Korean Job Discussion Forums

[phaedrus]

I think that an English school when run as a business has some serious problems. Unless it has a clear educational mandate I would even debate that the people who instruct there are not really teachers.

What I am talking about is that when the school is run based on recommendations from parents there are serious problems with quality of education.

I think real schools with real teachers should state what they will accomplish and tell the customers to take it or leave it. The way a lot of private schools back home are run.

[kangnamdragon]

we are not back home................

[Derrek]

Well, as far as I know, there are definately schools like that here too.

You know what I find interesting about teaching is that it's one of those jobs a considerable number of people can do fine at even if they don't have any education in it. And some can do extremely well.

You can't be an Engineer and fake it.
You can't be a Doctor and fake it.
You can't be a TV Commercial Writer/Producer and fake it (my old job).
You can't be a tailor and fake it.
The list goes on.

You CAN be a garbage person and fake it.
You can be a maid and fake it.
You can be a waiter and fake it.
You can be an English Teacher and fake it.

I suppose I would feel a bit low on my profession if English Teaching was what I spend so much time and money in college for, and now people around me with no education in that field are doing the same and making around the same dough.

[Mr. Pink]

[OiGirl]

You can be a Teacher and not work in a school.
You can be a Teacher and work at Wal-Mart.
You can be a Teacher and work in a restaurant.
You can be a Teacher and work at the beach.
You can even be a Teacher and work at a commercial hogwon.

The ability and opportunity to teach is not defined by the situation.

[some waygug-in]

I take it you never saw the move, "Catch Me If You Can".

It's amazing what can be faked with a little bravado and some creativity.


But seriously, most real teachers wouldn't work in hagwans. They can get much better gigs in real schools.

This doesn't mean all hagwans are bad, and all hagwan teachers are fake.
What I mean is, most people with BEd degrees would never accept the conditions that a lot of hagwans deliver.

That's my 1.5 centavos.

The way I see it, hagwans are like boot camp for newbie and wannabe teachers. Some don't last, some thrive, some give up and go to another country, some use the experience to move on to bigger and better things.

Cheers

[weatherman]

[Derrek]

[howie2424]

Here's my take. There are some schools here that fall into your category of daycare centers i.e they have no idea what they're doing, cater to the parents' every whim, try to keep everyone happy and, in the process accomplish very little from a learning perspective.

There are others that don't just take any student that walks in off the street. have a well organized and considered curriculum and follow the take it or leave it approach with the parents. These schools are, IMHO, the exception in Korea.

There are some that may fall somewhere in the middle but, generally, I'd guess these two categories cover most of the schools.

There are advantages and disadvantages to teaching in either environment. The daycare type places (my school falls into this category) can be frustrating because there's constant disorganization, parent complaints and no apparent structure to what you're doing. On the other hand, as a teacher you'll spend alot of time playing games or generally f***ing around and, so long as the kids are happy and come back month after month, your owner isn't going to be whining to you about the quality of your teaching abilities. Not a bad gig if you ask me, unless you're a serious type in which case you'll feel useless and ought to look for something better.

At the more serious schools you're going to enjoy a more stable environment with some clearly defined teaching goals, but you're also going to be expected to produce some results beyond a bunch of cheerful, smiling students. That means making more of an effort and, in most cases, having a little more in the way of qualifications. If you want to have the daily warm fuzzy feeling of having accomplished something, you should be working in one of these places because you're just not going to get it in the daycare style joints.

My own personal solution? Get the best of both worlds. Teach by day at the babysitting schools and line up some privates with serious students at night. Take your 2 million a month and free apartment by day and do the serious teaching on the side in the evenings for extra cash. Yes, flamers I know it's illegal and considered a mortal sin here in this land of the rule of law , but if you come to Korea to teach, 2 things are probably going to be true. One, the odds are you're going to end up in a babysiting type position and, two, the best chance you have to do some real teaching is to find it yourself.

[riverboy]

In defence of labourers everwhere.
You can't fake being a Garbage man if you can't pick up more than 10 kg and walk several km per day.
The same goes with most other labour jobs.
I could never fake being a maid(I'm too ugly, too messy and way tot hairy to look like I belong in one of thise nice little sexy outfits)
A waiter, well I agree with you there because I used to cook and most waiters piss me off.
TV commercial writer? Come on... Three fromgs saying "BUD" "Weiss" "ER" Does not constitute brilliance in any sense.
And yes I have convinced a few cutie pies over the years that I was a qualified doctor

[William Beckerson]

[coolsage]

Let's cut to the chase. The overwhelming majority of people who come to Korea to teach English are not teachers, per se. They have a Bachelor's degree in History, or Literature, or Beekeeping, or a specialty unrelated to actual teaching. Most are here to pay down student loans. Many will learn the craft of teaching while on the job. Some who are not cut out for that role will decide that after one year, to take the money and run. A few will choose to stick around longer, either because the money starts to look good and/or a personal relationship develops (and with all of these stunning Korean girls walking around, it's inevitable). But not much of this can be said to actually advance the level of English ability amongst the locals, which is our humble mandate here, and what we get paid for. If you find yourself dealing with hagwon 'goblins', you can either make your peace with that gig, or upgrade your credentials and deal with disinterested Uni frehsmen, and with luck, move up the food chain to an authentic situation in which you are really delivering the goods. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

[phaedrus]

The point I am trying to make is that if a person, trained or not, is passing knowledge on to a student with good intentions and the student is learning then the person is a teacher.

However, my opinion of hagwons is that they eliminate the good intentions part and therefore the instuctors don't qualify as teachers. I am not talking about having a degree or being particularly good at teaching.

By good intentions I mean having education as the goal and other issues such as immediate results, appearance of education and showiness eliminated.

Hagwons are often run for profit and not for education of students. The students actually learning something is a desire of the parents but often just a chance occurence and result of it being moderately necessary to get the buck.

My experience when I was a hagwon "teacher" is that I saw this and had no real spark of care about my students. As long as the parent paid then the goal was reached. Boss happy equals I am happy. To get the parent to pay there has to be an illusion of teaching. Often real teaching does not look as good as show. If I don't care about my students I think I am not a real teacher. If the institute doesn't care about education then the employees, who if they are actually ethical and obey the person who pays them, cannot be teachers. To be a teacher you have to care about education, not the money.

People who care so much that they push against that money issue and really TEACH I must congratulate. I do not have that energy. I also couldn't care enough about my boss's business to help her students so that she could get more money from them and therefore take more vacations etc. and buy a bigger car. I think that to do that even though you may be TEACHING six or seven hours a day makes you a hero.

I remember in Plato something about the people teaching for money while Socrates was teaching for knowledge.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[waterbaby]