|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
|
 Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 6:32 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| World Traveler wrote: |
2008.
The 'great recession' began in 2007 and ended in June of 2009 according to economists.
Do you really think it's impossible for a uni grad to find jobs in the United States?
| Quote: |
WASHINGTON - A Federal Reserve survey says economic growth increased throughout the United States from April through mid-May, fueled by home construction, consumer spending and steady hiring.
Eleven of the Fed's banking districts reported "modest to moderate" economic growth, according to the Beige Book survey released Wednesday. The 12th, in Dallas, reported strong growth. |
I think there is going to be some good news tomorrow (my prediction).
| Quote: |
The biggest measure of the economy's health comes out Friday when the government releases the May employment report.
Economists forecast that employers added 170,000 jobs, roughly in line with April's pace, while the unemployment rate remained at a four-year low of 7.5 per cent. |
|
Didn't realize unemployment is back under 5 per cent. Must be the new math.... |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 6:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| ampersandman wrote: |
| What about the over-30 crowd? I just spoke to a recruiter who says he has some trouble finding work at Korean private institutes for anyone over 27. |
Yeah some hakwon owners are definately douchbags. But, I have heard people eventually find jobs. Just takes more patience, I guess. I'm getting near mid 30's and wonder what would happen to me if I wanted a job here |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
PatrickGHBusan
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: Busan (1997-2008) Canada 2008 -
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 3:40 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Dodge7 wrote: |
| Who's Your Daddy? wrote: |
| tob55 wrote: |
| Who's Your Daddy? wrote: |
| Sad certified teachers are coming here. I have a masters, but I could have done this job without any university education. |
I am satisfied to have come here and made it okay during the past 9+ years. |
Does you job require or utilize your education?
I could have done my job with no university education. I wouldn't have been mature enough at 19 to do it, but say at 26 years old with only a high school education, I could do it no problem.
What I'm saying is, I think it is a waste of most certified teachers, because they're working here way below their ability. |
"Working way below their ability". You got that right. I do feel it is a waste of my precious teaching degree working as an esl teacher and many of my fellow collegues knows what a shame it is we're here. |
Then get a job at an International school where they hire people with your qualifications and pay them accordingly. Then you would teach subject matter and not ESL. Seriously Dodge...can't have it both ways on here: rant about the low quality of work while boasting you are a certified and qualified teacher.... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
PatrickGHBusan
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: Busan (1997-2008) Canada 2008 -
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 3:45 am Post subject: |
|
|
| northway wrote: |
| transmogrifier wrote: |
| silkhighway wrote: |
| Who's Your Daddy? wrote: |
What I'm saying is, I think it is a waste of most certified teachers, because they're working here way below their ability. |
This is assuming that a "certification" is anything more than a glorified filtering and protectionist scheme. |
Yeah, I worked back home in the public school system and there were plenty of certified teachers who didn't have a clue what they were doing. |
All of the best teachers I've ever had were non-certified, while all the worst had masters in education. Certification is a way of assuring that those who teach are those who can't do. |
I would say that this while being your personal experience is not a reflection of the larger reality.
Certified teachers are required to have a B.A. in their subject for the most part. The cert is a additional qualifications in pedagogy / andragogy, classroom management and other teaching related matters. It is a selection criteria as well.
Are there bad cert teachers? You bet!
Are there people with no cert who are bad teachers? You bet.
Were I hiring teachers, I personally would pick the cert teacher most of the time because he or she, on top of a B.A. has some idea of what managing a class and delivering content is all about. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
byrddogs
Joined: 19 Jun 2009
Location: Shanghai
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 4:51 am Post subject: |
|
|
| PatrickGHBusan wrote: |
| Dodge7 wrote: |
| Who's Your Daddy? wrote: |
| tob55 wrote: |
| Who's Your Daddy? wrote: |
| Sad certified teachers are coming here. I have a masters, but I could have done this job without any university education. |
I am satisfied to have come here and made it okay during the past 9+ years. |
Does you job require or utilize your education?
I could have done my job with no university education. I wouldn't have been mature enough at 19 to do it, but say at 26 years old with only a high school education, I could do it no problem.
What I'm saying is, I think it is a waste of most certified teachers, because they're working here way below their ability. |
"Working way below their ability". You got that right. I do feel it is a waste of my precious teaching degree working as an esl teacher and many of my fellow collegues knows what a shame it is we're here. |
Then get a job at an International school where they hire people with your qualifications and pay them accordingly. Then you would teach subject matter and not ESL. Seriously Dodge...can't have it both ways on here: rant about the low quality of work while boasting you are a certified and qualified teacher.... |
I agree whole heartedly with this. I really don't understand the incessant need to belittle others while boasting about oneself. Dodge, if you have the Ed degree and are certified as you say you are, then why not try for more if you think what you do and the others that you talk down to do is a joke? I did the ESL thing in Korea quite successfully and have moved on to put my teacher's certification to use in Shanghai. Do I think that I wasted time teaching public middle school in Seoul? Not for a minute. It helped me to get the position I have now. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rockbilly
Joined: 19 Mar 2013
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 8:03 am Post subject: Quals Are Bogus! |
|
|
| northway wrote: |
| All of the best teachers I've ever had were non-certified, while all the worst had masters in education . . . |
The stupidest people I've ever met--in 44 years of life--ALL had master's degrees. ALL of them. And I use the word "stupid" advisedly.
1) A Canadian school principal who washed up in China, at one of the "Maple Leaf" franchise schools. Boasted of his TWO master's degrees. Utter moron, scarcely speaking in complete sentences.
2) A support-staff guy, of some description, at my undergrad college back in the 90s. MA from Stanford, sheepskin framed and stuck on his office wall. Talked like "so it's like, I mean, we was like . . . talking about perambu . . . I mean . . . parabol . . . I mean parameters of what's expecting of our students." Utter, shocking, APPALLING moron.
3) I did theological training--yeah, I know what some of you will think. Anyway, guy there with a Master's in psychology, boasting about how "very close to a PhD" he was. Reading from Genesis, in the lector's course, he had to sound out each word, kindergarten fashion. "In . . . the . . . be--begin--ing . . . GOD . . . cre-a-ted . . . the . . . HEA . . . vens . . . AND . . ." A functional near-illiterate with a Master's degree! And yes, English was his first language!
PhDs can be just as dumb.
Conversely--
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE -- no degree.
SAMUEL JOHNSON -- 3 yrs uni, no degree.
COLERIDGE -- 3 yrs, no degree.
SHELLEY -- sent down, no degree.
GORE VIDAL -- chose not to go to college.
NONE OF THE ABOVE WAS "QUALIFIED" TO TEACH ENGLISH IN KOREA!
But the semi-literate bozos I've described above would all have snagged uni jobs here!
Qualifications are bogus. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
edwardcatflap
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 10:47 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Qualifications are bogus |
This point gets raised periodically (always by people without any qualifications, strangely enough) who never seem to recognize the basic flaw in their argument. Saying you know three guys with teaching or any other type of qualifications who are useless proves one thing only. That gaining a qualification does not guarantee you will be a good teacher/intelligent person. And i'm fairly sure no one has ever claimed this to be the case. What it doesn't prove, however, is whether the qualification actually had a neutral or negative affect on the people in question, which would be an interesting argument against doing them. The three guys you mentioned might all have been much less intelligent erudite etc... before they got their Masters. Until someone comes on here, with a qualification,and says they didn't improve at all after doing it, or actually got worse, this issue is really a non starter. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
World Traveler
Joined: 29 May 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 12:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Weigookin74 wrote: |
| Didn't realize unemployment is back under 5 per cent. |
For college graduates it is. (It's actually under 4%.)
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/BLS_Employment_by_Education.png
And since you're from Canada, you might enjoy this:
http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2013/05/17/the-myth-of-the-unemployed-university-graduate/
| Quote: |
| Last year, university graduates were more likely than anyone else in that age group to be employed and just as likely to be working as the same age group was back in 2005 when no one fretted about jobs. |
New article from NBC News:
If the jobs data for May are any indication, the economy isn't falling into the feared "spring swoon." It isn't dancing in the aisles, either, though.
And while Uncle Sam�s penny-pinching may be putting a damper on hiring, a steady improvement in consumers� finances is helping to keep the economic recovery on track.
Employers stepped up hiring in May, a sign the economy continues the gradual recovery that�s been in place for the past three years. Though slower than the rebounds typically seen after past recessions, the pace of hiring has averaged about 180,000 new jobs a month.
Friday�s employment report from the Labor Department � pegging job growth last month at 175,000 - showed that pace virtually unchanged.
"At least for now, it's more of the same - a slow steady recovery,� said Rick Meckler, president of Libertyview Capital Management.
The gradual improvement in the job market has prompted more unemployed workers to look for a job. Some 420,000 people entered or returned to the work force in May, many of them recent high school and college graduates.
If you are wondering why the ESL market in Korea is flooded...
http://everydaykorea.com/2013/05/drastic-reduction-of-foreign-teachers-in-gyeonggi-do/
| Quote: |
The Ministry feels that the level of Korean teachers� English teaching competency has been improving through various kinds of training, thereby justifying the change in foreign teacher hiring policies.
In addition, they are considering ways to effectively monitor and manage the results of the existing foreign teacher workforce. |
(What the last part of that quote means is the Korean government is looking for ways to squeeze more work out of the foreigners remaining in the public school system. One example of this would be placing native English teachers at multiple schools throughout the work week, and this has certainly increased recently.)
Saying "The ESL market is flooded, therefore the U.S. economy is bad" is faulty reasoning. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
silkhighway
Joined: 24 Oct 2010
Location: Canada
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 7:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| edwardcatflap wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Qualifications are bogus |
T.. before they got their Masters. Until someone comes on here, with a qualification,and says they didn't improve at all after doing it, or actually got worse, this issue is really a non starter. |
I have a supposedly rigorous teaching qualification. I'm not saying I didn't learn anything, I just don't think what I learned what worth the time and money and wasn't something I couldn't have picked up through experience and ongoing professional development. What I gained was to pass through a hooop that allowed me to become a member of a smaller pool of labour and be able to boast that I was "certified".
In Ontario, they recently increased teachers' college to two years from one, not because there was a whole boatload of new curriculum that needed to be covered, but because they're trying to reduce the amount of applicants by half due to a teacher oversupply. It's easier to make the current crop of students pay double the tuition to make up the university shortfall. It is very blatant that the priority of teachers college as a way of badly controlling labour supply rather than training and enabling new teaching professionals. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Unposter
Joined: 04 Jun 2006
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 7:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Edward,
I understand your point but I think you are asking the wrong question(s).
Such as:
Is the qualification (whatever it may be) necessary to do the job effectively?
Is someone with the qualification (whatever it may be) inherently superior to someone who does not have the qualification?
What is the impact of the qualification compared to experience on the job?
When we have answers to those questions, the debate will be put to rest. Before that, I suspect the debate will continue on, espcially considering the history of the field. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 8:36 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| PatrickGHBusan wrote: |
I would say that this while being your personal experience is not a reflection of the larger reality.
Certified teachers are required to have a B.A. in their subject for the most part. The cert is a additional qualifications in pedagogy / andragogy, classroom management and other teaching related matters. It is a selection criteria as well.
Are there bad cert teachers? You bet!
Are there people with no cert who are bad teachers? You bet.
Were I hiring teachers, I personally would pick the cert teacher most of the time because he or she, on top of a B.A. has some idea of what managing a class and delivering content is all about. |
Perhaps. The teachers in my middle school were all certified, yet all seemed to have selected their profession simply because they needed a job. None of the teachers at my high school were certified, but they were people with advanced degrees who specifically chose to teach despite having a host of different options. I feel like the certification requirement allows the uninspired a relatively cushy job with good benefits. This isn't to say that certified teachers are generally uninspired, but I do think there are a lot of people who pursue teaching degrees because it's the safe thing to do. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
silkhighway
Joined: 24 Oct 2010
Location: Canada
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 8:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Unposter wrote: |
Edward,
I understand your point but I think you are asking the wrong question(s).
Such as:
Is the qualification (whatever it may be) necessary to do the job effectively?
Is someone with the qualification (whatever it may be) inherently superior to someone who does not have the qualification?
What is the impact of the qualification compared to experience on the job?
When we have answers to those questions, the debate will be put to rest. Before that, I suspect the debate will continue on, espcially considering the history of the field. |
One of the huge debates around teaching is we can't agree on what is good teaching let alone evaluate it, it's very subjective.
However, interestingly enough, in most attempts to do so there's been no correlation between good teaching and the amount of tertiary certification the teacher possessed. Malcolm Gladwell (author of Tipping Point and Outliers) compares teachers to quarterback in this article and asks the question: How do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 9:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| World Traveler wrote: |
| Weigookin74 wrote: |
| Didn't realize unemployment is back under 5 per cent. |
For college graduates it is. (It's actually under 4%.)
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/BLS_Employment_by_Education.png
And since you're from Canada, you might enjoy this:
http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2013/05/17/the-myth-of-the-unemployed-university-graduate/
| Quote: |
| Last year, university graduates were more likely than anyone else in that age group to be employed and just as likely to be working as the same age group was back in 2005 when no one fretted about jobs. |
New article from NBC News:
If the jobs data for May are any indication, the economy isn't falling into the feared "spring swoon." It isn't dancing in the aisles, either, though.
And while Uncle Sam�s penny-pinching may be putting a damper on hiring, a steady improvement in consumers� finances is helping to keep the economic recovery on track.
Employers stepped up hiring in May, a sign the economy continues the gradual recovery that�s been in place for the past three years. Though slower than the rebounds typically seen after past recessions, the pace of hiring has averaged about 180,000 new jobs a month.
Friday�s employment report from the Labor Department � pegging job growth last month at 175,000 - showed that pace virtually unchanged.
"At least for now, it's more of the same - a slow steady recovery,� said Rick Meckler, president of Libertyview Capital Management.
The gradual improvement in the job market has prompted more unemployed workers to look for a job. Some 420,000 people entered or returned to the work force in May, many of them recent high school and college graduates.
If you are wondering why the ESL market in Korea is flooded...
http://everydaykorea.com/2013/05/drastic-reduction-of-foreign-teachers-in-gyeonggi-do/
| Quote: |
The Ministry feels that the level of Korean teachers� English teaching competency has been improving through various kinds of training, thereby justifying the change in foreign teacher hiring policies.
In addition, they are considering ways to effectively monitor and manage the results of the existing foreign teacher workforce. |
(What the last part of that quote means is the Korean government is looking for ways to squeeze more work out of the foreigners remaining in the public school system. One example of this would be placing native English teachers at multiple schools throughout the work week, and this has certainly increased recently.)
Saying "The ESL market is flooded, therefore the U.S. economy is bad" is faulty reasoning. |
Being a roaster at Starbucks or taking calls in a call centre doesn't count. I suspect they get the jobs first over other less educated but are still settling for less. The truth is the unemployment rate is still too high. When it goes down further, then those folks will get better jobs and the others with no education can take the previously mentioned jobs. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 9:38 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| As far as managing the foreign teacher workforce, I can only speak to life out here in the provinces. We all work our 22 hours a week whether at one school or more schools to get those 22 hours pinched out of us. Sometimes, we'll get a couple of extra classes squeezed out of us but with some marginal overtime. If Seoul and Gyeonggi aren't doing that but will start, welcome to our world. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 9:41 pm Post subject: |
|
|
As for the other issue, pre 2009 Korea and post 2009 Korea are two very different worlds. Oh wait! What happened in 2009? Global economic meltdown, you say?
March, 2008 not enough teachers showed up. The local ed office couldn't get any. Took months to get any to show up. (Early 2008, US unemployment rate 4.9%?) March 2009, the local ed office got all the teachers they needed and they also showed up "on time" instead of months later. (Early 2009, approaching 9% and rising fast.) Hmmm, deductive reasoning seems in order here. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
