Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ucfvgirl]

I was wondering if these opportunities exist in Korea. As a qualified teacher, I am getting a little bored with my teaching skills and I would love to continue learning new tricks of the trade. Any suggestions?

[crazylemongirl]

Kotesol, or do some networking to find some teachers working in different areas eg. if you work in a public school go talk to some university teachers etc.

The other thing you could do is start learning Korean. My teaching radically changed after attending a good korean course at SNU.

[Hotpants]

Go to my link below. Scroll down for 'T' for 'Teacher Training'. There is a wealth of free online articles about teaching theories and personal improvement in the field.

[Homer]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I'm hoping my school will give me a month off this winter for 'professional development' so I can do a CELTA in Thailand instaed of freezing my ass off and teaching pointless morning 'camp' lessons in Korea. The problem will no doubt be with the school district, not my school.

However UCFVgirl, I have to say that you're sense of klogic is pretty poor. Why would the Korean government want to invest time, much less money, in helping white people be more effective English teachers? Shouldn't they be making the most use of you each year, carefully metting out your two-weeks holiday and having you on show the rest of the time? All white people are homesick and usually only stick around for a year anyways, so why invest time and money in them? Just put them to 'maximum use' for a year and control them as closely as possible and be done with them. As long as they do a good, well rehearsed demo class with a Korean co-teacher once a year, what's the problem?

[Homer]

A sad and blaek view of teaching in Korea Yum!

It is however on target for some teachers (most?) who stick it out for a year or two, put nothing into their jobs and leave. In that respect why would an employer invest in PD for his short term teachers?

If a short term teacher wants PD then it is up to him or her to pay for it and get it done. This improvement will obviously not benefit his or her current employer as he or she will move on after a year or two....

For long termers the game is different. By doing PD you open more doors and gain access to better, higher paying jobs.

If you expand your PD into learning Korean and learning about the culture here you open yet more doors here and in other private sector companies along with possible government work for your home country.

Finally, by getting those better jobs through PD and hard work you accumulate experience that can be highly valued by schools back home.

[Rockwell Bergstrom]

Check out the these sites.

http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/

http://iteslj.org/

BTW, nice sit Hot Pants.

[gypsyfish]

Hanyang and Sookmyung Universities offer certificate/diploma courses. Others do too, I think.

[ucfvgirl]

I appreciate all of your input. You have given me some options and I appreciate that. Keep the suggestions coming.

[maryb]

I dont know if this will help you or not but there is an 80 hour free online TESOL course.

http://www.efl-law.com/TESOL-Certificates.php

[Francis-Pax]

I would say that the first thing you need to do is go to http://www.kotesol.org .

[ucfvgirl]

I have decided to attend the KOTESOL conference at the end of this month. I looked through the conference and I am pretty excited about what is being offered. So those of you that have mentioned going there, thanks. I am taking you up on that one. I still read everyday to see if there are new suggestions, so keep them coming.

[OiGirl]

If you are in the south-west part of the country or need an excuse for a road trip, the Gwangju-Jeonnam Chapter KOTESOL meeting is this Saturday. This month it will be held at Chonnam University. If you need help getting there, PM me and I give you more specific directions and meet you at the back gate.

Time: 2:00- 5:00 p.m. November 11th, 2006
Venue: Chonnam National University Humanities Building #1- Room #106

Schedule
2:00pm - Registration and welcome Gathering
2:30pm - "Resources and the EFL classroom"
3:30pm - Snack Break
3:45pm - "Using Drama in the EFL classroom"
4:45pm - Drawing

Bios of Presenters and Abstracts

1. About Bruce Wakefield
Bruce Wakefield is currently a Senior English teacher employed in the
English School at the New Zealand Centre for Culture and Education (NZC)
in Gangnam, Seoul. His service in South Korea has included nearly four
years teaching in hagwons. Plus three years teaching at Soonchunhyang
University, southwest of Seoul. Prior to that he spent nearly 30 years
teaching in the New Zealand Primary School service. Much of this time
was spent teaching pupils learning English as a Second Language(ESL). He
is a Master of Education graduate from Auckland University, New Zealand,
and a Bachelor of Arts graduate from Massey University, New Zealand.

Abstract
"Using the EFL Classroom, and its Environment, as a Teaching Resource"

This workshop will aim to teach English teachers a variety of ways to
think about, and use, their classrooms as a teaching resource. In
addition the workshop will explore ideas regarding the use of the
environment beyond the classroom as a source of teaching resources. In
particular one issue that the workshop will explore is how the EFL
(English as a Foreign Language) classroom, and its environment, can be
viewed as a low cost teaching resource. As a trained teacher from New
Zealand he finds the basic approach to EFL teaching in South Korea to be
very "textbook" orientated. In turn he feels the learning of English
becomes too disconnected from the real world. However another issue
that the workshop will explore is how teaching based on the EFL
environment can be used as the basis for tracking student progress. The
workshop will be activity based. Participants will be involved in
"doing" and "thinking". In addition a third issue that will be explored
is how the ideas to be presented can be adapted for use by teachers
working in a variety of educational settings. All the way from
Kindergarten and Elementary School pupils, through Middle / High School
and university levels, and up to mature adult students.

2. About John Buckley

John Buckley holds an LLM in Human Rights Law, a BA in Law and French
and a Certificate in TEFL. He has been teaching English in Korea for the
past five years. He currently works at Chonnam National University. He
has a particular interest in the history of English and the development
of new vocabulary. He has been involved with drama since he was ten
years old and was a founder member of the "Hae-kom Players", a drama
group based in Ulsan. He has used drama in various forms in both his own
language learning (he speaks five languages) and in teaching his
students at all levels, from Beginners up to Teacher Training.

Abstract
"Using Drama in the EFL classroom"

When Drama is mentioned such words as "the stage", "acting" and "plays"
come to mind for many people. For many the situations or series of
events which have vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or
results and which happen daily in lives for .e.g. the drama of a murder
trial or the final dramatic minutes of the match are not really
associated with "drama". Life doesn�t require a stage for drama to
happen and neither does the classroom. For life it-self is the stage. As
Shakespeare put it "All the world�s a stage, and all the men and women
merely players: They have their exits and entrances; and one man in his
time plays many parts�"(As You Like It, II, vii, 139). Shakespeare
realized the importance of drama and so among many others did Oscar
Wilde, "Give any man a mask and he will tell you the truth". This latter
comment is particularly apt for why we should use drama as a means of
getting students to express themselves in English. Give a student a
character part or an alter ego [Wilde�s mask] and they lose their
inhibitions. Students will speak [tell you the truth]. Thus, drama
provides the context for meaningful exchange in which participants see a
reason to communicate, and focuses on "how to do things" rather than
merely on "how to describe things". So while I will give a cursory
glance at the "Why drama in the classroom?" the main focus of this
presentation is "How to use drama in the classroom?" or rather how to
make English more vivid, emotional, interesting and striking.

Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL
www.kotesol.org/gwangju
[email protected]

[ttompatz]

[crazylemongirl]