Thursday, February 4, 2010

31. Summary

Strange to think about, the largest numbers of people that come to Korea are English teachers. These government programs which are supposed to hire and, presumably, retain good teachers are failing miserable to do so. For those that have a very good time here in Korea, though rare, great for them. If only everyone could be so lucky. For those in the majority that hated some to many aspects of their job in Korea, it creates a generation of people who will hate their experience here for the rest of their lives. They will tell others of their experiences one way or another. Create enough of these people and it creates a bad overall image of Korea. By the way, Korea doesn’t have a great image to begin with; no real tourist attractions, lack of diverse and distinctive foods, and lack of a friendly society. How do you hire people for jobs that no one wants… throw more money at the problem and hope it goes away, which seems to be the procedure here. I look at the recruiters ads and laugh; never believe recruiters, they’ll never tell you of the negative side – what awaits you on the other side, where it’s past the point of no return.

All in all, it’s been a good old round of behavioral warfare between me and them. Although they really can’t do much to you at the school, don’t let them convince you that they can. They like to pretend they have power and use the whole lecture and empty threats procedure. They seem to have major problems working with all their English native teachers; or shall I say, they weren’t ready to have one to begin with.

You are not alone in certain regards; the people from the other middle schools generally hate their jobs as well. We all start off as curious people afraid of the new world, and then we grow up. I was hardcore into the job for like 3-4 months and then it just hits you – Why? And you start to open your eyes. There are three kinds of people you will run into here, the kinds that like their jobs, hate their jobs, and those that think they’re okay. I tend to believe the stats, most people you meet aren’t veterans for good reason. About half of all foreign English teachers don’t renew their contracts and less than 1 in 10 that do renew have multiple years of experience. The elementary schools tend to be better from what I’ve seen.

I came to Korea a pretty calm and relaxed fellow. I will leave with a chip on my shoulder. The only way you can get the Koreans to attempt to do what you want is by beating them over the head with a logic club. Mildly ineffective, but they need some common sense more than they need English teachers.

I came here with good intentions. Something changes over time. Your belief that you are making a difference in the students’ lives turns into a lost cause. Your belief that they (students/teachers/admin) give a rat’s ass – disappears. Your belief that they are actually capable teachers – vanishes. You will remain, alone, to spend your year in purgatory. Teaching in South Korea is the midway point of nowhere. You won’t grow professionally or skillfully. You will instead grow to hate your job. I learned a word while being here: schadenfreude. Literally, it means “harm + joy,” it’s the pleasure from the misfortune of others. This is what I have learned in Korea.

Like anyone would have, I tried to fight the system in my random bouts of overwhelming desire. Where do you or should you vent when you feel trapped by the co-teachers? Good question. You’ll want to release some pent up frustrations at something. Generally, I’ve found it to be futile, if and when teachers are lectured to by the principal which happened to Hong one of the 2nd level teachers and Bak the 1st level teacher, they will be fuming for a bit because you made them look bad in the eyes of their superior, then they will return to their normal routine almost immediately… so much for that. Out of sight out of mind – too often this is the case for them, for you, and everyone in Korea.

I had a support structure while here; I could and did talk to my fiancĂ©e too much about my troubles. I can’t imagine not being able to do that. Trying to face this insurmountable opposition alone would have easily made me leave earlier. I’ve had enough of its absurdity to last a lifetime.

I write this as a bit of advice, warning, or training if you will. Such simple things like a letter from the last employee can help transition from one job to the next, but Korean’s have no understanding of this. Training, advice, support – who needs that? What is the cost of this ignorance? The answer: 1 billion plus USD spent on English education, more bad publicity, and very little results. Korea spends the most out of any other country on ESL, but has the worst results.

If you survive the year, I salute you. Even if you don’t, I salute you as well. Never have I worked for a company that knew and cared so little about what I was doing. Working here will change you into a person you do not want to become and you will hope to reverse its effects.

30. Everything Else

Often, you’ll have to wonder if doing something is okay… just do it until they tell you that it’s not. They’re not confrontational and it’ll take them a long time to actually build up the courage to tell you otherwise. Also, their logic isn’t very sound, so feel free to poke holes in it at will… I found it quite entertaining.

This school is spending money left and right on everything but education. I’ve never seen a school spend/throw around more money than they do here, in order: new windows, new parking lot, new part of the building with more unnecessary classrooms, new sliding doors for classrooms and teachers room, water dispensers, and new regular doors for other rooms such as bathrooms. Mind, nothing was wrong with the old ones.

One of the last things they added was computer podiums and electronic projectors were installed in the classroom. This I find very amusing and wasteful. Korean English teachers at my school barely used the whiteboard or chalkboard. They are generally amazed at any power point slides that I create, and have quite basic skills, if any, at creating them. They never used the computer podium in the English classroom except to occasionally try to progress my slides in one direction or another. I have seen them teach myself and have talked to some students and other native teachers about this as well; the Korean English teachers are notorious for the “standing still reading from a book” method of teaching. If they ever do use a projector or monitor, it’s to play a movie or a barely-educational lecture on learning English phrases. They already had flat screen televisions in every classroom to show those.

29. Intellectual Theft

As for their sticky fingers when it comes to lesson plans, don’t let them have too much. I would purposefully take the significant parts out of dittos and put them into my power point slides. The student would still get photocopies, but it would mostly be the busy work. Although my slides were on the classroom podium computer, they were password locked. If they wanted to see them, which was virtually never, they would have to come to me and ask to see them. One of the things I learned in business is that you should never make yourself replaceable. If you give them your materials they can just hire someone else to take your place and reuse your materials without you. If they make you submit your lessons, I might suggest submitting a really dumbed-down version. I figure the worst they could do is make you do a lesson plan outline which should have nothing to do with your computer files. Also, if you do give your lessons to them, they can probably pretend that they helped you make some of it or reviewed it, when in reality they didn’t. Appearance, even greatly falsified, is everything here.

28. Teaching and Movies

It’s really strange that they would put the power of the entire lesson planning into the hands of the 'foreigner.' It leaves them at a huge disadvantage. They have become lazy from their arrogance. Especially here, where there is no review or collection of your materials. Like some other foreigners, some choose to show movies at the end of the semesters to de-stress and let the students have a little fun. I do believe this is within our power. The Korean teachers show movies as well (i.e. when I’m busy verbal testing the students and they’re doing nothing). Some teachers will not care at all if you watch a movie. Some of the others are a little more cautious about how they handle the situation.

No matter if you are showing a movie or teaching English, some Korean teachers will take the classes away from you the week before the testing. The end of the semester is a time for the testing. From the beginning to the end of the semester, the students are supposed to cover and know certain materials; I believe the teachers are judged on this performance. The teacher’s will take your classes, mostly without notice. Sometimes, the students will arrive, you’ll start a film, and then the Korean teacher will walk in 5 min late as usual and tell the students to go somewhere else… I find that quite humorous, the students become de-motivated because the foreign teacher wants to show them a movie and their Korean teacher took it away from them... Serves them right though, they should both know what I’m teaching at all times, even after numerous attempts to get them to review/work on it together, and come to the class on time just like the students do.

Korean teachers are okay with you doing things as long as it doesn’t conflict with anything they want later down the line… This concept conflicts with our job understanding, if it wasn’t told to us beforehand and it was already done before with no complaint, then it is okay (trial and error). I think anyone would expect similarities of procedures between the first and second semester.

In the second semester, starting the week before the test, I tried to show a movie to the students; even though there were 3.5 weeks left technically (taking into account alternating regular and remedial classes it comes down to roughly 2 classes left per class – exactly one movie). The first level teacher already decided that she would take the students and didn’t tell me. The second level teacher had no problem and watched it with the class. So then, I started the movie for the 3rd level students... the 3rd level teacher came in and was like, “you should teach and not show movies,” and I asked “why?” I was never told I couldn't watch movies, I also said that I did it last semester at the end as well. She then said, "I'm asking you to not show this movie starting tomorrow, and I responded, “I'm going to keep on showing it.” I told her she could take the class from me if she wanted to and teach them if she wanted to, since the other teachers do the same thing... she thought about it for like 20 seconds and then took the students; lmao, that was easy.

Before taking the class, she asked the students if they wanted to learn or watch the movie... this, I thought was the most absurd thing I had ever heard... on one side, they want to have fun, but they know they have a test, on the other, the oppressive teacher that will strike down any opposition while asking a obviously one sided question – that’s a good way to strike down any independence they might have actually had. The students are trained to be followers…

The next day, the second level teacher Hong, did exactly the same thing as the third level teacher… you’d think they would tell each other things… so then she took the rest of the second level classes that week. So for that week, I didn’t teach any students with exception for showing half a movie to two classes of the 20.

The third day, the third level teacher strangely decided to tempt fate and try having a class with me again, the same situation played out. She additionally asked why I was there if I was just showing movies, to which I replied even a movie can be used to teach English. I stated that I would have a worksheet to accompany it, she wanted to see it, and I said it wasn’t ready yet; it would be ready after the movie. She took the class away again. If she, and any of the other Korean co-teachers, were logical they would ask me what I was teaching before going to the class and looking like a complete fool in front of the students…

The same day, the third level teacher finally decided that she would try to use me for her last two classes that week. She was teaching to the test, of course, and going over last year’s test word by word. She wanted me to read; fine I’ll read, but I’ll pace up and down desks aisles and read in the most boring and low voice I can muster. I figure you can pretend not to understand anything grammatical, they treat us like we’re idiots anyways.

So, some teachers will go out of their way to prevent you from showing a movie, others will sit back and allow it. One teacher even asked if I would show the movie next week… uh, sure. The second level teacher tried to follow suit with the third teacher by trying to get me to ‘add’ to her teaching of the book. The first day she asked me to explain what a page of idioms meant to the class… lol, I didn’t even know what 80% of the idioms meant and had never seen them before. I told her I didn’t understand most of them and then ended up not saying another word the entire class, while she lectured away, and I just walking around aimlessly.

It’s strange, I feel as though they don’t have the power to change what you’re doing. They can only ask you to stop doing something they don’t like. I still can’t comprehend the stupidity of not knowing what the foreign teacher is teaching. Technically, I just forced their hand in my favor. I figure they could have easily just made me help whatever they want to teach… but that doesn’t happen here, this cooperation so clearly marked in the contract has no meaning to them.

27. KT's Thoughts of NETS

Thoughts of what Korean teachers think of English native teachers:

We are meaningless to them. We are always ignorant to them, no matter your degree, your knowledge, and your ability – here it’s based on age and we’re generally younger by about 10 years. We are showing their giant inadequacy at teaching English. If you ever want to make a Korean teacher cry, ask them how long they’ve been teaching English and why they suck so much. Korea has archaic dinosaurs trying to teach English that have no creativity, no ability to teach, and no ability to engage interest. The Koreans that took these teaching spots are supposed to be the top students that competed heavily for these coveted stable/high paying positions. All they know how to do is follow a script; they are script kiddies of the non-technical teaching world. They are over qualified, over paid, and over appreciated. Once they obtain this job, they are set for life; no reason for them to become better, just a lot of pretending will get them far. We come here and teach better than they do, quite commonly, with no training whatsoever. To them you are a Sherpa, a person to carry the burden. Don’t let them push you around. They can and often do steal your material, they do this under the guise of reviewing it for class, but then they come to class and still don’t know what’s going on. They like new teachers, no reason for them to keep anyone (around hence the high turnover rates); they can manipulate people easier when they’re new. My mother is Korean, and she said to me, “Koreans will take advantage of you if they can.” Take her advice.