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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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 Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 5:29 am Post subject: |
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| fezmond wrote: |
i just finished 2 years teaching kindy + ele.
it was my second job but first with 5/6/7 year olds. took a few months to find my feet and i felt like quitting once a week. in my school we really did push those kids hard, no glorified babysitting as i'd been told by friends at other kindies.
now i wouldn't change kindy kids for any other age group, as long as they're 5 and above. i covered 2 days at a YBM for a friend recently and had to babysit kids of 3 and 4 years old (korean age). that was pure hell.
elementary kids are ok until they hit about 11 years old and they become buggers.
as the above posters said, if you hate young kids, don't do it. you'll be stressing out and shouting at them, the kids will dislike you and it'll be a long year. |
I get the impression that most of the comments about glorified babysitting come from people who have had kindies for a couple hours a week. Most of the folks I've known who worked at actual kindergartens where they were the primary teacher have pushed their kids pretty hard.
Korean five year olds are okay, but the first half of the year kind of sucks. Going any younger than that is just pointless, insulting, and cruel. |
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fezmond
Joined: 27 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:35 am Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| fezmond wrote: |
i just finished 2 years teaching kindy + ele.
it was my second job but first with 5/6/7 year olds. took a few months to find my feet and i felt like quitting once a week. in my school we really did push those kids hard, no glorified babysitting as i'd been told by friends at other kindies.
now i wouldn't change kindy kids for any other age group, as long as they're 5 and above. i covered 2 days at a YBM for a friend recently and had to babysit kids of 3 and 4 years old (korean age). that was pure hell.
elementary kids are ok until they hit about 11 years old and they become buggers.
as the above posters said, if you hate young kids, don't do it. you'll be stressing out and shouting at them, the kids will dislike you and it'll be a long year. |
I get the impression that most of the comments about glorified babysitting come from people who have had kindies for a couple hours a week. Most of the folks I've known who worked at actual kindergartens where they were the primary teacher have pushed their kids pretty hard.
Korean five year olds are okay, but the first half of the year kind of sucks. Going any younger than that is just pointless, insulting, and cruel. |
i completely agree.
as a full time worker i had to teach them everything imaginable - phonics, science, maths, art and even straight-up grammar for the 7 year olds. of course you need to relate the classes to the kids for it to work but i was surprised how much study they did. however, friday was a free day so we could do whatever we wanted outside of field trips/cooking/sports days etc.
the 3/4 year olds i did the other week were simply too young. i can't imagine why parents would do that to their kids. it was also the first week of the new year so it was the first time in such an environment for most of the kids. non-stop crying and confusion for the most part. |
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Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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I did public school kindergarden for one semester. It was an experiment. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't work umpteen hours a day. I just played with them. Spoke some English and Korean to them. (I have a basic understanding of Korean which made it easier for me, I guess.) In the mornings, we did whatever activity the school had planned. In the afternoons, I played with them. Swung them around, picked them up, played you tube sesame street videos, other youtube animation song videos, etc. It was cool. I assume private kindys don't have TV and computer in the classroom? They should. Great teaching and learning tool. Anyways, the young uns flipped out over cookie monster.
Sadly, they replaced me with a pretty female as the recession had just flooded the market. She couldn't speak any Korean and that ended that experiment. I went back to middle school kids. But, I really enjoyed that term doing kindergardens. (Did 5 different ones a week.) |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 6:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Weigookin74 wrote: |
I did public school kindergarden for one semester. It was an experiment. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't work umpteen hours a day. I just played with them. Spoke some English and Korean to them. (I have a basic understanding of Korean which made it easier for me, I guess.) In the mornings, we did whatever activity the school had planned. In the afternoons, I played with them. Swung them around, picked them up, played you tube sesame street videos, other youtube animation song videos, etc. It was cool. I assume private kindys don't have TV and computer in the classroom? They should. Great teaching and learning tool. Anyways, the young uns flipped out over cookie monster.
Sadly, they replaced me with a pretty female as the recession had just flooded the market. She couldn't speak any Korean and that ended that experiment. I went back to middle school kids. But, I really enjoyed that term doing kindergardens. (Did 5 different ones a week.) |
Knowing Korean helps at first, but after a month of full time English kindergarten it isn't really helpful outside of explaining some grammar points and how they relate to Korean. Knowing basic past and future tense in Korean made it infinitely easier to explain those concepts to my students in English. TV shows can be useful, but when you're teaching the kids four or five hours a day it's pretty easy to abuse outside media and fail to really teach. |
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soomin
Joined: 18 Jun 2009
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:50 am Post subject: |
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I taught kindie and some of the students were good, and their English was good, too... but their behavior was out of control and since they were young (and in the rich section of town), we weren't allowed to punish them, tell them that they were doing something wrong, or "show any emotion other than happiness no matter what."
I had kids fighting, sleeping in class, and acting crazy constantly and was just told that that was life and to keep smiling no matter what. That plus the insane amount of busy work I had to do (literally thousands of papers "asap") and putting up with an verbally abusive coworker made me quit. Especially after having a heart-to-heart with the boss and then being told later "Oh yeah, I heard you were having trouble, but I didn't care"... ugh. And, as others have said, the hours. It's hard to keep up with other foreigner friends when you're on totally opposite work hours... |
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thunderbird
Joined: 18 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:15 am Post subject: |
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| the keys to know its all a big joke and they dont know whats good education or bad, then ur fine, just know its joke n treat it like one |
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