Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Bear256]

I am in my fourth year at a small rural elementary school in Gyeonggi province and I have a strange situation coming up. My co-teacher/the science teacher is being sent to one of the national universities to a program to increase his English skills. He has told me that Korean school don't really have such a thing as substitute teachers so I will not have a co-teacher for the entire semester nor will the students be taught science for the semester.

I think it is great that he has this opportunity to better his English skills but find it weird that they don't have some way to replace these teachers as it is an ongoing program and all schools must face a similar dilemma each year.

Has anyone been through this at their school?

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Yeah - the two best English teachers at my school took successive 6-month professional development programmes and were replaced by useless newbies while they were away. If one of them were headed your way it probably wouldn't be long before you wish there had been no substitute.

Mat-leave replacements are also quite common. Your situation does sound a bit unusual.

[bosintang]

I'm in middle-school and had two situations:

1) A teacher left for two months and they replaced her with a substitute.

2) A teacher left for two weeks and they just had me teacher her schedule.

Are the students graded in English in elementary school? Does a Korean English teacher see the children regularly or just with the native speaker? If just with native speaker, can't they just use the homeroom teacher?

[Bear256]

I only "co-teach" six lessons a week out of my 25 with my Korean co-teacher (and NO, they are not graded) and that is to do the Gyeonggi-Do public English program with the cd's and our friends Zeeto and Minsu and co. To answer your second question, according to my co-teacher, having the homeroom teacher fill in to pretend to be a co-teacher places an undue burden on them as this is usually a free period for them and will increase their class "load" to attend this class. As I teach most of my K-6 classes by myself, this isn't any burden on me, though. By law, I am supposed to have a co-teacher for the rest of my morning classes but they don't know that and I have never told them and hoped they didn't find out.

My co-teacher is a waste of air and I am not sad to have him gone but found it a bit curious that the MOE would send him off, something known ahead of time and planned, with absolutely no chance of a substitute teacher, newbie or not, to replace him. A newbie would be hard pressed to not be a 100%+ improvement on my current anchor.

I know Korea prides itself on it's ability to overcome it's inability to plan as far ahead as it's next breath but even if I was a Down's Syndrome child I would have a pool of teachers to replace those selected for this program. The best part, after they had substituted a few times they would risk being the best co-teachers in the country and a model for the rest.

[yingwenlaoshi]

Kind of strange when your duties are supposed to be as an assistant.

[Satin]

I had a co-teacher. She's gone with her husband while he attends university overseas. Now, I have a new co-teacher. Middle school, but my classes are not graded either. I'm located far south and am still considered a co-teacher (contracted before EPIK screwed a good thing up).

[kat2]

Whenever we have someone get pregnant at school, there is always a substitute. It's usually a retired teacher or a fresh faced newbie striaght out of teacher's college. I'm in an elementary school. It sounds wierd that they aren't going to replace the teacher with SOME kind of warm body.

[pkang0202]

My coteacher is off to do the same thing.

They had originally gotten a fresh out of college female English major who I was looking forward to meeting. however, plans fell through and I got stuck with middle aged woman with only 1 year teaching experience.

This semester is going to be interesting. I'm wondering how I should play it the first week of school.

[Bear256]

We are a small rural school with one class each grade and about 120 students K-6th. My co-teacher said we might get some kind of substitute but he doubted it as there are never enough substitutes to replace the teachers in the program.

The funny part is my little school is highly sought by regular teachers with many applying for each opening. Many teachers want to teach here but we are unimportant at the same time.......

[pest2]

Id be pushin for a pay raise if I were you! Seems like they are asking you to go above and beyond your contract?

[Bear256]

Well, I was wrong. They weren't able to get a real teacher so they have hired a retired teacher that lives locally to co-teach the English classes with me. I asked if he can speak English and , after a surprised look, they said not at all, really. It never dawned on them that speaking at least a little English would be a good attribute of a teacher they hired to teach English. One has to wonder how they find their way to school each days when they don't have two brain cells to rub together.......

[dmbfan]

[mrsquirrel]

My last substitute teacher beat a boy with a wooded stick thing in class. I wasn't best pleased with that nor were the other teachers. Hopefully he won't be back when the useless pregnant teacher goes.

I think it's safe to say being preganant turns you into a crap teacher. Todays class was a disaster zone, after trying to get some attention, trying to explain and trying to suggest to her that she did a concept check for me since I was fighting a losing battle with my second years. Her only reply was I think they know what they are doing.
Hopefully all this wasted energy and lack of thinking is going into developing a super-human baby.