Korean Job Discussion Forums

[nautilus]

Actually I have 3..

#1 Co-teach 14 classes

A pleasure to work with and very easygoing. She picks up English fast and is never too proud to correct mistakes or share ideas. Supportive. Her only flaw is she sometimes lets students become too noisy before stepping in to discipline them. 90%

#2 Co teach 5 classes.

Very good at controlling students but otherwise totally unimaginative, thus steals my ideas whenever possible.. Reacts badly to criticism and remains sour about things that happened a looong time ago. Desperately insecure and strives always to be the centre of attention. Sadly her mind is also seething with a variety of racist ideologies. 20%

#3 stand in /sub/ summer camp
Young and talented but squeezed out of the game by older hags and harpies in the heirarchy who feel threatened by her. Due to her timidity and obedience to elders, her teaching abilities may never be allowed to be realised. 80%

[fromtheuk]

She has good manners with Koreans but displays a different set when it comes to moi.

She used to bad mouthe me with the trade mark fake Korean smile but she, like the previous co-teacher, is tired of me because her antics only make me hold my head even higher than before.

She puts on an awful kiddy voice when she talks to Korean teachers......I digress.

She is a control freak without any control. She is an actress, she can act very convincingly.

She tried to plot against me, but ever since I told the Principal about her shouting at me in class, (among other reasons, she refused to tell me what she was writing about me in her file, after our arguments) I feel she has realized there is nothing more she can do to get rid of me.

She is devious and I am grateful I totally ignore her unless there is a reason for us to speak. She is clearly resentful because her English is not very good at all.

Her English is adequate but not good enough. She is a nasty person and I look forward to upsetting her for the remainder of my contract.

[Hank the Iconoclast]

I have five regular co-teachers and one semi-regular co-teacher.

Monday -

#1. Easily the nicest guy I have met since being in Korea. He buys me fruit and takes me out to lunch. He engages me in conversation and is all around a great co-worker. In class, he controls the students well but we don't really work together on lessons. I make the lessons and he helps with getting the students to undersand. ----------- A

Tuesday and Wednesday

#2. My main co-teacher. She is really young and it's her first year teaching. You can tell she wants to fit in, hence her talking time with me is rather limited. However, we get along nicely and she never power trips. However, she did make me write an eight page paper very quickly while I was at my Monday school and never told me what the Office of Education thought of it. In the classroom, she is definitely an asset with discipline and she clarifies points for the students. Definitely helpful. ----- A-

#3. My third co-teacher teaches with me in the worst classes at my main middle school. He's very quiet, gives the students the answers to questions I am asking (when he does anything). He doesn't really control the classes and since they are my worst classes, I've had to improve my classroom management skills. Since I have built a rapport with most of those classes, I don't really need him since he doesn't offer anything.
He is a nice guy and I feel bad when I get irritated at him but he really does need to take a more pro-active role in the classroom. ----- D

Thursday

#4. My fourth co-teacher is one of my two favorite co-teachers. We work together on all the lessons. She gives me ideas and has a wonderful classroom management style. It doesn't matter if I am teaching 32 kids in her classes because I can address all of the students in some or another despite the size. In terms of teaching, she has helped me develop the most and has encouraged me greatly. She treats me as a real teacher, despite my lack of experience before this year. A+

Friday

#5. My fifth co-teacher is another one of my favorites. She is incredibly nice and she helps me if I have issues at other schools. For example, I had an issue with some students that were harassing myself and my fiance in the small town I live in. I called her up on a Sunday night and she help me find the appropriate action to take against the students.

I found out that one of the students was at the technical high school adjacent to my middle school on Tuesday and Wednesday. By Wednesday, I was with the principal of that high school. The student apologized to me in person. The principal gave me two choices, I could have had the student expelled for his actions against me or accept his apology.

In addition, I had issues with my main school last December. She helped to mediate the problem. She has a cool head and she has been a great help to me and my fiance.

Her classes are always a pleasure to teach and it's my favorite school of the week. A+[/b]

[Easter Clark]

1. 40-ish guy very easy-going and doesn't do much at all in the way of discipline. He told me himself that in my classroom he is my "slave." He will do role plays with me if I really encourage him--otherwise he basically translates instructions and jumps in when he sees the kids are having a hard time with the lesson. Does his best to help me seem like a personable guy with the students. Spoken English on a scale of 1-10: 7. Grade: A-

2. mid 40-ish guy who is very strict and likes every single stage of the lesson as tightly controlled as possible. This is to the extent that when I assign pairwork instead of letting the students work on their own he has half of the class do drills while the other half responds in unison. I have absolutely no discipline problems in his classes because the students have lost all motivation since he has killed their creativity. I teach the material and he teaches it again, but adds the history of the vocab a well as grammatical minutiae that makes watching the grass grow seem like an extreme sport. Spoken English on a scale of 1-10: 5. Grade: D-

3. Young guy--29 whose English is the best of the three.Very enthusiastic and energetic. Makes mistakes here and there but nothing major. Also very keen to make the kids do push ups and give them lashings with his stick at the slightest provocation. Oftentimes he will take a seat next to a student and watch me teach, then when I ask him to help explain a point he acts surprised that I want his help. Very loud guy but his passion for English rubs off on the kids. Spoken English on a scale of 1-10: 8. Grade: B

[BS.Dos.]

#1 (English level: 7)
#2 (English level: 5)
#3 (English level: 3)

[jadarite]

Depends, is co-teaching supposed to be a team effort or simply "You teach one half of the lesson and I teach the other half"?

[KYC]

F. Be creative with that F

[Dome Vans]

At my one middle school:

My handler: A+. Can't do enough for me. I plan all my lessons and she'll help out if need be. We have an excellent working relationship. Always in the classroom.

My other co-teacher who was my previous handler: A+. When he was handler, nothing was too much hassle. He's also a Poo-Jang-nim so very well respected. He lets me plan and teach all my lessons and helps out with discipline. Always in the classroom.

At my other Middle school:

My 2 co-teachers: A+. Excellent working relationship, we have a really good laugh in the English zone when not teaching. The same as the other school I do the teaching and they help out. Works out very well.

My elementary school:

Not an English speaking co-teacher as such for 3rd and 4th grade, but the home room teachers stay in the room. 5th Grade teacher. A+. Young and very pretty always helps out 100%, translating and learns English as well. 6th grade teacher. A+. Excellent as well. She's the School's Korean English teacher. She helps out loads.

Overall excellent. I really enjoy working with them and and have a good personal relationship as well with them. It's not all teaching, teaching teaching. Very pleased that I am left to plan everything and if need be there's support if I need it. No personality clashes at all and most certainly no over bearing teachers. I think it helped that the Native teacher before me was an absolute prik. I think they're relieved they haven't got another strange, alcoholic NT who'd send inappropriate text messages to the female teachers and spend a lesson teaching students swear words.

[nautilus]

[branchsnapper]

I think only one guy out of six wears a tie at my school. Is that a countryside thing?

My "co-teacher" doesn't teach with me at all, I just roll into everyone's regular classroom, so it is all very hit and miss.

[Dome Vans]

Not sure whether it's just a countryside thing. I think it comes down to the principal. At one middle school the principal strongly recommends that the male teachers wear shirt and tie. So all wear them. At my other school he's not fussed, so teachers can wear polo shirts or shirt and no tie.

At elementary, they're even less fussed about what I wear but they like my clown suit kept clean and free of egg stains.

[reimund]

My 5th grade teacher: D+

I have some personal bias here, because I'm leaving my public school as a result of her shenanigans. Still, the kids are ridiculously rowdy, and she's terrible with disciplining them. I've done more things on the discipline side than her, and after a certain point I just gave up, because with her being around 40, me 23, her lack of initiative completely undermined my authority.

She also has serious flaws in logic. I made a rule that I'd only say vocabulary words twice during tests, in order to get the students to be quiet and listen. What does she do? Yes. Repeat the vocab words over and over to the kids while I'm administering the test. WTF!

In terms of working relationship, it's been an absolute disaster. Let's just say she wants her cake and eat it, too. She lies, she tries to underhandedly maintain dominance over me, and once told me "I don't like you, and I don't trust you" in order to scare me and eventually bend to her will. Another example is her ridiculous demands to class that the kids respond to her greetings every morning with excitement and joy, when she could, oh, I don't know, greet them first in a pleasant way as to gain everyone's attention and respect.


6th grade teacher: C+

I was going to give her a B+, but after careful reconsideration, I'm deciding to give her a C+ out of spite.

She's an incredibly smart, and very witty person, enough so that she can command the attention of the class. But, again, like the other teacher, is very very underhanded and manipulative.

There was a very specific instance where she blatantly tried to win more favor with the kids than me (by giving them more candy than I did ), and it set an awful precedent and tone for the rest of the lessons. One of the students she gave candy to is now rowdy, loud, obnoxious, and it has, once again, undermined my authority as a teacher - one day he thought it was amusing to interrupt everything I was saying, and it pissed me off.

I've realized this is a thing she does - using other people to fight others. She has an underhanded grudge with my other co-teacher, and uses me (or, tries to show how we have a "great relationship") to make her jealous.

Needless to say, my experiences with co-teachers have been really, really bad. Admittedly, I'm no saint in all of this, as there were things I could have done better, but I was hoping for some role models to teach me how to teach. I've seen some positive things in the second co-teacher that I'd like to practice, but her underhanded power grabs have turned me off from her.

[I_Am_The_Kiwi]

Co-teaching does not exist in my school.
No teachers in the room except me....Period - 40 kids for 50mins...all mine

[pootle]

#1 My wrangler, runs lessons directly from the textbook with no additional materials. If I'm lucky I get 10 minutes at the end of a lesson for the enigmatically named 'Free Talk' or to give the kids a crossword or something else directed by her. Zero creativity, I wonder why the Korean government is bothering to pay me. Rating: 2/10

#2 Can't speak English and spends most of the time worrying about keeping her job, napping, or being taught English by me. Never attends my classes so I get to actually teach Rating: 5/10

#3 Thinks co teaching means he naps and I teach. Problem here is that he insists I teach from the deathly textbook, but I just go through the textbook crap quickly and use the theme/grammer point as a basis for more useful activities that involve lots of student listening and speaking. Rating: 4/10

Remind me again why I'm here?

[sojourner1]