Korean Job Discussion Forums

[PatrickGHBusan]

This came to mind after a discussion I had a couple of weeks ago with a friend of mine who lives in Daegu. She is married to a Korean guy we know and they have a mixed daughter who attends a local hakwon that offers kindergarten.

Their daughter looks Korean and the mixed heritage is not that apparent.

Anyway, their daughter attends a kindie hakwon that hires 2 FTs.

I wonder if any people here have had similar experiences and how that went if they had to interact with a FT teaching their kid.

I had to do that when our son was in a kindie Hakwon in Busan and for the most part it was a pretty cool experience. The 3 FTs that interacted with my son were nice.

My 3 nieces being fully Korean attend regular school and the oldest is now in middle school. She had a few FTs teach her over the years and one of them turned out to be an idiot but that does happen. She also had some idiot Korean teachers. I visited her at school a few times over the years to pick up her up when we took her shopping or to another activity and it always was an amusing experience as initially the staff at the school had no idea I was her uncle.

The idiot FT was a lone case but he was one for the ages. I met him in the school after I had gone to talk to the admin to advise them I would be picking her my niece a bit early. He saw me and naturally came up to say hello, assuming I was either teaching there or going to teach there. That was fine until he started commenting on the students there, including my niece. The comments ridiculed his students. His face was likely worth a million bucks when I told him that one of the students he was mocking was my niece. Still, lone case and I just wonder what experiences parents of mixed kids or people like me who have Korean nephews or nieces have had with FTs.

For the record, my experiences have been overwhelmingly positive.

[12ax7]

My kid's first English FT was a bitter old witch who treated him with disdain because he wasn't fluent in English. She couldn't comprehend or accept the fact that his first language is Korean.

Hope she reads this and recognizes herself.

[Neil]

Not what you're looking for as it's from the teachers POV and in a different country but anyway I teach middle school in Japan and coming across students with one western parent is really common here. I guess there was a large amount that became lifers in the 90s when ESL was popular here and would now have teenaged children. Korean public schools will probably be similar in 10 years time.

Some generalisations, of course I treat all the kids the same regardless of where their parents are from.

Girls are far more keen to use their English skills than boys.

Boys indeed will go out of their way to avoid using English in class, I have no idea how much English is used at home but just think boys don't want to embarass their non-English speaking classmates.

Even if their spoken English is perfect their writing needs a lot of work.

Some Japanese teachers are a bit uncomfortable that a student has better English than they do and some embrace it asking the mixed kid to help and advise the students who are struggling.

Out of about 20 mixed kids I've come across only one had zero English, I found out that his British father only speaks Japanese at home. Not my place to judge but found it a tad strange as the Japanese mum speaks English fluently.

They are resourceful...if they are rubbish at say math, they will find a classmate who is a math whizz but sucks at English and swap homework.

[PatrickGHBusan]

[Dodge7]

Interesting thread for once Patty cakes. Good job.

[12ax7]

[geldedgoat]

[schwa]

[12ax7]

[Julius]

[geldedgoat]

[12ax7]

[geldedgoat]

[PatrickGHBusan]

[PatrickGHBusan]