Korean Job Discussion Forums

marista99 · Joined: 05 Jun 2004 Location: Incheon

How much time do you spend prepping, per day, on average as a hogwan teacher?

teachingld2004 · Joined: 29 Mar 2004

Just finishing my second year at the same job. (and leaving in a month...) Currently I spend less then 1/2 hr per day. SOme times I spend zero time. But understand this is year 2, and I know this material like the back of my hand. I also can come up with lessons on the spur of the moment. But the first 8 months I must have spent 2 hrs a day preping. (some times more) Of corse when I make a test or need wwork sheets that takes time. But then I usually have copies to use other times.

Why do you ask? How much time do YOU spend???

Zyzyfer · Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:49 am Post subject:

It was like 3 the first few months, but I've gotten it down to 45 minutes to an hour. Still have like 4 hours spent on grading essays, though.

marista99 · Joined: 05 Jun 2004 Location: Incheon

My boss seems to expect several hours a day of prep, plus time spent grading papers. I was wondering if that was normal, is all. I've been at it for 6 months and I still feel like I have no life because I'm always teaching, preparing, or grading! Sounds like it's not out of the ordinary for a rookie though. Thanks for the input (and more comments on this subject are welcome of course)!

OiGirl · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Location: Hoke-y-gun

Bunnymonster · Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Location: Tokyo

Agreed seems like spending lots of time sitting at school is sufficient to keep the bosses happy, they seem to have no concept of actual work done. I usually do about an hour a days prep work but frankly could quite happily do it inside 30 minutes without too much effort (especially if I didn't have to create 4-5 sheets a day for my Kindy class from scratch Evil or Very Mad

), it does vary though depending on what my lessons are, how good the textbooks are and how many supplements I actually need to make rather than copy from a book....

harryh · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: south of Seoul

My supervisor wants me to prep for at least an hour and a half (contract states 'half an hour').

I've been teaching for six years and I don't understand why she wants me to prep so much, as I've prepared and taught the lessons SOooo often before. Obviously I try to vary lessons as often as possible, to try to keep the kids interested and alert, but it doesn't take too long.

Interestingly, my supervisor teaches at the school, has been teaching for only two years and I've never seen her prepare a lesson in the nine months I've been here.

She picks up the text book, goes into her classroom and reads the same sentence from the book for half the lesson, then asks the kids to 'repeat'.......... ok 'repeat' for the rest of it.

some waygug-in · Joined: 25 Jan 2003

Sounds like your supervisor is just wanting to flaunt her "power" over you.

I'm not sure what you can do about it, depending on whether your supervisor signs your paychecks or not. Laughing

If it were me, I would tell her to get stuffed.............. but then again, that's easy to say when you don't care if you get fired or not. Laughing

I prep between a half hour to 1 hour / day. Sometimes a bit more if I want to do some special activity. This would be significantly reduced if the school had textbooks. When I worked at a school with books, I usually prepped about a half hour a day.

IF you have no choice but to be at the school, your best bet is to find some kind of creative activity to use up all that time. I like to make my own games or resources that could be used many times, in many different classes.

Best of luck

eamo · Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.

Watch how the Korean teachers 'work'. They can show you how to appear to be a model worker without doing much at all.

Don't casually walk around the hagwon. Run!! You're so busy you have to run everywhere.

Use the photo-copier until there's flames coming out the back of it. Always have huge piles of copies on your desk. In fact, make your desk seem like a huge tower of books and paper. Your boss will love that.

Give each class so much homework that Moms actually start to complain about them having too much homework and that even making their 11 year-old stay up to 2am doesn't get it finished. Your boss will love you for that.

If your brain can stick it make a large part of each class drill and repeat. Loudly!! Your boss will love that.

If you get a five-minute break put your head on your desk and close your eyes. You're so tired because you're working so hard. Your boss will love that.

Give each class a 900 word vocabulary list to memorize the spellings of ( don't worry about the meanings) each week. Your boss will love that.

Make Kindergarten kids learn to spell words like, anti-disestablishmentarianism. Your boss will love that.