Korean Job Discussion Forums

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

The geography teacher at my high school is fabulous, and like an aunt to me. She loves English and practices it every day, uses English terms when teaching geography, and tries to use English when instructing her homeroom (unlike the English / homeroom teacher right next door). We have great conversations together. Yesterday I gave her a crossword puzzle on opposites I'm doing with my grade 2s today to keep them occupied while I go around checking their dialogue pronunciation in pairs. She finished it in about ten minutes, getting confused only on the answer for opposite of 'boring' - she was thinking exciting, not interesting.

This morning the high school photocopier was broken again so I went over to the middle school to use theirs. The new English teacher flags me over to ask me a bunch of questions about a test she has to prepare. Now, she's also a lovely lady, quite attractive apart from her 'I'm desperate' make-up, and I'm really pleased that she's so willing to ask for help, unlike some other English teachers. However, her English is just so abysmal that I can't for the life of me understand what she needs help with. She can't understand what I'm trying to say either. She asks me something about 'average' and '50%' and I explain that 20% of the questions should be difficult, 50% average, and 30% easy and show her some examples based on what level the students are at, but I don't know if that helps.

Then for fun I give her the same crossword puzzle I gave Mrs Geography and Miss English is stumped. 'Opposite of obey?' she asks me. 'What is "sane"?'; 'subtract?' I'm just sitting there wondering what on earth she's going to be able to teach my students. The previous English teacher she's replacing was by far the best at my school and now I've got someone who can't do a puzzle I'm sure many of my grade 2 HS students will be able to in less than 15 minutes. Plus, she's timid as hell and I fear she's going to get eaten alive by my naughty grade 3s in one class who adore me but like to give the Korean teachers as much grief as possible.

I wonder how much she knows about geography and if her and the high school geography teacher could just trade for a semester?