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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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ajuma
Joined: 18 Feb 2003
Location: Anywere but Seoul!!
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 Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 5:18 am Post subject: |
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R. S. Refugee : Unless you ABSOLUTLEY want to teach adults, DON'T take that job!!! It's a terrible situation!!!! Splits are bad enough (although they CAN be a good thing...gives you time in the middle of the day to nap, work out, shop, study, etc) but the "find your own place in 3 months is INSANITY!!! Finding a place to live in Seoul THAT YOU CAN AFFORD when you don't speak the language (I assume that you don't) would be a nighmare! Even if they say they'll offer assistance in finding something....DON'T BELIEVE IT!!!
As for "who would be better to teach".... as peppermint said, teaching adults is great for a newbie, since the adults can answer a lot of questions. The PERFECT job would be one where you could teach a variety of students and find out which YOU prefer. Everyone has their own favorites. I love 5-6th graders, middle school and 1st year high school and university students. Adults are ok, but not my favorite...and you can KEEP anyone younger than 4th grade! BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!! As you can see by the other posts, some people love them...and I say..."God bless 'em!" |
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Milwaukiedave
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Location: Goseong
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| Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 11:29 pm Post subject: |
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I agree with Dylan, the older they get the tougher it is to teach them.
At my last job I taught preschool, kindergarten and elementry.
Honestly the kindergarten were the easiest for me, mainly because they were hard workers. I enjoyed throwing hard things at them (especially the upper level k class). They are also the group I spend the most time with and I'm sure that had something to do with it as well.
The preschoolers are just plain evil! At that age, they really don't have much of an attention span. Pretty normal for a small child. I still can't believe parents expect kids to learn English at that young of an age.
Some of the elementry kids are good, but the class I had were a bunch of spoiled rotten kids. At least two of the four were very bright, but didn't want to work very hard.
That's my take... |
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Zyzyfer
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: who, what, where, when, why, how?
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| Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 9:54 pm Post subject: |
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| R. S. Refugee wrote: |
| manlyboy wrote: |
I've been working with Korean kids for about 18 months now. I taught adults for three years before that. The idea of switching to kids worried me a lot, but it turned out to be a good trade off.
Losses: Intellectually stimulating lessons, almost no behaviour management required, huge social network to tap in to.
Gains: No more split shifts, kids are fun, students aren't allowed to tell you how to do your job.
As far as age groups go, this is how I would rate the kids at my school:
Grade 2: Literally bounce off the walls. Blood, poop, and urine is par for the course.
Grade 3: Still bouncing off the walls, but have better control of their orifices.
Grade 4: Mostly angels. Troublemakers are few enough to not provoke any psychotic episodes on my part.
Grade 5: My favourite. Mature enough to have decent conversations with, but not yet rebellious enough to be giving you crap all the time.
Grade 6: Give you crap all the time. Behaviour management skills are sorely tested here. |
Interesting and informative. Thank you. Since you didn't mention kindy, 1st, 7th and upward, I assume you haven't had any personal experiences with them yet.
Cheers. |
I can add in a bit for those other years, since I taught at a middle school
Grade 7: In standard hakwons, all middle schoolers can be cumbersome. Generally very shy about speaking. However, 7th graders at heart have lost their school worries again and can be a fun bunch, very talkative in general. They just hate hakwons.
Grade 8: Same story in hakwons, and in general they're focused more on and hating studying again, as they're already starting to prepare for middle school graduation. However, they can still be fun at times. Rabblerousers are much more frequent than Grade 7, and you definitely start getting bad apples.
From there on, I've only had experience at a specialized hakwon, and all of the kids are in general more in tuned and wanting to study, so they don't give me any problems. |
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philinkorea
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 3:28 am Post subject: |
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im about to finish my second year which has been teaching adults. ive preferred it a lot to teaching kids and id agree that its really good if your new to the country.
well in my first year i taught kids outside seoul and i got so alienated, it was horrible. generally korea can be a clsed culture as we always say and teaching kids for me didnt help that
my adults classes we speak about culture etc. i got to be friends and hang out with them. actually a girl i taught later became my girlfriend which was great
the split shift is so bad though it has killed me and i wont do it again. if i come back ever again i wouldnt do that shift and may shift back to teaching kids but bettering my original situation. make sure my korean is much better and get back in contact with my old foreign and old k student friends here
but yeah, that job you got offered sounds rubbish. you should be able to do better |
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