Korean Job Discussion Forums

[whatever]

...students flaunt every possible rule knowing full well that between the director and their parents, the blame can be easily transferred to you.

...you find yourself praising lazy students for more progress than they deserve credit for.

...you still consider yourself 100% a teacher instead of an edutainer.

...students cry over something trivial and you've got to act like it's a big deal just to cover your ass.

...students blame you for not interjecting in disputes between them over erasers and petty insults conducted in rapid-fire, slang-ridden, screaming childrens' Korean.

...your students consider erasers to be the seventh food group.

...your well-founded suggestions--often supported by intuition and experience as well as common sense--are rejected outright because they came from you. Whatever it was, the opposite will be implemented.

...you are given conflicting directions whatever you do. More book, less book...more discipline, less discipline...no Korean, some Korean, etc.

...one of your favorite pasttimes is suggesting dumb English names for your kids to squeeze an extra laugh out of the day.

...most people in your office are well on there way to becoming, if not already, quite jaded and smug. You say something positive, they want to contradict it. You occasionally need to bitch and moan just to get it out, and they tell you how wrong you are, how negative you're being.

...everybody you work with is an expert on Korea.

...aggressive behavior, insults, profanity, ddongchims and more directed at you by students are barely admonished, if at all. In all likelihood, some of the Korean staff secretly find it funny. This may or may not have something to do with their maturity level being only slightly higher than the kids'.

...anything you do that is common behavior in Korea may be subject to prohibition. Take for example smoking [and I'm not a smoker]. The drivers may smoke while driving the kids. The Korean staff may smoke in the doorway of the school. Hell, the director may even smoke in their office while doing interviews, but even a whiff of smoke from you after discreetly smoking is likely to get you lectured, because you're giving the kids a bad example...as if they look to you to know how to behave anyway.

...many of your kids are stunned when they see you in E-Mart. They think you commute every day between _______ and Korea.

...you genuinely worry about getting screwed out of your salary, overtime, insurance, pension, severence, air ticket, etc.

...you start sarcastic threads on Dave's because everybody else is tired of listening to you complain about this sort of crap.

Maybe there's some funny ones...

[CA-NA-DA-ABC]

[Natalia]

When you think it's perfectly normal to be woken up by a phone call three hours before work because your director wants you to be there in five minutes for class photographs.

[kat2]

...you are given a set amount of white board markers to last the month. If they run out, you don't get any more. Same for copier paper.

...you run to the bank every payday to see if you actually got paid or not.

...you haven't had a paid holiday (non-national) in 11 months.

...the korean teachers are told not to talk to you at work, and that they will be fired if they associate with you outside of work.

[mehmeh]

You sing yourself to sleep at night with songs from a phonics book.

[seoulman1]

your students find it their duty to stick their fingers in your �rse.

[Pak Yu Man]

You work 30 hours a week and love our 20k won overtime pay.

[jaganath69]

[djsmnc]

...you work in a hagwon?

[Beeyee]

[atomic42]

Koreans like the butthole, esp the male butthole.

[KOREAN_MAN]

I remember ddong-chim. I've never done it as a kid though. I thought it was just disgusting. Do kids today still do that? LOL

[Octavius Hite]

..You're excited to go to Thailand for 5 days in January while all your friends in public school spent the month in India

[Milwaukiedave]

Well I did these things in a public school..so maybe we can change it to include public school teachers as well. Anyway...

When a kid is playing with their pencil and you walk up to him and take it away and break it in half in front of them.

When a kid is playing with his eraser and you take it away from him and open then window and throw it out into the parking lot (from the 4th floor) and tell him he can go get it on his break.

[shaunew]

When you wave at the camera in your classroom before you hit the little bastardz.