Korean Job Discussion Forums

I_Am_Wrong · Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: whatever

My schedule is too full for me to make up missed classes but even when I had a lighter schedule last year I never had to make them up. The only time we've ever done a make-up class is to make sure that once class doesn't get way behind the others. And yes, my class schedule is so confusing cuz at the moment they're all over the place as to what's been taught and what hasn't. We're just going to do a couple movie classes to bring all of them to the same part of the book.

thursdays child · Joined: 21 Sep 2005

Someone mentioned before about 'using the foreigner' ..at my school i experience the opposite - i never teach a whole week either, but because my scheduled classes are considered non-essential so if there's cleaning, extra study, photos, detentions...... they use my time. Difficult for continuity - but they do have a point - it's better to skip convo class than grammar class that actually is tested.

Same boat anyone?? Are you dispensible???

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Hater Depot · Joined: 29 Mar 2005

I felt a bit dispensable mainly because the mid-terms and finals only had one or two questions each drawn from my lessons.

thursdays child · Joined: 21 Sep 2005

In MY situation I am dispensible because I don't teach the students who sit the exams with speaking or listening. I teach vocational studies to students who maybe/most probably won't need spoken English. These students don't sit any kind of exam. I've repeatedly offered to teach the higher levels who do need me - but my school just thinks it's a stooopid idea???

TheUrbanMyth · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Location: Retired

No make-up classes, no cleaning, no detention. And only 21 40 min classes. Supposed to be 22, but that is the teachers class and they are almost always busy doing something else. Today I only taught them for 20 minutes and then they had some school event to take care of.
It's a easy job, but yeah the downtime does get a bit annoying sometimes.

(Now some guy's going to come here and state that there is no way that we have all that free time and we are just lying to make ourselves feel better) Rolling Eyes

SPINOZA · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Location: $eoul

I'm not sure why you feel dispensable, TC. You've been recruited by the K-Govt to improve K-kids' capacity to speak and understand proper English. There must be some reason. There may not be any questions on the exams related to your lessons, but is it possible to include conversation English questions on formal, written exams? The English exams are comical anyway - all multiple choice. That's what my observations suggested anyway. If that's wrong, feel free to put me in my place, anyone.

blunder1983 · Joined: 12 Apr 2005

A while back I saw some posts talking as how we only see the kids once a week we dont make a valuable impact on the groups. But that misses a lot of side bonuses that we provide the school.

1. We make English more exciting/fun.
2. We are constantly communicating in English to students, in the local area in the office etc.
3. We improve the ability of the co-teachers considerably.

There are plenty more but thats all i can think of now

thursdays child · Joined: 21 Sep 2005

Agree with everyone about everything. The FT can make English more fun and relevant (which i know i do).... I'm just referring to the original thread about copious amounts of downtime. And in schools like mine which are not academic, the FT does get a lot of freetime - which makes you feel a little useless and guilty toward your co-workers. But (as before said) slowly getting in to pissin' about - just not used to it that's all.