Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

There's this one woman who used to work at our front desk, kind of high up, that would always throw her kid in my class. The kid is Backpack Level 1. Barely. You know you show him pictures of things and prompt him to cough out the English word. "Kokiri. Elephant. Good."

The kid is something of a mess too and actually only has one tooth. Chomper. Anyway, for summer "camp" session I'm supposed to be teaching a low level essay class. He shows up. Errr. I give them a list of irregular verbs in present tense and want them to fill in the past tense. We're going to be using that a lot. They don't have to know them all but some is encouraging.

Chomper doesn't even have a pencil.

The other kids have varying abilities but obviously know many of the irregular past tense verbs.

He's just staring at the paper. While the real kids work on their paper, I grab the head English teacher/whitey wrangler woman.

"Errr... Betty is Chomper supposed to be in this class?"

"Oh yes."

"Are you sure? Last time I had him [two months ago] he was Backpack 1 level. I don't think he can even write a simple English sentence."

"Well, he's supposed to be in this class."

"I mean, he can be in this class but I don't think I can teach him. Did we test him?" I point out the other kids know verbs 'n' stuff. I point out Chomper doesn't even know the past tense form of eat is ate.

And then to stress I add "He didn't even know enough to bring a pencil to an essay class."

That kind of got her on the blower. He was out of that class that day.

[alabamaman]

It's one of the perks when you're an employee with a kid there. On the other hand, good for you when you pointed out the obvious to the parent.

[JZer]

Well at least you don't work somewhere where the parents can move the children up if they want to. I have a child who can barely read and she will probably be but in the Gogo 5 class in the fall. This after I have twice recommended that she be held back.

[wylies99]

I have two classes with the owner's kids. They're okay, (nothing great), with English, but they ask me some funky questions.