Korean Job Discussion Forums

iggyb · Joined: 29 Oct 2003

Online TESOL can have some value for individuals. (They could get the same pulling out TESOL articles via Google - but without the resume boost.)

I am talking about the overall benefit to TESOL education in Korea.

Requiring 1 or more years of full time teaching experience would improve the overall quality of FT teaching in Korea.

Requiring a online certificate won't come close to that.

diver · Joined: 16 Jun 2003

iggyb · Joined: 29 Oct 2003

I give much more credit to experience.

I've done a practicum for a regular teaching degree and for double the time a BA would since it was an MA in education. I've also done the course work in a college program for TESOL certification.

To me, experience means much more.

I didn't get much out of my student teaching - having limited control of the classes while being watched by a regular teacher all the time and having my attention outside class focused on the college course work and papers I had to write.

I got far, far more out of being thrown in a hakwon and told to sink or swim.

Yes, I'm sure there are people with no training who go into the hakwons and learn little about teaching beyond mere survival as they collect the money. I'm sure there are a similar number who coast through a regular college teaching program getting little to show when they hit a classroom.

I was surprised how many education majors at my school gave up on the idea of being a teacher once they graduated or quit after their 1st year on the job. (It was different at the MA level. Everybody in that program took a job in the public schools back home. Don't know how long they lasted.)

Smithington · Joined: 14 Dec 2011

Yup, I for example have an MA and five years experience in Korean public schools. But I can no longer apply until I get a TESL certificate. My five years' experience is null and void. And, this being Korea, the new rules come out so close to the hiring deadline there's no way a course can be completed (never mind a certificate issued) by that time. Which means that a newbie with zero Korean public school experience, but a little certificate, gets a job, while the guy with 5 years' experience is considered unqualified.

Once again Korea is doing things ass backwards, and in the process failing to respect and properly utilize its experienced teachers.

TheUrbanMyth · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Location: Retired

Smithington · Joined: 14 Dec 2011

iggyb · Joined: 29 Oct 2003

Until the last couple of years, many states in the US would allow people to teach in public schools based on experience and experience beyond teaching.

If you had experience as a chemist or engineer or in the business world and so on, and the school had classes for which your experience was a good match, the school could hire you under special programs. This was not uncommon outside the core curriculum.

No Child Left Behind's phrase "highly qualified" has districts scared to death to continue that practice, but before now, if you're professional and life experience gave you a background that match the needs of the courses they offered, you could get a job teaching.

"Nor does it own you any type of job regardless of your experience."

Nor did the person suggest Korea owed him a job. He was commenting on the idiocy of the requirement.

I agree with him and would extend that to the change back in the US: So a chemist with MA or PhD who has been working for Dupont for 10 years can't get a job teaching chemistry in high school because he doesn't have a teaching degree and thus isn't "highly qualified."

Is someone with that much chemistry experience and education surely able to teach teens? No. Is someone who just finished a BA in education related to chemisty a sure thing? No.

Again, I'd favor the person with experience over the one with an education degree and nothing but student-teaching under their belt.

TheUrbanMyth · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Location: Retired

iggyb · Joined: 29 Oct 2003

Another thing, I had heard SMOE was getting rid of high school FTs and today at the other site, they said the message went out that middle school ones were going too.

Which makes perfect sense...

Middle and high school FTs in general get much more control of their classes in terms of time and planning than in elementary school. Which means m. and h. FTs get to learn their craft much more than e.s.

I've been in an elementary school in Seoul this year and I taught in hakwons for 4 years many years ago. And I've thought about this before: How I would have learned little about teaching if I had started in this elementary school positions, because I don't get much time with each class, and I am limited in what I can do when I am given control...There is little room for experimenting. (In fact, there is little room to apply things that have proven to work for me in other settings.)

But that's life.

I will agree with UrbanMyth that things don't make a heck of a lot of sense the world around...