Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Unreal]

Today I found out that I have a co-teacher for every class. I've only seen one so far (I actually wondered who this old guy was in my classroom, not realizing who he was). Curious, I went over the schedule and figured out that while I'm teaching 18 classes, the Korean English teachers have 16, six of which are actually taught by foreign teachers. So they really have 10 classes each. It's probably better as I'd rather not teach alongside someone else and if I take a sick day there should be someone to cover for me.

Also I found it interesting that most if not all the Korean teachers at my school are expected to create "documents". I'm not sure what they cover but apparently a teacher who creates these documents gets something like promotion credits. One teacher even admitted (to me) of submitting false documents because she must, but she thinks they are pointless. I thought it was strange that the teachers who will get promoted are the ones who create lots of "documents" while those who spend most of their energy teaching won't.

I find it especially interesting that while the other English teachers have an extra 8 hours per week to chase promotions, the foreign teachers are teaching almost twice as much and have no chance of being promoted and as the head English instructor (who's Korean) said, the salaries of foreigners haven't gone up for 10 years as far as he remembers.

[steroidmaximus]

Welcome to Korea.

Cue RR. . .

[Paddycakes]

First, if you want to survive in Korea (and in Korean public schools) you need to suspend any and all notions of common sense and reason as you know it.

You need to learn to go into your "Happy Place" when Koreans starting talking and explaining things, or you'll get frustrated, confused and depressed.

Second, as has been mentioned a thousand time before, for Koreans image is what counts.

If Teacher X has 50 pieces of paper, and Teacher Y only has 30 pieces of paper, then by default Teacher X is a better teacher than Teacher Y.

This is Korean logic.

How their society manages to function at all still bogles my mind.

[Homer]

Paddycakes,

You just described daily life at my former school in Ontario...Teachers meetings were mind melters along with pedagogical days where reforms in education were discussed...


Brings back fond memories of pointless bickering about schedules and test days, administrative assignments....ah yes...