Korean Job Discussion Forums

[northway]

What I get from this thread:

Those who stay in Korea clearly do so with a gun to their head.

Or sloppy condom usage.

[Captain Corea]

I'm so glad I'm not in one of the OP's classes.

[iggyb]

I didn't read every item especially in the other lists.

I agree with some others that much of what is described is just teaching.

It's why so many people who've spent a few years earning a college degree and getting certified quit within the first 5 years once they hit the schools back home. It is why some people (like my sister) get to their last semester in college, when they have their semester-long practicum, and quit before they finish the degree. It's why public schools in much of the world give teachers long summer and winter vacations. Students and teacher's need them or they'd burn out and go crazy. I didn't realize when I was a student how much my teachers were grinding down by the end of a semester. I get it now.

Much of the behavioral issues listed are also laregly dependant on classroom managment skills. And that is as much an art as anything. Every teacher has to find a style(s) that work for their personality, and every semester has some difference, and some semesters, you just get off on the wrong foot and spend the rest of the semester fighting up hill. That's a teacher's life.

It isn't for everybody, and it is perfectly fine if someone decides it isn't a profession for them, but it is also one of the reasons it can be considered a profession.

Some of the points related to public schools are also different, I've heard, depending on whether you are in an elementary or secondary school.

Many of the other points were more closely related to hakwon life than public schools...but...

...I'm glad I started my full-time teaching in hakwons. In a sink-or-swim situation. I knew I was doing a bad job my first six months in and only felt like I was starting to earn my pay near the end of the first year. That isn't uncommon for teachers back home when they finish college and are left alone with a class for the first time. It also isn't terribly unusual to hear a veteran teacher say when they have started at a new school.

I did a year-long practicum in a middle and high school later when back in the US earning a degree in education and getting certified, but I don't think it would have come close to matching the experience I gained being thrown to the wolves with no curriculum and virtually no material to pull for the class. It was rough, but it forced me to --- do something. I didn't have anything else or anybody else to fall back on, and I wasn't going to make it a full year in Korea if I didn't spend much time trying to figure out how do at least an adequate job.

And I know from working in the hakwons, talking to other public school teachers, and reading Dave's that some expats in Korea never get to the point of feeling like - doing something.

I remember in the training we went to in Seoul once a very nice looking and well-dressed Korean-American girl in our group commented that, in general, she didn't like activities that required "this kind of preparation" in her elementary school classes. The only preparation required for the sample activity was - running photo copies and folding the papers in half!!

In hakwons, I could understand. The sheer amount of in-class hours you had each week would grind you down to the numb, and you didn't have long vacations. And all the other things that make hakwon life a grind were a big disincentive to putting in extra work to prepare for classes...

...but with all the free time you have in public schools - I felt like slapping that girl upside the head...

(Most of the people I worked with in the hakwons did try to make their classes work and did put in what time they could in preparing material. Only a minority - usually scabs brought in illegally - plainly did nothing but wing it day after day with activities that did little to help the students learn. From reading Dave's and especially waygook.org, I am assuming that is true for a majority public school FTs too.)

I also don't talk about good and bad teachers in the US or Korea. I think in terms of adequate and inadequate, because unless you are in a teacher's room day-after-day, you really don't know what the classroom situation is like.

Anyway, I am also glad I started out in hakwons, because I wouldn't have learned in a TESOL program back home just how much you can accomplish with students when you don't share a common L1.

I had taken a semester of TESOL courses necessary for certification in American public schools before coming to Korea, but it didn't prepare me for teaching a classroom full of beginning and low level Korean students all by myself.

I had to learn fast. And I did learn how much you can accomplish through bodylanguage and lowering your material down to their level --

-- which I agree is the way it should be done. You should provide material just above the average ability in the class. What I found in teaching in Korea was that the times when students just stared at me blankly or got disruptive or an activity just fell apart - it was because I'd prepared material they weren't ready for. I needed to do something else to build them up to it or just had to accept it wasn't going to work with that class.

A good thing about hakwons too was that some students came and went each month. The dynamic of the students changed usually each month. Which meant I had many more chances to ajust to the students. Whereas in public schools - in Korea and in the US - if you start a semester badly your first couple of weeks, it is very hard to get it on track the rest of the semster. You usually have to count on the new one to begin again.

It was having to make these adjustments that taught me how to teach.

If I could have broken into Korean to get the class on the same page and kept the activity moving --- yes --- it would have made them feel more comfortable, but it would not have improved their learning English.

After having taught for about 9 years now, and after having struggled learning French and Korean (and failed with Korean), and seen how others taught a foreign language when they shared the L1 --- I think teachers who share a L1 retard the progress of their students by giving them material that is too advanced and relying on the L1 to get them through.

They tend to end up teaching the students more about the language than teaching the language, and they fail to give the students enough time to practice using it.

Language learning is supposed to be confusing. Students are supposed to struggle to negociate meaning and make themselves understood. Especially by trying to communicate with each other.

Too much confusion isn't good. They just give up. But again, that usually means you are trying to get them to do something that is too advanced and/or that you haven't prepared them for through earlier, less complicated building block activities.

If you break into the L1 to solve this problem, I don't see how you can get a proper feel for what the class is capable of and making proper adjustments to future activities.

I don't mean that the lists the OP put up are wrong. Many points about interference by parents and Korean teachers and admins and lack of support by admins is true to my experience too.

And hakwons and public schools don't allow you to do what you feel would be best too much of the time. I don't think either one allows you to really teach. Or expects a FT to really teach. Not how you would back home (at least in US schools where I've taught or studied).

But, many of the problems on the list could be significantly adjusted through planning and making adjustments with experience.

I guess I can conclude this best by saying: I don't think anyone committed to teaching as a profession would ultimately be satisfied in a career working in a hakwon or public school position in Korea.

The public school jobs are easy enough to the point you might get by long term with it by concentrating on your free time outside of school and some hobbies you could use in school during that mammoth amount of free time -- but I don't think anybody would be satisfied long-term with the actual teaching itself in public schools or hakwons.

I've talked to and read a handful of people who are teachers back home who have come to Korea and landed in a public school where they had much control over the class and were satisfied with it. But I've also talked to others who felt like I did and said the job was easy but not satisfying and were looking to go back home or try a university job in Korea.

The odd thing is --- hakwons were more like real teaching to me - I had more control over the material and controlled all the classtime - but were such headaches outside the classroom, they weren't worth it long-term either. I burnt out after 4 years. Probably should have left after 3.

[PatrickGHBusan]

[transmogrifier]

[edwardcatflap]

@ iggyb you make some good points. Kids need a lot of support to be able to learn effectively in L2 and this requires practical training, a lot of lesson preparation and experience to know what will and won't work. Teaching kids also involves a ton of minor irritations you have to cope with from day to day but as long as you can deal with them with patience and focus on the job in hand, simply listing these irritations doesn't make you a bad teacher IMO

[transmogrifier]

[r122925]

[NQ]

[PatrickGHBusan]

[r122925]

[Julius]

[PatrickGHBusan]

[iggyb]

[jonpurdy]