Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Illysook]

I like my job. My co-workers treat me well and now that I've been here for a little while, my students are starting to open up and talk to me. I helped one student with a college application. Quite a few students have traveled to English speaking countries and are quite fluent. I also have students who have very low levels and even a class of moderately disabled students. They are nice because most of them will at least try to pay attention. The ones who are smart and simply tired or bored will sleep on my class. My recent class on "best jobs" included bed tester and I asked if the desks in my classroom were comfortable!

Now, I assumed that this was pretty common behavior for high school students. I went to an upper middle class high school and sleeping in class was practically one of my majors. (Once, when I had a bad cold, I slept through choir practice.) So, I'm sure that it's normal!

However, I've been told by a few people that our school is the worst one in my suburb!

So, I have been wondering: what are the factors that go into this pecking order? Are they tested at the end of middle school? Is the presence of special classes for the disabled causing a stigma for the other students at my school? How does this work?

[eamo]

I'm guessing you're school isn't very highly rated if there are disabled kids there.

My high school has only two bands...those trying to go to foreign universities and the rest who expect to go to the top three Korean colleges.

As for the sleeping thing.......I don't allow it...many of my Korean co-workers seem to allow it in their classes, I don't..........

.............I explained to my students that kids in my home country who slept during class would be considered the losers of the class and if they slept often their parents would be contacted and asked why they're sleepy and why can't you get your son/daughter to bed in time.

But in Korea we're supposed to be more understanding about sleeping in class because they stay up half the night to 'study'.

[ThingsComeAround]

[cj1976]

It doesn't hurt me or my ego to see a kid sleeping in the class. If they're not interested in what I'm saying, then I'm not going to force them to like it. Most of these kids place English low on their list of priorities, and I can't say I blame them. It must be tough for the weaker students trying to understand what the hell is going on.
The brighter kids with better English tend to be more attentive and less likely to sleep.
I'm not a real teacher anyway, so why get stressed about it? I do my job to the best of my abilities. Keeping kids awake is not my lookout.

[Illysook]

What goes into the rating of a school?

[toby99]

[oldfatfarang]

My thoughts on K kids sleeping in class:

First, it sends a message to the other students: "If Minsuk can sleep, why should I bother to listen/participate."

Second, it sends a message to your co-teacher (and therefore your school): "He's not interested in the students/their English."

Third: I spend a lot of time making interesting lessons for these kids. I expect every kid to 'give it a go." I think it's very rude if they are sleeping/ using cellphones / talking etc. (All my co-teachers know my thoughts on this.)

Fourth, I don't care if that kid has spent the last 2 weeks 'studying' until 4am every night. Not my problem. I'm paid to help them with English conversation - nothing else is important in our English room.

So, every time I see a kid sleeping I stop teaching and ask the co-teacher if the kid is sick. I say that, if the kid is sick, they should go to the sick room/nurse, but if they are just sleepy they must wake up.

Korean teachers seem reluctant to send kids to the nurse/sick room - so they usually let the sick kids sleep at the back of the class.

[jvalmer]

There are mostly 3 types of high schools.

Specialized HS - Science, Art, Foreign Lang - all the kids in these schools are in the top end of their classes (or subject). Students have to apply to get in and schools are selective.

Academic HS- in the average range, but many bright kids, and dumb, also can be found here. Some smart students may purposely choose to go to a lower ranked HS in the assumption they will outclasses their classmates and will look better when applying to universities. Many will go to top universities, many won't go on to post-secondary

Technical - Technical, Agricultural, Industrial, Design - generally the lower end of the grade scale. Occasionally a smart one can make into a top university but the odds are against them. They are basically trained to start working after they graduate.

Depending on which area, the school board will place students in a school based on a lottery, or grades, or you apply to a specific school, or a combination of a few of them. The specialized school is application only.

Everyone in your area will know how the school rank against each other. It's a combination of historic reputation, grades and the number of students that school sends to the SKY universities. In some of the small counties the only school in the largest town is the HS to get into.

[redaxe]

When I used to teach ESL I thought it would be rather douchey of me to wake up the students who were sleeping during my joke of an English class (I had no training whatsoever and was just given a terrible texbook and an audio tape and told to teach English, lol). Their lives are pretty miserable, they have to be at school for like 14 hours a day already, so I tried to let them rest in my class if they needed to. But it wasn't a very good school and most of the kids weren't college-bound anyway. Low standards all around.

[Quack Addict]

[cj1976]

I used to get worked up about it and wake the kids up, but they'd soon nod off again. Fighting Korean culture is like peeing in the wind, so I gave up trying. Actually, I should specify. When I say 'kids', I mean teenagers. In the 4 years I spent teaching in public elementary schools, keeping the students awake was definitely not the problem because they were so hyper.
However, in my limited experience with teenagers here it is quite the opposite. If my co-teachers don't wake them up, so be it. They are the real authority in the class.

[Kaypea]

My Middle School is in an area where some of the kids don't go to hogwan, so they don't rank that high on tests. That being said, some of my brightest and highest scoring kids don't go to hogwan either, but just *in general* average kids do better on tests and stuff if their parents send them to the cram schools.

Because we're a low-ranking school, we get extra cash from the government. That's nice, but the school board is really vigilant about how we spend the money, so the teachers here are overburdened with paperwork.

As for sleeping...

I expect most kids to *not sleep*, but there's the occasional, and I mean *occasional* kid, who's so problematic that it's better if they sleep. We have some kids who really, really hate school.

Most kids don't sleep in my class, but the other day I had to cover the listening class where the kids listen to a cd and write answers, and a lot of them slept and I don't blame them *at all*.

[Illysook]

After a presentation and/or a video, I will go around to each table and make an effort to ask each and every student at least one question. At that point, they have a worksheet in front of them if they wished to, they could have written down their answer. If students are sleeping, I will tap them on the shoulder and ask them a question. Some will wake up and participate, some won't. At least, I have tried, and after doing this consistently for awhile, students are making more efforts to speak to me in and out of class.

I like my school and I like my students. It doesn't bother me that it has a low rating. I'm trying to be a good teacher and I think that the people that I work with are good teachers. The Korean English teacher who has the special ed. students is amazing. This is why I wonder what goes into the ratings.

[Kaypea]

Oh, to address the *high school pecking order*...

I know the foreign language high schools are TOUGH. I have a very bright student who's lived in India and speaks near-perfect English (no, she doesnt' sound like Apu) and she didn't get in.

I guess all those fancy schmancy schools are really tough.

What's it like to teach there? I'd be intimidated. I'd be way dumber than all the students.

[Bloopity Bloop]