Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wylies99]

The Korean teachers at my school pretty much blame everything on us. Every time a parent calls about anything- it's my fault.

I would explain to the parents what is going on with class and their kids, but I can't speak or read Korean.

So, the parents call with concerns and the Korean teachers tell them ANYTHING to keep their kids enrolled.

What do I mean by ANYTHING? Well, usually it's something NEGATIVE about me- one class just won't do any homework, so the parents were told that it's my fault. One group of students fights every day, in class, and, again, that's my fault.

For one class, books didn't arrive for almost two weeks, so I had activities for the students. Parents complained and a Korean teacher told the parents that I didn't order the books on time ( I'm not in charge of ordering anything).

The best ones, so far, deal with medicines. These kids are sick all of the time, and they walk into class, hand me some prescription with instructions printed in Korean. Could a Korean teacher TELL ME what to do? Nope- and if the kids don't take the medicine on time, or take the wrong amount, the parents call- and the Korean teachers blame me.

Is this normal? Happens everywhere?

[Yu_Bum_suk]

That kind of thing happened all the time during my six months of hogwan dues. I'd combat it by telling them that unless they were very specific (who called, when, why, etc.) I didn't care, or I'd just brush them off and say something like 'well tell Jay's mother that I think her son is a disgrace and she should be ashamed of him'. Don't let it get to you - chances are 90% there's nothing you could do about it.

I've never heard of a single parent complaining at my middle / high school. I have, however, heard teachers phoning home to complain about students a few times.

[Picotrain]

Keep in mind that even if the complaint went directly to you, you would probably not understand it. The only person who can is the Korean teacher. The Korean teacher might well receive complaints about him/herself, but he/she might suppress such complaints and focus solely on your "mistakes." I would hazard to guess that, in a school such as you have described, the complaints received about the Korean teachers far outnumber the ones about foreigners.

[some waygug-in]

It wouldn't help to explain the situation to them. Korean parents seem to have pre-concieved expectations and notions about what hagwan classes are all about. Mostly they are totally unrealistic and one sided.

If you tried to explain things, chances are pretty good that they would see your actions as being "disrespectful" to the parents and you would be in worse doo doo.


Better to just ignore it as much as possible, unless it gets out of hand.