Korean Job Discussion Forums

[marsha marsha marsha]

How would you rate yourself as a teacher? For example...
When teaching kids, I would give myself a 3, that is why I stopped.
Teaching adults in hogwans, I would say maybe a 6.
Teaching adult privates, I would say a 8 to be fair.

What about you guys? How do you rate yourselves? We should come up with some criteria to use for rating so we can all really see where we stand as teachers.

[Zyzyfer]

When there's some criteria, I might answer realistically, but for now, 10s across the board.

[William Beckerson]

Well, considering I have all of the requirements to teach in Korea- I'm white and English is my native language- I'll have to say I'm a perfect 10, just like Zyzyfer.

[kojangee]

- 9 for kids for purely entertainment purposes
- 7 for kids for educational purposes
- 3 for adults for entertainment purposes
- 8 for adults for educational purposes

[Sloth]

What can I say? I'm an educational god!

Ah... humility. Never had a use for it.

[Rand Al Thor]

university 9.5
adult hagwon 10.5
kids 1.0 (evil little buggers they are)

[Zyzyfer]

Aight, aight, I'll break down and use kojangee's system thingy.

7 for kids for purely entertainment purposes
8/3 for kids for educational purposes(depends on whether I can use Korean to control the class or not)
4 for adults for entertainment purposes
8 for adults for educational purposes

I know all sorts of English grammar/spelling rules, but I'll be damned if I can explain the reasoning behind the various rules.

[Singer]

As a master of education with a specialization in TESOL, I would say that I'm 10's across the board except kindergarten. Definate 0 there.

However, using the tactics that I have been so well educated in is difficult in Korean society because 99% of bosses out there have no idea what it takes to educate. They only know the business side. So, to implement a nice mix of audio-lingual and communicative methods to elementary school students is almost impossible to come by unless you spend about 4-6 hours in prep time. And...doing academic with communicative style to older than elementary is virtually impossible due to the Korean educational system.

The students are not taught how to study. They are only taught how to memorize. This is due to the ridiculously large class sizes. No teacher can spend the required attention on making the students think. So, they lecture, give homework and students naturally memorize instead of learning the material.

This is great for math. This is why most Korean students are math geniuses, as for anything else...well, just look around.

As a result, I tend to get lazy and de-motivated when teaching my students, so to be realistic...I'm 10 in theory, and about a 7 or 8 in practice.

It's also frusterating that students don't learn social interest in Korea as well. This is why drivers drive the way they do. This is why when bumped on the street, they don't say sorry. This is why it seems like most Koreans only think about themselves and totally ignore what's going on around them.

Since this is a comparisons against our "Western" style of living, I don't mean to be critical. But this is the nature of the Korean life-style.

[BTM]

I am the greatest teacher the world has ever known, as well as being invisible and able to fly.

I am 37 feet tall, and can shoot laser beams from my nipples.

[VanIslander]

Before coming to Korea I wanted to teach in a Korean university after my first year in a hagwon, but I'm going through my second year at the same hagwon largely because of my success and failures:

On a scale of 1-10, with 1 as incapable to get anything right except by chance and 10 as fully competent, requiring no adjustment to facilitate learning growth:

kindergarten.......3
early grades.......8.5
late elementary.......7
middle school.......5
high school........3
adults........2

I'm just afraid university students would be as distracted as kindy kids and as lazy as adults... a nightmare for me.

If I still hold the silly notion of college teaching next year I'll have to do CELTA for self confidence. Alternatively, if I continue teaching youngsters I might take CELTYL or other young learners certificate upgrade course to excel.

There's something really satisfying about taking children who've just learned to sit in their seat and say "hello" and helping to turn them within a year into good-pronouncing basic communicators.

I often feel that each child deserves a 10.

Hence, my hidden personal sense of frustration sometimes.

[Eazy_E]

As a relative newbie (8 months under my belt), I'm able to boast the following:

kindergarten - 3
early elementary - 7
late elementary - 6
middle school - 5

Trust me, I do try harder than most foreign hagwon teachers I know. But the teaching hours and other circumstances of hagwons really prevent even the most well-meaning of teachers from being real teachers.

The earlier comments about Korean students are true... they're taught to memorize, not to study. This applies especially to English. They cannot spell phonetically, even to guess at a word. And they certainly can't express themselves in English except to parrot a phrase that you've already taught them.

That's not to say it's not good to give your best effort, but there are significant obstacles if you really intend to give the hagwon kids an education worthy of the word.

[Saxiif]

Hmmm, don't much to compare myself with but I always show up on time and I'm the only teacher at my school who does even cursory class prep (my lazy korean coworkers never even bother to grab the textbooks and bring them into their class before class begins, so I always get to see them running around tracking down their textbooks when the student come in).

So maybe a 6-7 with the younger kids (I do the manic clown teacher routine well enough to keep their attention and teach them something)
and a 4-5 with the older kids since I have a tell of a time piercing through indifference and all the older kids all suddenly decided at once that it would be fun to pretend that I have cooties (ie cringe/giggle whenever I get close) which has been driving me nuts.