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Hi TL, until today I was happy teaching in Korea, and maybe tomorrow I will be again, but to be honest today I am seriously SERIOUSLY fucked off with this country and it's approach to teaching.
As a bit of context, I'm a super energetic teacher, I like to be an active part of my lessons as hell, that's what I'm paid to do. I try to make the lessons exciting, and start students on their English journey with fun and a energy in their hearts. We don't learn when we're bored, we learn when we're having fun. I know I;m an amazing teacher, I've bought students up from no ability to high ability in around 6 months, because I'm open, talkative and energetic. I make sure I know what the kids like and how I can use that in teaching
But today, I feel like shit.
I was called on my vacation that another school's foreign teacher was stuck in Beijing on account of the typhoon, and that they needed a teacher ASAP to help them in a teaching competition. Now to describe the competition will probably make people's head's explode in WTF, but I will try. There is a host school, and that school has teachers from other schools teach their kid's for 1 lesson, and then the teachers are assesed on their lesson plan, and other things. The competition was this morning, so essentially I had one day to prepare. Ain't no thing, I prepare my own lessons in much less time, and the school I worked for already had their own plan on what they were going to do. You teach a class in front of a judge (even though there are a few judges, only one checks your class) and other teachers, in hope they take something from your lesson and enjoy.
This competition is for the Koreans, the foreigner doesn't win anything. So basically we're an accessory for their glory, something I was cool with as the teachers I met were the nicest teachers I've met in Korea so far. We met the students yesterday, and I played with them during down time, gaining a relationship with many of the students. They realised I was playful, and to be honest the class were great.
Now the lesson plan, I thought, was amazing. There were video clips for motivation (I had to pretend to have a phone conversation with the video....good motivating shit when the guy in the video is someone dressed as an olympic athelete.) then from there, we had a 'storytime' where we had a flip chart with faces in, I pretended to call them again. All the time I'm energetic, open, joking with students and making the kids laugh, and the teachers seem to enjoy it too, as it's something they seem not used to. The faces ranged from famous koreans to the students themselves. It was well recieved...and the koreans LOVED IT. We then did other activities, and to say that me and the teacher I was working with have worked together excactly 2 days, the chemistry was great. The lesson was energetic....the students got the answers straight away and seemed to fully understand the lesson.
At the end of the lesson, we said goodbye to the amazing students and went to watch other teachers in the competition teach.
I have to say, the other classes were boring, bland and generally not good. The foreign teacher was a decoration in the class, an expensive one at that. Talking to other people watching, they agreed that my lesson was awesome, while they told the other foreigners that their lessons were pretty bland.
[image blocked]
Now, in most opinions, a good Foreign teacher/korean teacher relationship is essential for both students learning and enjoyment levels. The students need that foreigner to give them a reason to learn english. We only speak English, and if they wanna talk to the cool teacher that's like a huge child dancing around and playing around with the kids, they better learn the god damn lingo. That's how my students learn, thats how all my students have learnt over the last 2 years and a bit.
So we get to the point where awards are given. To be honest, I was confident of a 1st, after seeing how lifeless the other lessons were. The closest rivals, to me and a few others was a class where they put on a mask, and pretended to be Conan from detective conan....something I found SERIOUSLY contrived, and the students themselves seemed to be thinking 'wtf are they doing'. I would accept them in first and us in second, as Koreans love that shit.
Now, I had no fucking clue what was going on in the ceremony...as Korean ceremonies are the most bullshit you can fit into 2 hours of some old dude talking shit...I drifted off and chated to a foreigner next to me, who was so impressed with the lesson that my teachers did he was like 'O shit man, that was fucking awesome' after he slated some other teachers who knew their lesson was pants.
We got joint last (3rd position, but 2 teams get that which means that's everyone). I mean....I really don't understand what they were looking for. The only thing I could think of was that they were looking for a traditional rote style lesson, with the occasional game. That is something which is proven to be ineffective...as it's dull and little to no student interaction. Now, I feel REALLY bad for the dude I worked with, he put himself out on this, and I let him down (in my head, it's all my fault) but what else is there for me to do?
I don't like the rote style learning, it never worked for me, it doesn't work on kids full stop. The Korean style of learning is excactly this, it's all rote. It's a terrible system, and to add that foreigners are paid a minimum of 2.2million won (around 2k dollars) means we're very expensive decorations for an English class room. I felt that no matter how hard we tried, with the lesson plan as a 50/50 split between me and the coteacher, we couldn't win. To give an example of the winning team, it was a 90/10 split between korean and foreigner, and most the time the class was writing silently. Foreigners are supposed to teach the speaking aspect, to build confidence for when they move to the bigger schools, where speaking no longer matters and only test scores do...
But today, I feel so unmotivated. Why should I give 110% if they're looking for 10? Why should I engage the students when the people in charge (the education board were the judges) want me to stand there, point to shit on the board and reitterate pronuncitation that they can get from the fucking CDROM. Why should I even try anymore? It's not worth my time and effort. I give my all to teach, and the ungrateful bastards uptop just want silence and rote learning....FUCK THIS SHIT
tl;dr Got into a teaching competition, awesome exciting lesson plan to teach english to the kids, get beat by rote style learning and less foreigner interactions. Fuck the man
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Because if you give your 10% you will likely burn out in no time.
Your own form of "hands on" teaching will probably serve to keep your sanity more than to the benefit of the students.
Unless you feel like getting burnt out and returning to the states feeling all sorts of nastiness towards Korea, I would suggest continuing on with your style.
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On August 30 2012 19:44 ktimekiller wrote:
Because if you give your 10% you will likely burn out in no time.
Your own form of "hands on" teaching will probably serve to keep your sanity more than to the benefit of the students.
Unless you feel like getting burnt out and returning to the states feeling all sorts of nastiness towards Korea, I would suggest continuing on with your style.
But it does benefit the students. I don't give the answers to the students, I don't make them copy the answers down, I let them explore the content with a tour guide who knows the shit and will give insight into why it's useful to have. An excited tour guide is the one you learn more from, not the tour guide who says 'this is la famila catedral, this is gaudi building, this is the beach'
And yes, it does help me stay sane, I will definitely give you that. one of the teachers who was that 10% was like 'that fuck I'm leaving in 3 months' whereas I was like 'that fuck I'm staying for 9 more'
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Don't give a fuck about a fucking competition. Your job is to get pupils to learn their stuff and get on in life. This my friend is your primary goal and you are (as it seems) really good at it. Do you really think a school has a good reputation when their leaders represent the outcome? Personally, and I think everyone had this in school, I think the feedback / opinion of the pupils is by far MUCH MORE profit for the school or the schools system. Therefor I don't even understand why you think about giving less (like 10%). It is you that constantly works on his reputation and "portfolio" of happy and good pupils. Don't think you can earn respect and reputation in such a short time. DO NOT STOP YOUR CURRENT TEACHING STYLE. The world has enough of willingless fuck up teachers. Teachers like you and your attitute is the reason why I would consider getting a teacher myself. It is awful and disgusting how much time kids (I used to do the same) WASTE in school because they are not attracted by the teaching. YOUR JOB IS TO MAKE PUPILS LEARN AND GET ON... not to satisfy some bullshit chief of an old fashioned school or school system.
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if you know your lessons are fucking amazing
you enjoy them
the students enjoy them
the people in the atmosphere enjoy them
why do you need a shitty shiny medal to tell you you're good at what you do?
it's your choice you can make them sit there and write stuff out for an hour but would you enjoy that? would that make you happy? would they look forward to coming and learning from your lessons?
you should care because you're in a position of power over their futures, one in which they have no say on what kind of teacher they get, you should try because you want them to enjoy learning, you want them to look forward to learning as to dreading coming into your class from the sound of it you've achieved that and are just upset over not getting that medal.
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As a teacher in Korea atm I know if I won any sort of award for me or my students I'm probably doing a terrible job. There was a speech competition a while back, I got my students researching, writing and practicing their own speeches. It wasn't perfect but they did it all on their own with some guidance and editing. Then I got in trouble for not making them rote memorise the 7 minutes or so of speech and they got poor marks because I hadn't just written their speeches for them in the first place. So the kids who got the awards basically regurgitated speeches written by their teachers/parents and learnt next to nothing.
The korean educational bureaucracy is just fully retarded. It's all about regulations and the appearance of results rather than actual learning. The obsession with rote memorisation and drilling over understanding/learning is frustrating. Luckily I'm at a hagwon and teach alone so I can teach however I like as long as I get through the syllabus.
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On August 30 2012 20:18 Scarecrow wrote:
As a teacher in Korea atm I know if I won any sort of award for me or my students I'm probably doing a terrible job. There was a speech competition a while back, I got my students researching, writing and practicing their own speeches. It wasn't perfect but they did it all on their own with some guidance and editing. Then I got in trouble for not making them rote memorise the 7 minutes or so of speech and they got poor marks because I hadn't just written their speeches for them in the first place. So the kids who got the awards basically regurgitated speeches written by their teachers/parents and learnt next to nothing.
The korean educational bureaucracy is just fully retarded. It's all about regulations and the appearance of results rather than actual learning. The obsession with rote memorisation and drilling over understanding/learning is frustrating. Luckily I'm at a hagwon and teach alone so I can teach however I like as long as I get through the syllabus.
how'd you handle that?
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United States24676 Posts
What you describe as the problem with education in Korea is probably pretty accurate (and Korea isn't the only country with this problem).
If the only example of this is how you were rated in some competition, then it isn't worth worrying about. How else has this impacted you?
The quality of a lesson is also one of the most difficult things to judge. Any lesson I've ever taught, in my whole life (and I've taught a lot at this point), would have been rated really high by some people and really low by other people. If your bosses allow you to teach your children how you think works (regardless of a silly competition that sounds dumb) then that should be more than enough to pacify you.
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On August 30 2012 20:21 Denzil wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2012 20:18 Scarecrow wrote:
As a teacher in Korea atm I know if I won any sort of award for me or my students I'm probably doing a terrible job. There was a speech competition a while back, I got my students researching, writing and practicing their own speeches. It wasn't perfect but they did it all on their own with some guidance and editing. Then I got in trouble for not making them rote memorise the 7 minutes or so of speech and they got poor marks because I hadn't just written their speeches for them in the first place. So the kids who got the awards basically regurgitated speeches written by their teachers/parents and learnt next to nothing.
The korean educational bureaucracy is just fully retarded. It's all about regulations and the appearance of results rather than actual learning. The obsession with rote memorisation and drilling over understanding/learning is frustrating. Luckily I'm at a hagwon and teach alone so I can teach however I like as long as I get through the syllabus. how'd you handle that?
Well I wasn't explicitly told to write their speeches for them. So my boss couldn't really blame me for the speeches not scoring high. I figured actual teaching was the better way to go. It's hard enough writing and delivering a 7 minute speech let alone memorising it all, in a different language, at age 12.
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The funny thing is that Korea does really well in international studies like PISA. Everybody at our university is always like "try to learn from the Koreans, they do it right".
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Whoa that really sucks  I assume you were judged on your lesson and not on your students' actual performance then, right? You clearly don't have a self-esteem problem (to put it one way hehe) and I 100% believe you when you say you're a kickass teacher, so all I can say is that it's a damn shame but...well sometimes it's good to vent. Quality of lessons depends on the student, but yeah, rote/boring teaching is just terrible.
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On August 30 2012 21:15 surfinbird1 wrote:
The funny thing is that Korea does really well in international studies like PISA. Everybody at our university is always like "try to learn from the Koreans, they do it right".
Same shit in Turkey, because we don't actually learn the shit and instead we memorize the whole thing. Then we forget it. Then we actually grow needs to re-learn the whole fucking thing when we need it in business life or shit like that and we do.
Note: Turkish Universities is a very different thing. We get the questions of past exams, solve all of them more than once, go to the exam, score high. Still, shit is pretty stupid.
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Lol surfinbird1, Koreans are good at putting in the hours. :D
To the OP, who cares about the award lmao, just know that you're actually teaching kids in Korea how to speak English... kind of annoys me that all my cousins go to hagwon from like elementary school to high school and cannot speak English at all...
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On August 30 2012 21:15 Aerisky wrote:Whoa that really sucks I assume you were judged on your lesson and not on your students' actual performance then, right? You clearly don't have a self-esteem problem (to put it one way hehe) and I 100% believe you when you say you're a kickass teacher, so all I can say is that it's a damn shame but...well sometimes it's good to vent. Quality of lessons depends on the student, but yeah, rote/boring teaching is just terrible.
If it was on students retention for that one lesson, then we'd of aced it because all the kids were using the target sentences with no problems by the end. I asked them what the verbs were and boom, they got it, I asked them to do a phone call with me, boom perfect.
The reason I feel so shitty is that I was called in as relief for their actual native teacher in their school. I'm trying to build a rep with the public school teachers across the area (great showcase here) so that if the planned phasing out of teachers happens in Korea, then I can do free lance teaching in public schools as like a guest teacher for a day (don't know if it will work, but if I got the cred then it would go well).
The teachers I worked with loved me, and if things go to plan, I'll be meeting them next week for drinks and stuff...so kind of excited for that. I hope that the teachers watching realised what it was all about and the good stuff.
I don't need that shiny medal, and it wouldn't have been given to me either, but it was the dude I was working with. He made this lesson plan, we practiced a few times and it was great. I just felt seriously bad for him as something like this would have meant he would get better options later down the line.
As for the learn like Koreans, that shit has started to be phased out and replaced with 'learn like the fins'. Finland has an amazing system apparently, and MANY countries are looking at their education system as it's not the mindless drone that the Korean system is.
Thanks for the encouragement guys  And when it comes to teaching, I'm probably the most self assured guy because I'm just kick ass like that....though I am lazy when it comes to my own plans, I just make the book WAY more exciting. I kill the teachers part (get through this part of the book) and kill the students with jokes and excitement (not too many games either).
I do miss the Hagwon life. It was easier in many ways. the students were a higher level, and as you see the same students all the time, you get a good grasp of how well their English is improving. I did the same as you with the speech competition, I was like 'don't look at me, it's your competition and you can do it, I will check your grammar and word choices at the end, but I know that you know how to do it' and they got high scores anyway, mainly because I practiced their pronunciation in classes without them knowing X)
The education system, especially the effectiveness of their foreign teachers, is something which needs a major overhaul. Many teachers are under-utilised (that doesn't need they need more hours) in the class rooms, and they with the right system in place, the students won't need external motivation to learn English...the foreign teacher is all the motivation they need.
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EPT
