Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Bloopity Bloop]

For the 1st time in my 3 years teaching in Korea, I (sadly) have one of THOSE co-teachers.

Walking into my office on the first day of school, I find that I have 5 co-teachers this year--4 of whom I had never co-taught with previously. At that point, I already knew there were going to be issues what with all the different teaching styles and the varying levels of effort each teacher might (or not) want to put into my class. Furthermore, I was to start using a textbook (never had to before) which NONE of my co-teachers had even opened until they showed it to me; it was also decided that it'd be the core of our midterm and final tests this year. It wouldn't be such a bad idea IF THEY HAD ACTUALLY COORDINATED WITH EACH OTHER. So week 1 is a total clusteryouknowwhat with every co-teacher wanting this and that from every class. As much as I wanted to have an organized agenda so that students are learning the same stuff, it just wasn't worth the effort to battle against a bunch of older teacher long set in their ways and teaching philosophies.

Well, on the Friday of week 1 (it's been almost 3 weeks since then?), I'm in the middle of a class with a co-teacher I've never even had much interaction with prior. She pulls me to the front while I am LITERALLY in the middle of helping a group of students working on the textbook. I ask her if she needs anything and this is the exchange that started it all...

Me: "Yes?"
Her: "What are we doing?"
Me: "Well, the students are working on the textbook."
Her: "I don't want to do the text book (and in my head, I'm thinking... except this is what you guys WANTED me to use...). What do you want to do now?"
Me: "Well, I don't have anything significant that is ready off-hand"
Her: "So you just show videos in class and force me to teach everything else? Is this your class or mine?"
--So I showed a 1-minute video at the start of class to engage students, which I followed up with at least 15 solid minutes of discussion and she basically did FIVE minutes of the listening section of the text book (which is in KOREAN)--
Me: "What are you talking about? I asked you if you would mind doing the listening part because I can't teach material that's in Korean. It was FIVE minutes."
Her: "I don't want to talk about this now!"

Later that day, she sat me down in our office and talked about how upset she was about how I didn't do this or that (WTF?). She also forced another teacher to team up against me. In any case, we came to the conclusion that she didn't want to take part in the class outside of merely assisting me in the rare occasion I'm unable to get my points across to students. Okay, fine, NO PROBLEM.

Since then, I'd come into the office and she'd be talking heatedly with other teachers and stop as soon as she knew I was there. I thought, okay, maybe this b**** is just venting (although I'm still unsure what she could be so upset about). But as time went by, teachers actually began coming up to me and telling me, "b**** said this, she said that". Until then, I had just been avoiding her and just minding my own business and doing my job. In my classes with her, I'd been doing an even better job w/o her involved. I thought I'd given her what she wanted, I felt better about it, case closed. Right?

NOPE, my head teacher said we needed to talk about this "fiasco". The b**** had apparently talked so much trash about me (about what I'm not sure), that some of the teachers in the office are asking my head-teacher why she keeps defending me. She is literally rallying people against me. Well, other than the obvious reason that I am completely blameless here and this b**** has been raging over a MINISCULE misunderstanding for almost a month now, my head teacher lost face because of this and wants ME to apologize to this teacher.

This teacher is in her mid-30s and only recently became a teacher. Her students all hate her and most of the teachers in the school don't like her. My head teacher actually told me that no other head teacher wanted her in their offices so we got stuck with her. So how is this happening?

OK... I'm thinking at this point, I should just let it go... everyone's on my side if they're telling me what she's doing. I'll be fine if I just keep doing my job. THEN...

I was LEGITIMATELY sick on Monday and took a day to recover. Yesterday, as I'm about to eat lunch with my head teacher, she asks me about my weekend. "Just the usual stuff" I say, "nothing special." She then starts telling me "a little bird" told her about certain pictures on my Facebook that might lead some people to suspect I had just partied too hard over the weekend and took a day off cause I was hungover. Okay, that was weird... Wait... no... it couldn't be...

Later that day, another teacher confirmed my suspicions. This PSYCHO B**** had actually LOOKED me up on Facebook, and reported what she found there to my head teacher and warned her not to trust me--about ANYTHING. If I lied about my sickness, I must lie about everything else

This also made me wonder what she actually saw. I do not party almost at all. I have no photos on my Facebook that I wouldn't show my parents or employers. Furthermore, most of my school knows I don't even drink. So I wasn't too worried about anything coming out of this. I just CANNOT BELIEVE that something SO SMALL is now turning into some kind of personal crusade against me. WHAT KIND OF INSANE PERSON WOULD RAGE FOR THIS LONG ABOUT NOTHING?! LITERALLY NOTHING!

Before any of your smartypants calls me out for not confronting her directly, I hadn't realized how much she was doing behind the scenes until recently. And on the day of the FB incident, she left for a 2-week long business trip. I asked my head teacher in a roundabout way whether or not it was in fact this teacher that told her about the my Facebook, but lied to my face and said no. Obviously she thinks it'll make things worse--and she said, "just forget about it. You guys should work it out with each other."

WHAT?!

I am furious about this. I am definitely going to have a word or two with Crazy 선생님 when she gets back.

What would you do in my situation? Does anyone have a similar experience?

[bobloblaw]

Ignore the problem until it goes away or find a way to get her to like you.

[Gorf]

At this point I would say that the situation seems beyond repair. I hate to say it, but just tough it out, ignore it, just put your head down and try to remain as innocuous as possible. There's no way to convince her magically that you're a nice, normal guy. Some people just have a chip on their shoulder and the easy target is the foreigner. That's about all there is to it. Some people just can't be reasoned with and there's no way to go about compromising constructively.

[Weigookin74]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[hapigokelli]

I had this happen with a teacher a few years back. She went from trying to be my best friend to trying to get me fired in a matter of days. She even called up the head of the SMOE office and tried to tell them that I showed up to work drunk and all of the students were afraid of me. NEVER happened.

Here is my advice, from my experience.

1. Change your name on your facebook account so that if they look you up, they can't find you. This is even better than changing privacy settings because you can claim that you don't even have an account.

2. Be extremely nice to your other co-teachers, offer to help them out with things that aren't necessarily your job. Get them on your side.

3. Bring in a cake or cookies to your office for the other teachers. Make sure that you bring it in while most of the other teachers are in the office and make a big show of giving some to everyone. This wins major points.
Always smile at the other teachers when you see them, say good morning everyday when you come in, it's really appreciated.

4. If the woman yells at you or even talks to you, just smile at her and nod, then ignore everything she says. If you are always calm and she's screaming, who looks like the nut-job?

5. Openly tell the other teachers that you don't know why the woman is gossiping about you, that you just want to get along with everyone and give the best education to the students possible.

6. Again, ALWAYS remain clam and polite, losing it will work against you.

7. Document everything as best you can.

8. If all else fails, take it to the VP, ask for a meeting with your head teacher, the VP and one other teacher that you know is on your side. Bring your documentation, let them know as politely as possible what is going on.

Good luck.

[fermentation]

One thing you can do is play the game. Confronting her directly won't accomplish much. Also, max out the security settings on facebook. I have mind so it's almost impossible to find me.

[pegasus64128]

I've never had any real problems with co-teachers (touch wood) but I agree with the above advice. If you are nice, professional, and generally liked, especially by your students then it's harder to target you. I did once work with a horrible co-teacher (a real blood/energy-sucking leech) but I could handle her now I reckon.

Watch out for personnel changes in public schools too. I was getting a bad vibe off a new staff member and was not (in)formally introduced to her. I found out she was working in a more senior capacity, which for some reason stimulated me to smile at her more and of course give the big bow and 안녕하십니까. Seems ok now (but again - touch wood).