Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Otherside]

What's the most ridiculous request you've ever recieved from your co-teacher?

Abridged version (for those who don't want to read the rest): My co-teacher called me on Sunday afternoon and asked me to lesson plan now.

Full Version.

Here's mine. Let me give a quick preface. This is my 2nd year at the school, last year I had 2 co-teachers (My main co-teacher who was wonderful, and a second teacher who was average, but I didn't deal with her much). This year, at the beginning of the semester I found out that my lesser co-teacher would be my only co-teacher. Her Idea of co-teaching is to do other work while I teach the class. Atleast she's present I guess. On many occasions she's been "so busy" that she can't stop doing her work on her computer (which is the one hooked up to all the AV equipment). Ridiculous I know.

Fast Forward to Thursday. On Thursday, she asks me to do a lesson plan for my 3 afterschool classes. She want's an entire yearly plan for 3 different classes, twice a week each. After arguing and thrashing it about, finding out exactly what she wants (the examples she shows me are full page plans for each lesson, which would work out to over 120 pages of lesson plans). I grudgingly agree. The irony is, the only people who even look at these plans are the Principal, the VP (both of whom don't speak English) and her. A grand total of 5 minutes will probably be spent flicking through the plans.

To add insult to injury, she asks me to do this at about 3pm on Thursday. At 4:40 after doing a bit of work (I found a "sample plan" based on the curricilum online, so it is mainly reformatting...thank god) I go home. On Friday, in the morning, I have classes and in the afternoon I have a GEPIk meeting, so no work is done.

TEN Minutes ago, (yes, at 4:45pm on SUNDAY) she gives me a call and asks me when I can do my lesson plan. She says I need to finish it by 12 tomorrow. I ask her, how many classes I have tomorrow (I already know, the answer is and that I'll do it when I have time (Bare in mind, if this was done properly, it is probably a 50 hour task - the fact that I've found the information and can get it done in 3 hours is beside the point). She then repeats that she needs it by 12, and asks me if I can do it now?
I reply it's Sunday, and I'll do it when I have time at work. We go round in circles with my response being the same each time.

Obviously I'm not going to do this and it will be done, when it's done. I'm thinking about producing the work at the same pace it would have taken me to do it normally (i.e. show 2 or 3 pages of work for every hour of time I have, even though thanks to the resources, I could 10 times that out), to teach her something of a lesson - that if you need "100 pages of paperwork done give me more than 90minutes to do it".

Finally, this stings me extra hard as this same teacher needed lesson plans from me for winter camp last year. Every day in the run up to the camp the details were changed : number of students, number of classes, level of classes - could range from 1 class of 20 students of mixed level for 4 classes a day to 4 classes of 6 students of the same level for 1 class a day. Which would obviously greatly influence my lessons (and the lesson plans). The final make up of classes was COMPLETLY different to the lesson plans I produced, so apart from giving her and management something to gloss over for 2 minutes, the hours I spent were worthless as I pretty much had to come up with classes from scratch.

[D.D.]

Some people are like energy vampires. When you do things under her control she is sucking your energy.

Learn to say no to her control drama so she can go drain another person stupid enough to play her games.

[harlowethrombey]

she wants the full page plans so she can pass them off as her own after you leave.

remember, everything you create becomes the property of the school, if not the actual co-teacher. So you can really bust ass and create some great, well-designed professional looking plans that she or the school can turn in for some school pride at a future date or you can copy and paste like your life depends on it.


If I was going to make 120 lesson plans I'd have one page where the objective, materials and names for all but one of the activities was the same. Copy and past 120 times. Then I'd toss in one new activity per page.


Dont work too hard, it wont be worth it.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Why didn't you just suck your teeth and say "Oh very difficult." If you do all the work she wants you to, you will get 10 times more work next time and probably more stacked on that. You don't get rewarded for working here, your just get more work.

[FUBAR]

Is she hot? if so ask her to come over and help you.

If not so hot ask her to teach your classes tomorrow so you can lesson plan.

[gregoriomills]

[Bibbitybop]

[Tjames426]

This is why..

My cell phone is either off after classes on Friday

or

I do not answer work related phone numbers over the weekend

From the time I go home on Friday until I arrive Monday morning... I do not answer work related numbers.

[Smee]

To be fair it's standard practice to submit paperwork for t hese afterschool classes. I have to give an outlilne of the 20 classes I'll teach in advance. Ridiculous b/c I have to do it before I know how many students or what level, but it's all just busy work anyway. I write everything in English so it's not like anybody else there can read it.

At the end of the year I have to submit the lesson plans, though I just write a three-sentence summary of what I did. Or, what I had planned to do, since it has to conform to the outline I made before I knew how many students or what level.

The first year I didnt' know I had to submit this paperwork, so class finished in early December and b/c of tests and festivals I had no class for nearly 3 weeks. Just sat around reading, studying Korean, playing on the computer, whatever. The teacher comes to me a few hours before vacation is supposed to start and tells me I need to submit 20 lesson plans by the end of the day.

The whole practice is ridiculous because the coteacher ends up changing everything anyway. I had 20-some students signed up but only six came to class each week. I marked the other 14 or so absent each time. I come back from winter vacatio and am told I have to hurry up and change my paperwork. Turns out the coteacher thought it would look bad that 14 students never came to class, so she randomly marked some students present here and there. Problem is the dates she randomly added conflicted with field trips, tests, and other events we had, so I had to go back and redo all the dates on my paperwork, just so she can make it look like the students WEREN'T being irresponsible.

I think she's the most worthless person I've met in my public school career. Anytime I get these b.s. "i need it now" requests, I just say I'm busy and I'll do it whenever. Another perrson's lack of planning shouldn't become your problem.

[OculisOrbis]

After school classes at a public school are optional. Just tell your co-teacher that you didn't have to do full lesson plans last year and the world didn't end so if she insists that you do them this year you just choose to opt out of the after school classes. If she wants an after school program, then she needs to lighten up on the BS paperwork. I do a once-a-month one to three sentence summary of all my classes AFTER I have completed the month. That, or less, has always been good enough - even if it takes some time to convince them of it......and I shared the attendance record issue that you had -- solved by keeping the accurate version each and submitting it. When requested to get creative on the revisions, I just say that was the attendance for the class - if you dont like like it then feel free to make any changes you'd like. I'm going home now. Have a nice day.

[Robot_Teacher]

What an insult from a control freak. I dealt with this crud many times in the Army. I learned the hard arse way in my young days since I was a gentleman devoted to doing good, but those with manipulative and other evil intentions capitalize on your weaknesses of showing generosity, respect, sincerity, and then can make you submit to their every demand while shamers would do as little as possible through not taking the boss serious, not being highly attentive nor showing concern about it all.

As hard as it can be to do, just don't show any emotion, nor show you care, don't respond in a serious manner, and just blow her off. When she badgers you, just mumble a little bullshit that makes no sense, be non responsive as can be, and do as little as necessary for her. I've learned here, at home, and every where else, if you respond attentively and serious to unreasonable control freaks, then they'll take advantage of you by asking unnecessary requests and use you to the point of almost no return and you get no rewards for enduring the hard way to go. This is how shamers and lazy work the system to do as little as possible wherever they are, but that's not what we're talking about. Don't stand for it by feeding into retarded demands.

If she get's offensive, because you're not living (working) up to her standards, then ask her what her problem is and tell her it's high time to just stop what she's doing right now, becuase you're not going to take it. Tell her Sunday is a red day and it's highly unreasonable to be even thinking about work much less calling you do do work as it's not an emergency. You're not a soldier on call 24/7 nor a fire man. She can't fire you so fire away.

Because you're not reacting attentively and proactive to her demands, showing you don't care to take her serious due to lacking professionalism and you put her on ignore as much as possible, she'll grow tired of making all these nagging unnecessary demands and quit. If she can't quit within 2 weeks to a month, then she's psycho and you can go report upward on the issue of her personal problems getting in the way of you doing your job. Even if you don't report upward, it's an internal struggle with someone determined to keep a work conflict going that eats away at the quality of doing the job you're both their to do.

Don't let people walk all over you through manipulation. Making requests with too little time to complete them, unnecessarily huge requests, and calling you to work on Sunday is totally unacceptable and offensive. I'd have no respect for her, but I wouldn't go deliberately attacking him/her or harassing; just ignore and discredit.

[Otherside]

Smee, your situation sounds a lot like mine. I mean, if by doing these lesson plans would in someway result in a better lesson, I could see the point, but it's just mindless paper pushing.

Harlow, I've found some plans online, I'm going to use those. It will take some time in formatting the text etc. I've seen some of her lesson plans... It's the exact same shit over and over (as in she uses the same lesson plan for gr3, gr4, gr5 etc...just mixes it around some). And obviously has no bearing on the actual class.

Rusty, I went down that road on Thursday. We fought and argued but the result was the same. This is why I'm thinking of dragging it out. My theory of "if you give 50 hours work, it will take 50 hours" or next time, she'll give me 100 hours work and expect done in 5.

Fubar, nope...she's in her 50s and a senior teacher. I doubt i'll be able to lesson plan during class tomorrow...because she'll be surfing the net/pushing paper at that time and these classes don't teach themselves.

This change in co-teachers has actually proved to be very disappointing. As of 14feb I was under the impression (as was my previous co-teacher) that the status-quo would remain the same. When I returned I found out the bad news and both I and my old -coteacher were pretty unhappy. My new co-teacher was pretty happy as now she can sit on her arse all day while I do the work. Actually to be fair, she participates in about 5 classes a week. (end rant)

[Horangi Munshin]

I think this pile of detailed lesson plans will end up on a dusty shelf or in your co-teachers personal files. All that I have ever been required to hand in year long plan wise was a sentence about each class. Basically the topic for that day.

[dean_burrito]

Just remind your coteacher that you are supposed to do these things together. They will probably back off.

[LostinKSpace]

Give her an overview of what you are going to do (Titles) and say that you will give them a plan with materials at the end of the month. That is all my school requires (and I know schools are different), as for calling on Sunday she is out of order.

It honestly sounds like she has been told to do something and is dumping it on you, as one poster said just say it is very difficult, she should get the message.

Contrary to popular belief saying no is something that PS K teachers do very often, its is just how you say it.