Korean Job Discussion Forums

[travelingfool]

There is shite talking from all sides. Koreans love to call us losers. Teachers call each other losers.

Can someone tell me where the hostility comes from?

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Anyone can come here and teach. The result is some of the world's best teachers and some of the most hopeless working side by side.

[Pwillig]

People always find something to bitch about :-p

[ekul]

Before coming to Korea I had no idea that there was even a negative view of teachers here. I was seriously enthusiastic and thought I was going to have a really good experience. Which so far has been the case. However when I read this website it turns out that I am a loser who has come to Korea to have sex with Korean women and because I cannot get a job back in my home country.

Thanks for letting me know Dave's. Without you guys I'd never have known how much of a loser I was and would instead be enjoying myself in blissful ignorance teaching kids English.

[Goku]

Teaching is a prestegious proffession (supposedly)

But when you recruit people from all walks of life with little to no experience with it, you get a hodge podge of different fruits. A lot of them will inevitably be bad fruits.

Most of the hostility directed to us orginates from a whole bunch of teachers who have no idea what they were doing (not completely their fault, they expected training and never got it).They came up with games, candies and stickers and pass our crosswords to fill the time. While these are SOMEWHAT suitable for kindegarten and elementary schools, somehow they magically worked their way up to middle school and high school.

I know a high school teacher that passes out holiday word searches for the kids and has them eat candy the whole time.

Which is evidence of poor teacher training. So other Korean teachers will view us as lazy, good for nothing teachers. Only capable of running down to cotsco, buying bulk candy/stickers and printing off worksheets from websites (which most of the time isn't bad).

I didn't have much respect when I came here. I had to work to earn it. There's no doubt in my mind that people would peg me loser just for being a foreigner. But that was my expectation and I dealt with that problem. Now they see as hard working, strict, and motivated. But the majority of teachers won't pull their weight and it's just dragging our image down.

[samcheokguy]

Sadly, we are band aids on whales. In these rural schools, add learning disabilites, plus unwanted kids, plus fetal alcohol syndrome, plus the regionalism and social status that determine a lot of your life before you're born, and you end up with kids who don't do well in ANY subject. There is a vo-tech high school attached to my Middle School, and let me tell you, these kids KNOW what people think of them for going the low road. If my english class WASN"T fun, they just cut it.
-I agree that some teachers are far too much fun and games, but at some of these rural poor schools, I feel as if we are the only 'fun' some of these kids get.
-However the fact I 'teach' so little, and have so few conversations, is the reason I'm doing Uni in China this fall. I need to get back to teaching adults, and although it was fun, and interesting, I'd like to be challenged again.

[Juregen]

[justaguy]

You cannot control what other people think of you. It doesn't matter who's opinion it is, Korean or not. I don't care what anyone thinks of me. In the end, what others think really doesn't mean anything.

I don't understand why so many people actually care.

[kiknkorea]

[jdog2050]

[kiknkorea]

[Goku]

[samcheokguy]

[Adventurer]

[Straphanger]