Korean Job Discussion Forums

[crazylemongirl]

I notice that the buzz word for the last year or so has been co-teaching. But I'm curious as to what that means. Mine seems to vary from teacher to teacher.

I have one really good teacher, who is really progressive in her style. We joke around a lot in class. She occasioanlly reigns in the students if things are getting a little crazy. And does translation when needed. I go over the lessons with her before hand so she knows what the objectives are.

One comes to class and occasionally hits the kids and occasionally translates stuff.

One someitimes comes to class and sits up the back and drinks coffee.

One sometimes comes to part of the class hits the kids and occasionally translates stuff.

One comes to class, repeats what I say in english and then the students complain so she speaks in korean.

So I think basically I only have teacher that I co-teach with.

[jaderedux]

Luckily I was the first foreign teacher that stayed any amount of time. We have been through a learning curve.

At frist we tried with me teaching part of the class and the Korean teacher teaching part of the class. That was major CF. So we switched basically during my class time I am the lead teacher.

I work with the korean teachers to explain things that get too complicated and they help keep the classes quiet. I have been teaching in this school for quite sometime and can pretty much tell if the students are starting to glaze over.

Game instructions and such are best if you have help. Some Vocab goes eaiser with help. I am really lucky somedays the korean teachers really do the 50/50 things and other days it is more me than team teaching.

But AGAIN this came from 3 years of learning together.

Jade

[Dawn]

I co-teach a half-day kindergarten class in an early childhood program, so the environment is a bit different. That said, my Korean co-teacher and I largely divide duties, with me carrying more of the load in the classroom and her carrying more of the load outside of it. In the classroom, I provide the bulk of group instruction, and she provides native language support when necessary. When it comes to individual and small group activities, we split the workload. At times, I'll work with one group while she works with another. At other times, one of us will work one-on-one with kids who are really struggling, while the other one oversees pretty much everyone else in the class. We also split discipline tasks pretty much down the middle, though I do get her involved when I'm dealing with health and safety issues (where I want to be sure the kid understand what to do or not do in the future) as well as with any major squabbles where parents may need to be notified.

Outside of class, she handles 98 percent of the interaction with parents. I write report cards once every two months, including maybe a half page of comments about each child. She maintains weekly written records, calls parents whenever there's any sort of problem, responds to all queries from parents, etc. She's also helps ensure that the kids get to and from school safely each day.

I was a bit leery of co-teaching in the beginning, as I had once before been saddled with a do-nothing co-teacher who was employed because "she is a member of the church, she has no family, and she needs a job." This time around, though, teaching has truly been a team effort, and I think the kids have benefitted from the arrangement. ... Now, I'm just waiting to see whether she's willing to go a third year with me or whether her boyfriend is going to marry her and steal her away. ...

[No L]

One of the reasons that "co-teaching" has become such a buzz word is that there has been an increase in hiring for public schools. My co-teacher says that foreigners are not allowed to be full-time teachers in Korean public schools (B.Ed or not). (Maybe because we didn't take the test? Is a foreigner allowed to take the test?) Anyways, schools can get around this rule by calling us assistant teachers or co-teachers. A Korean teacher is supposed to be present in the classroom at all times. The FT is not to be alone with the students. Obviously this doesn't always end up being the case.

A lot of places also claim that co-teaching/two teachers are needed to get the right balance of educational theory/knowledge and English competence.

In my case, mostly my co-teachers sit at the back of the room. They occassionally translate something or discipline students. Sometimes they help me model conversations. I plan the lessons and inform them what I'll be doing ahead of time

[canukteacher]

My co-teaher likes to teach. So, we have been doing the back and forth thing this week. She introduces the lesson, and I reinforce all of the points with the kids. She also loves to play games, but is not very good at planning them or explaining them. But we are working on that. She also likes to do all the lesson planning. For now I will be quiet, but I am sure that will change over time.

CT

[kylehawkins2000]

Co-teaching is nothing new. They've been doing it in the hogwans for years. I think the idea is so that the hogwan gets to boast a low teacher-to-student ratio, and also so that the kids that get really stressed over the English-only environment get there little security blanket to cling to. In other cases it is spurred on by a lack of trust or faith in the foreign teacher. Unfortunately in my experience the Hogwan managers generally think that in order to co-teach all they have to do is stick a Korean teacher and a foreign teacher together in the same room with a bunch of kids.

I think if your hogwan is going to emply co-teachers they should set down some guidelines concerning that responsibilities of each of the teachers.

[baldrick]

It can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your co-teacher.
I see each of my classes only once a week, at which time I am more like a 'guest' in the class. Now the other 4 times a week the kids are with their korean teacher. So I feel the behaviour of the class is refelcted through that teacher, not through me. I can try my own methods etc etc but as they see me for 45 mins a week it dosen't really have any effect on them. Am I to waste the only time we have together discipling them? No, why waste my energy. To be honest, I am fed up with dealing with the incompetence of my co-teachers. Being half asleep in class, chatting on phones, intentionally ignoring me when I need help, chatting with students at the back of the class whilst the lesson is going on, being sympathetic with students when I have scolded them, inability to learn how to say english, orange, fish etc properly even after I've got the 10 year olds saying them correctly...........the list goes on and on and on. This is only 2 out of 4 I'm talking about, the other 2 are great.
There was a time back in the day when I let it wear me out. Nowadays I just go with the flow.........its all a man can do in the face of such adversity.
And please no professional 'MUST TEACH ENGLISH IN A MILITARY FASHION UNTIL MY HEART STOPS BEATING' types are allowed to chastise my attitude. You try 10 months of that crap.

[peppermint]

I'm jealous of anyone who has a co-teacher. I'm supposed to, but don't.

[JongnoGuru]

Curious --- are all (most) of the Korean "co-teachers" women? Would seem so from the posts.

On a semi-related note:
Last year I met a young English hagwon teacher, a male of the species, at Incheon Airport. He'd been working for a hagwon somewhere out in Gangwon-do for nearly a year, and said he had to "high-tail it" out of Korea. He had all his belongings stuffed into two large bags that looked ready to burst, and was flying standby or something. I was meeting a client at the airport had time to burn, and was having a coffee on the Departures level.

I figured it was just another "bad hagwon boss / midnight run" saga, but no. He liked his job, his students and his boss. Still, he had to run. Apparently, a couple kids from his class claimed they spotted him and his female Korean co-teacher exiting a love-motel in town. He said he never saw rumours spread faster than they do in sleepy old Can't-remember-where, and rumours like that probably don't sit too well with the parents or the administration.

I told him it was unfortunate, but maybe all he needed was to change classes or change co-teachers. Perhaps he ought to just deny the vicious rumours and let them die down. Now here's where this guy's story gets interesting, unfolding from a tale of woe into a tale of "Wow!"

Seems those rumours were vicious, alright. (true, but) Totally vicious all the same! And actually, they weren't what had prompted him to take it on the lam. Not directly, anyway.

The rumours of his & his co-teacher's dalliance spread throughout the school, the supermarkets, the apartment complexes, etc., (damn small town, I'm guessing) until they inevitably reached the tender ears of two of his students' young mothers -- two young ladies whose charms, alas, he admits to having also enjoyed on a semi-regular basis. (one even took him to Guam )

One of these mothers immediately breaks off all contact with him, never calls, and changes her cellphone number. The other becomes incensed upon finding that her affections have been so cruelly trifled with (oh, she's just a paragon of virtue, dontcha know ) calls him at all hours and screams at him in Korean (which he couldn't understand), and demands to see him, "RIGHT NOW!!" sorta thing.

He finally agrees to meet with her. She's waiting for him at a cafe, where she starts out smiling, flirty, naughty, etc. He realises right away she's blitzed and decides to avoid a potentially explosive scene -- he slips out "to buy cigarettes" and doesn't go back.

All this while, his job is imploding at the hagwon, where all they know are rumours about the co-teacher, who soon quits. From here on, the details are fuzzy.... The co-teacher calls him and (not clear how she knows this) tells him that the husband of one of the student's mothers is after him and he'd better run for his life! How did the husband get wise? Because a friend or colleague of the husband's was AT THE SAME CAFE when the English teacher was meeting the mother!

The guy told me really enjoyed his time in Korea until those last few days, and he hoped to come back "once the heat blows over in Gangwon-do"...


The Guru

(Sorry -- does this belong on the "Freaky Waygook" thread instead?)

[crazylemongirl]

Guru perhaps it should. A damn interesting story though. Perhaps a very good example of the saying of don't sh it where you eat.

[ladyandthetramp]

[schwa]

I've always had co-teachers in the middleschools I've taught at, very pleasant all of them & some have become my good friends.

The first I worked with was quite adamant about splitting all duties 50-50, including lesson-planning. Her english was great & I learned a lot about classroom dynamics from her. Honestly though, I felt the kids might have benefited from more of me -- I saw them only once a week but my co-teacher taught them the rest of the week too. She had her reasons though. She wanted to create a co-teaching model contrary to the idea that other Korean english teachers given the same opportunity could just sit on their lazy duffs or not even show up.

To that end we gave demonstration classes & led discussion groups on the topic of team-teaching. Since then, other co-teachers I've had maybe lacked her drive or confidence but regarded the professional relationship they had with me as a partnership. (I think the term 'assistant teacher' is demeaning, whichever side it falls on.)

I do handle the bulk of in-class activities now but its still very much a team effort. Key to that is weekly meetings with my co-teachers to plan our classes together. Often just 5 or 10 minutes is sufficient, but everyone gets to have their input & feel part of the process.

Its possible your co-teacher is waiting for some direction from you as to how to do this thing together.