Some people just aren't born to teach very young children

Most people know my job has been going downhill for some time now. I won't go into the specifics again (it's all over my blog if you really want to read it, but just leave it at the fact that I'm not getting paid, and we're probably good to go), but yesterday definitely was a true nadir in my Korean teaching experiences.

First off, I'm really here to teach debate, and I have a solid group of students who participate on those days that I teach it (Saturday and Sunday). However, during the week, I've been required to teach English classes to fill time. Mostly, I've been teaching novel reading classes to students and every now and then a social studies class. It hasn't been that bad, but it hasn't been great either.

Well, we ended up with a new manager the other day, and she changed the curriculum completely. Part of the problem of being me here is that the mothers of these kids keep requesting me to teach classes (it may be because they like my teaching; it may be because they want the Caucasian guy teaching their Korean kids; or whatever). So, this new manager decided that I should be teaching reading, dictation and grammar instead of the usual novel classes. Well, the reading isn't that bad, and the grammar is pretty straightforward. But the class for dictation is a class of four students who are EXTREMELY young. Think fresh out of kindergarten and you get the age group. Think less mature than kindergarten and you get the mentality. So, I'm supposed to teach dictation to a group of kids that have no intentions of listening AT ALL. I ended up spending the last half hour of class fending off screaming kids yelling "We want ice cream!". Needless to say, I went home after work with my nerves so frayed that I don't think I will ever teach kids that age again, especially in a language they mostly don't understand.

That's what it's like to teach here on an almost constant basis. The kids don't want to learn; they're being forced into evening classes by their parents who want them to max the English portions of the TOEFL tests that they have to take in order to get into good schools YEARS from now. So the kids don't see a reason why they should be there, and they hold it personally against the teachers who are trying to teach them. And then to top it off, you have the mothers who have no teaching experience whatsoever constantly telling the teachers how they want the classes to be taught. Fortunately, I don't have to run into this part of the equation (the Korean teachers do, however), but there's always that sense that everything you do is being watched. All of the classes are on CCTV, so the parents often sit in the lobby watching the classes on the main computer, criticizing each teaching moment as it takes place.

That's the kind of atmosphere that I've been living in for the last 7 months or so. Now add the variable of "no pay at all" and you might understand why I'm heading to a major clash with this job.

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