Korean Job Discussion Forums

[iggyb]

I'm teaching Korean English teachers, and some things I'd heard about public education in Korea are becoming more clear...

They don't do lesson plans, and if they have clear objectives in mind they can't articulate them (in English or Korean). We have them do plans for the practice teaching, and in the objectives section of it, they always simply write "reading, writing, listening, speaking" - no matter how many times we stress that having specific objectives are good.

Also, about the fourth time that different students stopped me to say they wanted me to do some activity differently, while I was in the middle of it, it dawned on me --- since they don't make lesson plans in their own classes and don't have well-defined objectives for what they want to accomplish in that day's lesson or that particular activity - it does not dawn on them ---- that I have specific reasons for why I'm doing something in my class and have specific goals in mind I want the class to reach and that I've planned those things out before setting foot in the classroom. --- It also dawned on me that this is a sign as well that they don't respect me as a teacher or consider themselves students when in the classroom...(I have 6 years of teaching experience, and I'm certified in English and TESOL in my home state, and I just completed a MA program in teaching English in secondary schools.)

If this were just happening with me, I'd have to consider that my activities and methods and/or objectives are weak....

....but this is common across the board for the foreign staff....

Don't get me wrong. The classes and students are a net good, and I'm glad I'm actually teaching this second go around in Korea.

But given the number of years of experience teaching I have sitting in my classes day to day (among all these veteran Korean teachers), I can't help being slightly amazed at the lack of consideration they have for planning themselves and lack of respect they have for the effort that the foreign staff puts into our own daily lessons and semester plans.

I'm working 45+ hours a week with most of that being prep time, much like I did in high school in the US, but they seem to think we do nothing much outside of class and that we can turn on a dime while in the middle of a class even to the point of doing things that head in a direction specifically opposite of what I have planned and the objectives I outlined at the start of that day's class....

[calicoe]

Simply amazing. Thanks heaps for that post.

[sunnata1]

With regards to middle-school, I get the feeling my co-teachers simply start at the beginning of the text book and try to finish at the end of the year.

[lifeinkorea]

[Kaypea]

I think that the flexibility of the Korean classroom can be neat. Like, when I'm doing some vocab review, and the co-teach pause me and says, "Why don't you teach this?" and hands me a double-sided A4 with 4 pages of some conversation textbook conensed onto it, because the english teachers decided that morning to have the students memorize 4 dialogues for the test.

It's neat It's like doing a demo lesson for a job interview, but without the pressure. How do you "teach" it? Hmm I guess it falls under "speaking" so I have them do choral repetition... I am a great teacher!

Actually, it seems like some of the younger teachers do lesson plans and activities, but the old-school way is just "study this or I'll hit you."

(I actually feel bad for these teachers, because I guess that's how they learned. Now, as far as they're concerned, "the students don't like to study." No, today's students need to be engaged and activated..)

[cruisemonkey]

[halfmanhalfbiscuit]

What do they do in Teachers College then?

[cruisemonkey]

[lifeinkorea]

[cruisemonkey]

[Henri]

[iggyb]

[iggyb]

[some waygug-in]

I can't speak for middle or high school teachers, but what I've seen in elementary schools leads me to believe that they all follow set plans that they download or just read from the internet.

They have a teacher's site with set lesson plans for each subject/chapter of everything they do. They don't plan a thing, they just follow what they are told to do.

Partly due to the way they are shifted around every year, they may teach science one year and English the next.

[zipper]