Korean Job Discussion Forums

[lilith63]

I'm miserable here. I'm teaching in Yongin and have the worst co-teacher. I have no say in the lesson planning, and rarely get to teach. When I do, she changes it mid-lesson. I have 3.5 years experience teaching in the U.S. and overseas, I'm not prepared to sit in the corner pushing buttons for this woman. She is manipulative, trying to charm me with dinners and helping me. She is a very kind person, but horrible to work with. There is zero communication with her and she blames it on her English..thing is, the last NT spoke Korean and he had the same problems (I found his resignation letter).

I had it today...and am now refusing to teach until she sits down and plans with me and lets me teach without interruption. She isn't saying a word to me...so I typed my resignation letter and am going to hand deliver it to the VP.

Advice? Suggestions?

[Otherside]

Lilith, this is a pretty common complaint in Korea.
You either have the co-teachers who do nothing and expect you to do everything while they sit at the back of the class (if you are lucky) and shop online or you have the control freaks who like to do everything and leave you to be a human tape-recorder effectivly curtailing any chance you have to teach and leave feeling like a complete fraud.

In my school, my co-teacher is similar to yours. She's a nice old broad, and have no problems on a personal level with her (and she always trys to find a loophole to give me extra time off etc), but the teaching is a joke. She'll take over classes when she sees fit, and then leave the room when she has to do something. I'll be explaining a point (after finally getting the kids to pay attention) and she'll start giving out a handout which totally distracts my very easily-distracted students. A week doesn't go by where I don't seriously consider throwing in the towel.

Here's how it is though. You've got 2 choices, one is go with the flow, take the easy paycheck and ride it out till the end of the year. When my co-teacher takes over, I go to the back of the class and start surfing the net, she's happy, I'm happy.

Option 2. Make a stand and fight it. Odds are, you'll lose. All of a sudden life won't be so great anymore, you'll move from having a working problem with a "very kind person" to having a working problem with a "woman who hates you".

I don't really know how it goes from here. I chose option 1 (im from the "fromtheUk school of the path of least resistance") You chose option 2, let me know how it pans out.