Korean Job Discussion Forums

[MollyBloom]

I'm having a HORRIBLE time with my co-teacher. Any horror stories you have heard about co-teachers, mine probably equals those stories. This woman is crazy!

Anywho, she is only a substitute teacher and therefore is only working with me for two more months. I had to talk to my handler about her a few times: she yelled at me, called me names, argued with me in front of students during classes, to name a few things. In two months, the regular co-teacher who is away will be coming back and I will be working with her soon.

I love my school, my other co-workers, the homeroom teachers, vice principal and principal and students. I am pretty sure they like me too. I only have a problem with this temporary teacher. My school is 10 minutes away from my apt and it's in a good area. I like the grades I am teaching and all my lessons are already planned for the year, so there are a lot of advantages for me to stay at my current school for another year.

Question: I want to re-sign with SMOE and stay at my school, but am worried if my school will not want me to stay because of my problems with this substitute teacher. How much weight does my school hold with my SMOE re-signing? How does that work? If my school decides they don't want me for another year, will I still have a chance to re-sign with SMOE with another school?

Am I just being paranoid for no reason? I have heard this sub. teacher situation means nothing and I shouldn't be worried about not being re-signed with my school (apparently sub teachers are not taken as seriously as full-time teachers).

P.S. My handler confessed to me that she thinks the sub teacher is "not right in the head."

[esetters21]

I am new to the ps system, but I'll be damned if I get shown up by any co-teacher, much less a substitute. Hold your ground. It sounds like you are well liked by administration. She is temporary and I would treat her as such. Did you talk to your local NSET supervisor or district office concerning the winch?

[KYC]

You just started and you are thinking/worried about problems with renewing already? wow...

Why even stress it? If you do your job even half decent, they'll want you to renew.

[MollyBloom]

[MollyBloom]

[ttompatz]

[Bibbitybop]

You already have my advice. Did you confront the teacher as I suggested?

[MollyBloom]

[MollyBloom]

[Soju808]

[aarontendo]

Your school pretty much as all the weight when it comes time to decide to keep you. Basically if they don't want you for another year they'll probably rag on you. Then, when it comes time to re-sign you won't be able to change schools because Principal has spoken.

This comes from experience.

[wings]

Substitute teachers are really bitter. I have had 2 subs, one for 3 months, the other just for a week. Both were really bitter becuase they haven�t passed the test to be full time teachers, so they tried to prove themselves by arguing with me over everything, including my choice to not eat the school lunch and several other things that had nothing to do with teaching.

She will be gone soon, and everyone will forget about her really quickly. Judging from the system here I would say that as someone who hasn�t passed the test to be a teacher her opinion will be worth ZERO to the principal etc. Don�t worry about it.

[fromtheuk]

Look at all of my co-teacher rants.

There is some hope. My situation seemed hopeless a few months ago.

My co-teacher and I had regular arguments, we both went to see the Principal about this twice.

The good news is, I have gone from being in a position of total confrontation with my co-teacher to total civility and a fair amount of politeness that you'd normally expect at work.

What did I do? One day, I said to my co-teacher I felt embarrassed and silly about our arguments. As adults I said we ought to be able to work out our differences without going to the Principal every 5 minutes like badly behaved kids.

I said to her we ought to reach a compromise where we both do our job and clarify what each other expects from each other. The main problem with my co-teacher is I assumed her English was better than it was, and that's why we continually misunderstood each other, and argued.

What calmed her down and made her on less of a power trip was when I showed her an email from the previous native teacher at our school, she called my co-teacher a nightmare to work with.

When I showed her that email, my co-teacher came back down to earth.

Now I ask her in different ways a few times if I am not sure of what she is asking of me. Now she has some respect for me, whereas before she used to treat me like a child.

I think my co-teacher is a bit neurotic, but many people are under pressure. I try to be helpful without lowering myself, and I find it keeps the peace and my co-teacher is less demanding than before.

I also have helped my co-teacher with her TESOL course, which she appreciated. You scratch my back I'll.............

Try and ask your co-teacher what is upsetting her and see if it helps.

I honestly cannot believe how well things are going nowadays at work, compared with how it was before. This is a true story, not a piece of uplifiting lies designed to make you feel hopeful.

[MollyBloom]

My co-teacher is an older woman who, I think, used to teach full-time but decided to teach as a sub than retire. She has worked over 25 years as a teacher, so I think maybe some people respect her just because of her age (or maybe not). I kind of get the feeling she is playing mind games with me and not is so innocent as she pretends to be.

[fromtheuk]

My co-teacher is fairly young, but the last co-teacher and the current one both used to show me subtle disrespect in class, in front of the students.

Mind games are to be expected. The point is if it is possible to find out what makes them tick, some of them ditch these games.

My co-teacher has.