Blogs | Teaching in Korea Perspective
Found in the comment threads of iforeigner.name, a helpful and thoughtful viewpoint on what it’s like to teach in Korea. More from the writer, Jason Ryan, can be found at his blog: kimchi-icecream.blogspot.com.
Jason said… Hi,I saw a link to your post on Roboseyo’s blog and read the original posting here. I’ve been in Korea for almost 4 years now. I started on Ganghwa Island in three middle schools, with after school classes at an elementary school and a high school . . . and I’m now teaching at a national university of education.
I had only been in Korea for two weeks, and I had no clue what I was agreeing to, when I said yes to extra classes and ended up teaching 34 classes a week . . . and that’s when I began running into a lot of the same stuff you are experiencing.
To this day I will never forget the day I took a sick day to prevent myself from strangling a Korean teacher who was overtly sabotaging my authority in the classroom by telling the students in Korean the opposite of what I would ask them to do . . . that being said, I also had other Korean teachers who were AWESOME–it’s just the bad apples that poison you, sigh. Learning how to inoculate against burn out and rage and despair is insanely difficult here . . . but it is possible.
My teaching methods and goals changed almost overnight from what I know to be ‘good teaching’ (Canadian style and based on TEFL teaching theory) to a ‘foreign teacher in Korea survival teaching style’: 1. Fun is the most important goal in the class, 2. If the students speak SOME English, and learn ONE thing–I was happy.
In my second year I prepared a 3 hour seminar presentation for new foreign teachers arriving in Korea based on what I had heard from hundreds of foreign teachers in Seoul, Daegu, Ilsan, Incheon, Ganghwa, etc, at parties/bars/on the street . . . and at the same time tried to balance that info with all of the TESL and TEFL theory I had studied. My advice to you (and them) is/was to stop giving homework (why bother, no one usually does it due to the insane amounts of time in public school, hogwan, and then forced study at home with the Korean Super/Psychotic-Study Mom watching over their shoulders . . . homework just makes you the enemy who in the students’ minds is just stressing and tiring them out more.
Make FUN your number one priority in lesson planning and class time otherwise students see your class as sleep time, do homework for other classes, etc.
Korean teachers (not ALL, but too many) see our classes as a waste of time as they are not tested in any meaningful way, nor is speaking a part of the national university test which DEFINES THE ENTIRE ED SYSTEM! Once they see the students enjoying the class, and actually speaking some English and hopefully learning one or two things, they generally begin to wake up from the zombie-state too many are possessed by and begin to actively participate in the teaching process–often they also participate with the students in the games and activity stages of the lesson. “A Framework for Task-Based Learning” is one book I’d highly recommend picking up as I’ve had a lot of success using that approach here.
Anyway, my point is that I SOOOOO get the head-space you’re in right now, and hope that you will rediscover some kind of joy in teaching in Korea.
I find that I can recharge and re-motivate myself every year at the KOTESOL conference in Seoul at Sookmyung Women’s University on the last Saturday and Sunday of October every year. Go to this site for more info,
http://www.kotesol.org/?q=IC08
You can go to a lot of decent if not excellent lectures on teaching and teaching issues, get free shit, see the 2009 new books from major publishers and get them for a lower price, and also meet a lot of other foreign public school teachers and profs along with Koreans teachers/profs too.
Anyways, please know that you are not alone, and hopefully I will see you at the conference.
Sincerely,
Jason Ryan
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I am tired of meeting teachers over here who are being jerked around by schools and recruiters. I have met so many others who, usually after paying the price, have found more interesting and teacher friendly environments to work. I would like to create a blog or a space where pilgrim teacher and those with more experience could exchange views on the good, the bad and the ugly on the ROK without the bullshit and censorship so often found in the literature and FAQ pages. I am thinking of organizing this so teachers and prospective teachers can make informed choices. I know the insights you have and I would imagine you have teacher friends that could add to this and make it more valuable. All I would like is a short critique of your experience with school, district and recruitment company with names, without giving a testimonial or a damnation. If you or anyone else you know would like to help me out with this it will be appreciated by more than just me. Perhaps the Korean schools, owners, districts and recruiters will be a little fairer in dealing with us when they can see the teacher’s thoughts will be posted for the world to see. I am pretty sure I will become persona non grata here soon after I do this but I am tired of them screwing with all the good people who come here to work in their schools. On the other hand, I know praise is more effective than a whip so will be sure to accent the good stories as well.
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