Korean Job Discussion Forums

[retrogress]

If you are a public school teacher in Korea, please take part in this poll. (It would make me happy.)

Sometimes I think that there is very little direction for foreign teachers in this country. Many feel lost, some are totally in command. I wonder how many fit into each category. More importantly I wonder who teachers consider themselves as teachers.

If you want to leave a message with why you find yourself in the selected category, please do.

Thanks!

[mrsquirrel]

I'm here for the fresh kimchi.

[crusher_of_heads]

I'm here for the warm, intelligent and welcoming people.

[Fishead soup]

You left out several other catagories

Edutainers- Someone who focuses of making learning fun

Walking tape recorders- Being used simply for Choral repetition for the textbook

[retrogress]

to Fishhead Soup: edutainer would fit in with "making students interested in English".

Walking tape recorder??? EEK!

[Hank the Iconoclast]

Sometimes I get a lot of teaching done but other times I just try my best just to get them interested. I try to be a full-blown academic teacher but that can be difficult in rural Korea when their level is abyssmal at times.

[b_jinx]

[nicholas_chiasson]

I'm here as an assistant teacher because that is what my contract says I do. I try to do said job as well as possible but not sweat it, as I'm not paid or given the benefits of a korean teacher, nor do I have the 60 hour a week of duties.

[WoBW]

Depends what I'm teaching and where I'm doing it. I loved a couple of hagwons (yes, you read that correctly) because I got to teach academic writing and also TOEFL speaking to a bunch of super-smart kids. That means I had to teach the associated grammar for the writing. I love that kind of teaching, so then I was an academic teacher. Shit, I had a nine-year old girl who would write 3 page essays with almost NO mistakes, and she'd never been abroad. I loved that!

Now I'm at a private public school, and I'm not allowed to teach grammar or rigorous academic writing . So I guess now I'm more of an edutainer. I am expected to play plenty of games and 'be nice.'

I prefer the academic teaching.

[Ramen]

I'm here to play games.

[captain kirk]

Edutainer. BUT that means, to me, showmanship and being engaging. No, not like a clown.

Jeez man there's an 'open class' coming up. I'm contractually an 'assistant teacher' to the Kcoteacher but they let me do what I want. However for the open class it's the usual spare pickins for morons out of the established curriculum. Led by Kcoteacher who, smiling like a maniac, hates herself during these ordeals as much as I do. The kids will all want to kill themselves, as well.

Survive this temporary inanity?

[retrogress]

I find my students learn better and have a better attitude when I let them do activities and play games. (I try to remind myself of that French class in Highschool that I have virtually no recollection of--pardon the contradiction in this sentence). If we had played cames, learned to count to twenty and had a really, really cool French teacher, perhaps I would have taken an interest nad continued to study it. But we didn't.

I have another year of teaching elementary before I leave the K for good. (really. Next time I'm going to Japan even if I don't make much money--I need culture, not cash at this point).

By the way, I wish someone had told me "YOUR NOT ALLOWED TO TEACH GRAMMAR". It would have saved me the trying last semester. Foreign teachers need someone to lay (by this I mean expectations and guidelines) just as students often NEED a teacher to lay down the law.

[moosehead]

I answered the first choice but I do teach in a private elem, not public.

wherever any of us do teach, no doubt we are at the mercy of how Ks think we should be teaching, and that right there is the main problem.

when I first came I did want direction - in teaching, not in teaching English. unfortunately, it seems Ks need to have control over everything and teaching is no exception - never mind they can't conjugate a verb properly to save their lives or use articles where they should, or expand adjective and adverb usage -

our K head teacher can't even capitalize and use punctuation on her memos to us!! It's embarrassing, really it is.

sigh, whatever. good thread anyway

[xtchr]

[crusher_of_heads]