Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

This is kind of funny. A half wit vice director at my friend's hagwon is playing a weird game with his foreign teachers. He comes to the teacher with what is ostensibly a complaint from a parent. My friend got "A student's mother was complaining you don't talk enough in class..."

Right. Not talks TOO much. But the teachers doesn't talk ENOUGH. An odd comment considering "how would the mother know?" and why would a student complain about that? "Teacher makes us do the talking in English speaking class! Teacher makes us learn!"

She wrote it off as a comment by a malicious student. Kid gets a bad grade, mother demands to know why, kid pukes up some stupid lie, mother calls in to complain.

Next day, her coworker was told "A mother called to complain that you look too tired." Again, how does the mother know? Does a 10 year old complain about that to a mother? "Teacher always has a 100 yard stare! Teacher thinks there's a tree line in class!" How many of us don't look tired after wrestling with class after class of screaming kids?

She then mentions to her coworker "Funny thing, the Vice Director had a strange mother complaint for me. He said a mother said I didn't talk enough."

The coworker said "That's weird, because the Vice Director told me about your mother complaint and it wasn't that you weren't talking enough. He said the mother complained you were sitting down in class too much."

It's become obvious the Vice Director is pulling these complaints out of his ass, attributing them to some random mother, and dumping on his foreign teachers.

Cracker.

[Real Reality]

How about a concealed or hidden Internet camera with sound?

[JongnoGuru]

Hey now, Reality! You know you're not supposed to be talking in a thread!

I wasn't going to tell you this, but many of the mommies have been complaining that you're talking too much these days, when you should be posting link after link to the Chosun, the JoongAng, the Times and the Herald!

Remember: What Mommy wants Mommy gets.

[dulouz]

Yea, I got that too. The owners don't have a problem lying when they need to or even when they don't need to.

[Grotto]

typical director bullcrap. For some reason they always want to tell you what a bad job you are doing. Mothers are complaining....students are complaining......numbers are down.

Just laugh in their face....its so ludicrous that it doesnt need to be addressed. They think that if they tell you that there are complaints all the time you will work harder. They dont realise that we have some modicum of intelligence and can figure out what the hell is going on.

In my public school gig right now they are amazed when I tell them foriegners talk to each other all the time. (I dont get complaints here)But they sometimes try to tell me "everyone else is doing it" when I check with other people in the program and they are not 'doing it' I tell them point blank.

Last year in a hogwan the stupid director would come and complain to me about the other foriegn teacher and then complain to him about me. Stupid!

[Demonicat]

I just make up a lie to respond with:
"Mother says you don't talk enough"
"Well, according to current TEFL theory TTT, or teacher talking time, is distructive to a class"

"Mother says you lookee tired"
"Well, I spent last night studying until 3 am, sorry"

"Mother says you go to fast"
"well..." acutally I haven;t thought of a response to this one, so I generally have to teach the same book twice to kids that perfected it the first time. Damn mothers not wanting to shell out 35 bucks for their kids books every 2 months.

[Grotto]

One way to stop this crap in its tracks is to go way way overboard on it.

OH MY GOD!!! A mother complained alright lets call her in so I can sit down with her and we can talk about this. Lets call her right now I have an even better idea lets take her out for dinner and discusss this over dejagalbi. I demand we deal with this today, immediately, if not sooner.

Watch the stupid director freeze like a deer caught in headlights!

[Badmojo]

[eamo]

[redbird]

How often do you talk with parents? Are there any formal conferences set up during the year?

[jajdude]

One poster on another thread not so long ago had a great response to his director, after a few complaints:

"Tell me exactly what you want me to do, and I will do it."

End of discussion.

=============================================================================

Impossible to reply to? Maybe.

Imagine J. Kim in Saudi Arabia.

Korean, the language they want.

J. Kim knows no Arabic. They gawk at him wherever he goes.

And so on......

sound familiar?

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[Hollywoodaction]

TTT, in a perfect world, would be kept to a minimum. That theory often gets thrown out of the window when you have students like mine who, on one hand, claim they want to improve their conversational skills, but, on the other, refuse to talk when given ample opportunity to do so. I'm slowly training my students to understand their role. In one of my classes, I use a book that aims to reduce TTT to a minimum. I love it. It's got an insane variety of tasks that all induce different skills while giving me the role of a coach more than a teacher. My students in that class are starting to get the picture, although I'm not sure they happy with doing all the work that comes with having a student centered class while I simply listen in and correct some of their errors or answer their questions. Another problem is that I'm not sure they understand how good these tasks really are because they are a bit more based on language acquisition research than what they have already been exposed to.

[schwa]

What book is that?

[Hollywoodaction]

Inside Out, published by MacMillan. Great for young adults. I also recommend anything created by David Nunan.