Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sweetrevenge]

Hello, I recently began teaching here in March and am wondering if its expected of me to assign homework in my classes. I teach an elementary class and a Middleschool level class and all the kids are either 7-8 or 12 - 14.

[tob55]

At least in some cases moms expect to see their children bringing homework with them. It is not the case in all hagwons, but it can also be expected in some places. In my first hagwon, way back when, we had to do phone teaching with each of our students for 5 minutes every week as their homework. It was okay for some of the students, but most just never talked during the five minutes. However, it satisfied the mothers who looked forward to this type of 'homework.'

[nicwr2002]

[Tyshine]

My old hagwon gave online and workbook homework for everyone, even 1st graders.

[thegadfly]

You need to ask someone in authority at your school, not a bunch folks who have no idea on a message board.

Some hakwons expect you to assign (and check) homework, no matter what, others are a bit more flexible, but prefer homework to be assigned most of the time. Still others never want any homework of any type to be assigned. I've worked at all three types of places, and I am sure we have folks in each camp that will chime in, and I am sure there are tons of folks in grey areas in between the types I listed.

The thing is, none of us know what YOUR situation is, and apparently you don't either, so ask someone in a position to know, rather than folks that could, at best, guess.

Good luck to you.

[Aine1979]

It's going to differ from school to school, and can even differ from student to student. At my hagwon, we have students whose parents expect homework every day, those who want it once a week, and others who don't want their children given homework at all.

[faeriehazel]

Doesn't your hakwon have a regular homework schedule? All the hakwons I've worked at had regularly assigned homework built into the curriculum, and teachers could assign extra if they wanted to. I've never worked anywhere where it was completely up to the teacher.

[Hokie21]

[EZE]

Generally do what your boss wants you to do regarding assigning homework, while using a little bit of your own judgment and intuition day-to-day.

On your end, the bigger concern is how you go about checking the homework. You definitely want to have your lessons prepared yesterday at the latest so you aren't doing any last second preparation before a class. And you don't want to spend time between classes socializing in the teachers' room, because the time before a class is when you can get a lot of important class-related things taken care of before each class actually starts.

Go to the classroom as early as you can so you can check their homework with the highest degree of accuracy instead of being hurried and overlooking mistakes. This also gives you time to explain the mistakes to the kids individually and to help some of the kids who need a little one-on-one assistance if there are things they don't understand. Thirdly, you can find out ahead of time who has and who hasn't brought their books so you can make any necessary copies before class begins. You still might be checking homework after the bell, but getting as much done as possible beforehand allows you to maximize the class period for classroom teaching. Teachers who wait until the bell rings to go to the classroom must be pissing away the first 25% of class time on checking homework and checking roll. It's wasteful of the students' time and the parents' investment.

Let's say a teacher has five classes a day and each class has ten students, and the parents are paying 300,000 won per student. If the teacher wastes 25% of the class time, then he or she is wasting 3,750,000 won of the parents' money each month. Worse, it wastes many hours of time for each student in one of the most academically competitive countries on Earth, putting them at a disadvantage to many thousands of other Korean kids out there, in addition to many of the kids from China, Japan, and elsewhere they'll also be competing against someday.

[BackRow]

Yea, how are any of us to know? Every place is different. Don't you have to submit a month (or more) plan or have one made for you about the material covered for each class that also lays out the homework?

Your boss really should have told you what they expected. You don't want to end up having a meeting because moms are complaining their kids aren't getting homework.

[Stain]

Sadly, you have to ask your hagwon what they want. Of course, they won't want you to do that. They want you as a decoration to draw students in. Mothers, in their infinite wisdom, think they should study
with a foreign teacher. However, by study, they mean just make their kids have fun. There are exceptions, of course. There are mothers who believe the foreign teacher's class should be a lot of things, which irritates the hell out of the Korean teachers, who just want to get on with the curriculum of grammar and reading comprehension.
Don't worry so much about it and let them get on with what they want to. The ultimate goal is passing exams.