I'm going to be starting at a new school this summer and have been checking their website to see what their response is to "the situation." (Looks like they're still open but banning parents from entering. Yay! haha) Anyway, I noticed on the "Meet the Teachers" page that quite a few of the NETs I first saw on the site have been replaced by brand new faces. At least 5 that I can tell. Is this a bad sign or totally normal? Or possibly C19-related? Or... maybe they're just now getting around to updating the website? The person I'm replacing was pretty vague on why they were leaving and I'm not sure it's worth asking the school or recruiter about directly. Halp.
The foreign teachers I knew who stayed longer than 2 years fell into 3 general groups:1) Those who had a longterm plan to make enough money to enable them to go where they wanted to go and settle in comfortably - like me2) Those who fell in love with a Korean and got married3) Losers and apologists with nothing else going on in their pathetic existencesIt's no coincidence at all that if you go there and buckle down and work without spending a lot of money that most can pay off a student loan in 2 years. To answer your question, no it isn't a bad sign. It's typical.
It would be nice to see long term teachers rewarded somehow or at least be given any kind of motivation. Maybe they could be given more responsibility in terms of mentoring new teachers, running training sessions, opening up their classes throughout the year for people to observe etc. Personally I'd love the chance to observe other teachers to get more ideas for my classes.One thing that has always bothered me about this job is the lack of feedback. I've been here six years and still don't know where I stand in terms of where the bar is set. Am I well below it? Am I just doing what is expected of me? Maybe I'm the best teacher Korea has ever seen and my material blows everyone else out of the water but the point is I have absolutely no idea. No idea at all. I don't really enjoy teaching because I don't know if I'm good at it or not. So why carry on, you know?
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)