korean public schools really just need an outside body to come in once or twice a year and evaluate the teachers, like OFSTED would in the UK. it feels like public school teachers here really don't have anyone to impress (apart from the fake open classes), as they change schools every four years anyway, are never evaluated and know they've pretty much got a job for life. not to mention that the subject teachers seem to get swapped around seemingly at will- teachers getting put on english teaching duty for the year, despite never having taught ESL before (and often not even being able to speak english very well, either)
The problem with Ofsted is they only come once? a year and observe a few selected teachers. What should be happening is the head of dept should be observing all teachers in their dept twice a year and giving them proper feedback. Plus there should be a mandatory peer observation schedule with feedback as part of a teacher's duties. This is what happened at the BC when i worked there and, while unpopular for obvious reasons, people knew it was effective. Quite a few teachers got put on PIPs (performance improvement procedures) as a result
Bad feedback sucks, but it's right of passage every teacher should have to go through. You can't rely on the students to know how the teacher should be developing.
i wonder if it's also cultural? that no teacher wants to criticise other teachers, making them lose face or something? when i first started i'd always ask for feedback but just get a "yes, it was good" despite knowing the class was completely and utterly shite. it was infuriating and impossible to improve
ha exactly. i mean, public schools give yearly feedback forms (rating their teacher) to all students, right down to elementary grade 1 and 2. how mental is that
Peer reviews generally aren't done in private companies back home because of the loss of face issue. Someone at your pay level gives you a bad review, totally poisons the work environment. And very likely you'll give an equally bad review back. It's not a realistic way to review people. Reviews are usually only done by supervisors, or by a completely independent entity.
Well, it has a place, but a small one--students usually have a good sense of whether a teacher is "on their side" and has their interests at heart. But many of the instruments used are iffy at ascertaining that. The real student feedback comes in measuring their progress against pre-defined criteria.There used to be a lot of discussion about how "teaching to the test" is bad, but I always felt that it depends on the test. If the test is measuring the right things in the right way, I'm all for it.
Peer reviews generally aren't done in private companies back home because of the loss of face issue. Someone at your pay level gives you a bad review, totally poisons the work environment. And very likely you'll give an equally bad review back. It's not a realistic way to review people. Reviews are usually only done by supervisors, or by a completely independent entity.Right. But you don't get heads of Dept assessing here either. And when I first came to Korea, I was completely under the impression I was just the assistant and I'd be learning from the Korean teacher. Hard to do without a single piece of feedback!Not to mention every single SMOE training day I went on was utterly awful
Right. But you don't get heads of Dept assessing here either. And when I first came to Korea, I was completely under the impression I was just the assistant and I'd be learning from the Korean teacher. Hard to do without a single piece of feedback!
I really like that EPIK has its mentor/mentee program but it's nowhere near where it should be. - First year teachers should have access to mentors' classes througout the year, not just one time. Deskwarming? Why not be able to pop out for the afternoon to see a class?- Second year teachers should not automatically become mentors. My classes were still probably terrible at that point.- There could be a small team of long term teachers (+ five years?) who have themselves been evaluated, doing the mentoring and doing it regularly throughout the year. One week per semester where they see two mentee classes per day? Something like that.I feel like the mentor/mentee meetings in my experience have been the usual "tick the box, it's done" paperwork for schools when it could be a lot more than that.
I've always wondered why there isn't a set textbook for all native teachers to use. Aren't we kind of wasted on using the Korean English textbooks?I'm always flogging this dead horse but I genuinely believe there should be no native teachers in elementary schools. If the aim is getting the Korean population to speak English then isn't this a monumental waste of resources? KETs are more than capable of laying the groundwork of English learning alone. I get the argument of pronunciation problems but to me that isn't a strong enough argument for allocating native teachers to elementary. If the only aim is to pass a multiple choice English test then every single NET might as well just go home!If the aim is more about exposing students to other cultures then forget everything above and stick NETs everywhere, who cares haha.
One of the main, original, reasons for placing NETs in public schools was to dissuade parents from sending their kids to hagwons.
I have a better life than you hahahahahahahahaaha hahahahahahahaha... ................... .........
This is sad.Would anyone who has a great life post that?
I wouldn't worryAt my local MOE, the Korean CTs complained to the MOE that many of the new NETs were inexperienced (well, no sh*t, a teaching license isn't required). Either way, more experienced NETs are preferred in my MOE.