iggyb
Joined: 29 Oct 2003
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 Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 4:08 am Post subject: Korean Teachers |
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You see here at Dave's that Korean teachers in hakwons and public schools have issues with the NETs. I don't mean to suggest that isn't true or even that it is exaggerated. In general, the Koreans I worked with in hakwons in the 1990s were nice to work with and could tell you a lot about Korean society. (The management was usually a different story...) But, I did see examples where the Koreans were pitted against the NETs.
Anyway, I thought of this topic when I read this article in the Chosun Daily:
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/09/03/2009090300544.html
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If teachers are graded "incapable" in evaluations to be conducted from next year, they will be barred from teaching and have to take intensive training instead. Conversely, those with excellent teaching skills will be entitled to a sabbatical or paid training in Korea or overseas.
But the teacher evaluation bill is still pending in the National Assembly. If parliament does not pass it within the year, the ministry will turn it into a directive instead and implement it next year. |
People often resist change in the work place - especially this kind of change: higher overseeing and evaluations which influence your future and current working environment. I remember in the late 1990s, Korean industry was trying to switch over to a "team" oriented management style. I had some corporate classes, and people were not thrilled.
The Korean public schools probably need reformed, but that doesn't make the changes any easier on the teachers. Here in the US, we get evaluated all the time. It wasn't like that when I was in school, but now, a couple times a semester, you'll have the department head, vice principle, principle, or even someone from the school board pop into your class unannounced and evaluate you. I don't particularly like it...
Imagine you're these Koreans teachers seeing these changes coming down the pipe, and imagine them watching a revolving door of non-experienced, non-education major foreign teachers coming in and out of their schools who are usually just looking to make some money and then go home to find a job out of education...
I probably wouldn't be too thrilled about that setting either if I were one of them...
Reform is hard....Which is one reason why Korea has been trying to do it forever and not really getting it done...
P.S. -- an example from my US teaching...
I had taken short video clips of a wrestling match a day or two earlier and edited them into a short video, and I opened my ESL classes with it. The purpose was to encourage Hispanic ESL students who often feel isolated in the school due to the language barrier to be more involved by going to sporting events or joining school clubs.
Soon after I started, the department head came in to observe. I wasn't happy...
I knew what would come later --- since all the rage in education in the US is "bell to bell instruction" - and always (ALWAYS) keeping your eye on the task and making everything you do relevant to the subject you teach...
With the No Child Left Behind standards getting higher in the US, school boards and administrators are under a lot of pressure to push up numbers, and they frown upon stuff like I got caught doing... |
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