important thing is the teachers know what they�re doing, they can buddy up with someone who knows what they�re doing, the resources are extensive and well organised or there are regular teacher development sessions where ideas can be given and shared. If your hagwan doesn�t fulfil any of this criteria, they are failing to support their staff, no matter what Calendar says. If you don�t have any of this support, you will need to rely on the internet, as Gadfly advises, which is a good resource, if a little time consuming to wade through all the unsuitable stuff.

And @ Calendar, if a hagwan owner advertises specifically for a woman or someone with no experience, failing to grasp the concept that employing an experienced teacher will generally reduce the likelihood of poor lessons, as described by Gorf above, then they are idiots and have no idea about education. And that�s nothing to do with cultural diversity either, just common sense.

[BackRow]

I'm having the exact same experience myself, although I've only been here a week sofar and haven't been pulled aside (yet)

On the bright side atleast you have readily available access to computers/printing, I don't at the moment and it really holds things back

[toadkillerdog]

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