How much do teacher's really want an experienced native teacher?

How much do teacher's really want an experienced native teacher?  Seems a disconnect between EPIK and provincial offices hiring practices and pay rates offered versus what teachers need and want.  Seems one is not listening to the other. 

How much do teacher's really want an experienced native teacher?  Seems a disconnect between EPIK and provincial offices hiring practices and pay rates offered versus what teachers need and want.  Seems one is not listening to the other. 

Korean teachers want someone who wont be a pain in the ass. Experienced teachers generally wont ask for help on how to do things and will get the job done without much assistance. There are exceptions and Korean teachers might not be looking for experienced teachers, but rather someone who is agreeable.

As a whole, the government's opinion matters most (more than us, Korean teachers, students or parents) and the government has the option to either:

- Pay for experienced teachers, overhaul the entire education system and really get things in order

or

- Do the bare minimum to maintain the facade to poor parents who can't afford to send their kids to fancy hagwons that their kids will be given just as equal an opportunity as the rich kids who get in to SKY universities.

The 2.2m a month tape player foreigner is the KET's dream subordinate.

It's only a matter of time before NET robots take over. After all they're willing to work for just 1.2m a month and a can of WD-40, and don't demand trips to evil Japan. And they don't endlessly waste all their "class prep time" trolling on Waygook about ways to make 4m a month with no effort.

LOL what if they had full on androids that are designed to fix every sentence that is spoken in the classroom and sends class recordings to the office of education. Let the Chaos ensue.

I swear, the POEs ideas on English education must've been concocted by Mr Bean.

Korean teachers want someone who wont be a pain in the ass. Experienced teachers generally wont ask for help on how to do things and will get the job done without much assistance. There are exceptions and Korean teachers might not be looking for experienced teachers, but rather someone who is agreeable.

As a whole, the government's opinion matters most (more than us, Korean teachers, students or parents) and the government has the option to either:

- Pay for experienced teachers, overhaul the entire education system and really get things in order

or

- Do the bare minimum to maintain the facade to poor parents who can't afford to send their kids to fancy hagwons that their kids will be given just as equal an opportunity as the rich kids who get in to SKY universities.

I dunno, seems they're getting decent bang for the buck. Plenty of Koreans can communicate reasonably well in Korean. I think the government is at the point of diminishing returns for what it would get out of it. Sure, you could double the salary and get double the experience, but would you get double the proficiency from what, 2 days of English class a week for one hour each? Say you add a 3rd day, would you get double the English ability by 6th grade with all of that?

What should they do? Hire double the English teachers and split the class of 30 kids in two for more attention? Would that double their proficiency?

What's the economic benefit of this for society? Is Korea THAT lacking in English proficiency and ability? Are they failing in global business because of it? What are we trying to do? Ensure high-level English proficiency for a worker at Burger King dealing with perhaps 4 foreign customers out of 200 they deal with in a day? Do they need to pronounce "Whopper" with a native accent?

Is this only going to happen with English? What about science? What about math? What about physical education? Have you seen kids today? They're getting pudgy.

Sometimes I think people here have unreasonable expectations regarding Korean English education.

Sorry, I see the case for incremental improvement. I don't see the need for a massive overhaul and dramatically increasing expenditure.

Keep in mind, you institute a national mandate, this has to apply to ALL districts. Even those in EffingNowhere, Gangwando and Gilligando Island

I feel that Korean teachers probably want an experienced NET, as in somebody experienced in that position in Korea.  An experienced teacher coming in with glorified ideals that they're going to change the system is probably right at the bottom of the list of what they want.

I dunno, seems they're getting decent bang for the buck.

When it comes to the national budget for English education, the money goes to places besides salaries and many of those places are money pits.

That aside, you could pay more to hire a more experienced teacher, but all that means nothing if said teacher has to adhere to a curriculum that makes absolutely no sense, compared to traditional and modern pedagogical approaches, or if a student has worked out, and takes advantage of the fact, that simply attending classes and doing jack sh*t is enough to be promoted to the next grade.
You could hire an Ivy league grad, with a PHD and 20yrs experience, but it means nothing if you force him/her to teach "She is a bag designer? The entire system needs a complete overhaul and I'm not just referring to English.

I didn't tell Koreans to bone up on their English, they did. I didn't put comically convoluted English grammar questions
in the Suneung, Korea did.

When it comes to the national budget for English education, the money goes to places besides salaries and many of those places are money pits.

That aside, you could pay more to hire a more experienced teacher, but all that means nothing if said teacher has to adhere to a curriculum that makes absolutely no sense, compared to traditional and modern pedagogical approaches, or if a student has worked out, and takes advantage of the fact, that simply attending classes and doing jack sh*t is enough to be promoted to the next grade.
You could hire an Ivy league grad, with a PHD and 20yrs experience, but it means nothing if you force him/her to teach "She is a bag designer? The entire system needs a complete overhaul and I'm not just referring to English.

I didn't tell Koreans to bone up on their English, they did. I didn't put comically convoluted English grammar questions
in the Suneung, Korea did.

Okay, but even with this complete overhaul of the entire English curriculum AND hire more expensive teachers. How much more benefit would you get?

And what are you going to do? Flunk 15-30% of your students every year because they suck at one subject at 10 years old? Do you have any idea what kind of costs will accumulate with that? You're going to get overcrowding and kids that just do not advance. You think our schools back home are flunking 4th graders because they get a crappy grade in Spanish?

Unless a kid has a serious developmental disability or study issue, there is zero reason to hold them back until high school. Not with all the rules tied to adulthood, public funding, etc.

When implementing education for a population, you have to accept that some kids aren't that bright and that some kids aren't going to college. You can't start holding them back simply because they suck at one subject and screwing up things.

Is the cost-benefit really there? Would this overhaul truly be worth the price? And why the focus just on English?

When you run an education system, you have to focus on all subjects and all kinds of students, not just a single field and goal

Unless you put students in a full emersion program, I doubt any number of 'experts', or higher number of classes, or improved methods, will improve the proficiency of English in Korea. You'll get the same 10% at the top, 80% in the middle, and the bottom 10% that will barely know what an 'A' looks like. Just look at other countries like.... ehem... Canada... cough... cough... trying to teach their second official language.

With hiring in general:

“A” managers hire “A” (or “A+”) staff so they look good.
“B” managers hire “C” staff for the same reason.

Even though they don’t do the hiring, I think the formula holds.

Unless you put students in a full emersion program, I doubt any number of 'experts', or higher number of classes, or improved methods, will improve the proficiency of English in Korea. You'll get the same 10% at the top, 80% in the middle, and the bottom 10% that will barely know what an 'A' looks like. Just look at other countries like.... ehem... Canada... cough... cough... trying to teach their second official language.

I don't know where you went to school, but in my area of BC, we had the choice of learning either French or Russian (my town had a prevalent Russian Doukhobor history: there are even the occasional street and shop sign in Cyrillic). Second language classes were mandatory until grade 10, and strongly encouraged for 11 and 12 as well.
  Plenty of years later, I can still speak French conversationally, or at least, enough to for small talk and day to day life.
  Most of the people I've kept in touch with who took Russian still speak it pretty well (although most of them took it because their family spoke it at home, so maybe they don't count).

  I get that French is much easier to learn and retain for speakers of other European languages than English is for a Korean speaker, but I also think that the manner in which we are taught our second languages is more effective than the 40 year old pedagogy they use here in Korea.

When it comes to the national budget for English education, the money goes to places besides salaries and many of those places are money pits.

That aside, you could pay more to hire a more experienced teacher, but all that means nothing if said teacher has to adhere to a curriculum that makes absolutely no sense, compared to traditional and modern pedagogical approaches, or if a student has worked out, and takes advantage of the fact, that simply attending classes and doing jack sh*t is enough to be promoted to the next grade.
You could hire an Ivy league grad, with a PHD and 20yrs experience, but it means nothing if you force him/her to teach "She is a bag designer? The entire system needs a complete overhaul and I'm not just referring to English.

I didn't tell Koreans to bone up on their English, they did. I didn't put comically convoluted English grammar questions
in the Suneung, Korea did.

I mean experienced at working in the Korean school system and local culture.  Experienced in the sense the co teacher doesn't have to drive the foreign teacher all over the place translating setting up a bank account, getting a cell phone, frequent babysitting and translating, etc.  I meant experienced in the sense they go to class prepared with materials and activities for class whether it be old school games, add on activities, or even ppt activities to supplement the textbook.  A newbie doesn't know these things and does take a lot of Korean teachers time. 

I don't know where you went to school, but in my area of BC, we had the choice of learning either French or Russian (my town had a prevalent Russian Doukhobor history: there are even the occasional street and shop sign in Cyrillic). Second language classes were mandatory until grade 10, and strongly encouraged for 11 and 12 as well.
  Plenty of years later, I can still speak French conversationally, or at least, enough to for small talk and day to day life.
  Most of the people I've kept in touch with who took Russian still speak it pretty well (although most of them took it because their family spoke it at home, so maybe they don't count).

  I get that French is much easier to learn and retain for speakers of other European languages than English is for a Korean speaker, but I also think that the manner in which we are taught our second languages is more effective than the 40 year old pedagogy they use here in Korea.

I know a lot of folks who took French in the school system.  Today, their French is poor and very basic.  It really didn't do the trick and in some parts of Canada if you don't speak it fluently, you get discriminated against in jobs and treated as a second class citizen.  Not in BC of course.   

I don't know where you went to school, but in my area of BC, we had the choice of learning either French or Russian (my town had a prevalent Russian Doukhobor history: there are even the occasional street and shop sign in Cyrillic). Second language classes were mandatory until grade 10, and strongly encouraged for 11 and 12 as well.
  Plenty of years later, I can still speak French conversationally, or at least, enough to for small talk and day to day life.
  Most of the people I've kept in touch with who took Russian still speak it pretty well (although most of them took it because their family spoke it at home, so maybe they don't count).

  I get that French is much easier to learn and retain for speakers of other European languages than English is for a Korean speaker, but I also think that the manner in which we are taught our second languages is more effective than the 40 year old pedagogy they use here in Korea.

Alberta, and trust me, most can't speak French if their lives depended on it, despite some 10 years of mandatory French. And I've only met one guy, out I don't know how many, from Vancouver/BC that could speak French, and he took French emersion. I lived in Ottawa a few years too, and despite being on the Quebec border, and a quarter of the city being French speaking, most of the English side can't speak much French.

Also a funny quote from a hockey player the was traded from the Flames to the Habs, "I might be in trouble... I don't speak French, even if I have the most French name on that team.", and this guy was born in a town called Lac La Biche (granted he didn't grow up there)..

Interesting! Maybe it had something to do with the fact that so many of the kids were already bilingual in my area that more importance was put on the second language programmes?

Also, I'm pretty surprised that so few Anglos in Ottawa speak French!

Well... actually, I guess I'm not, considering how few of us NETs actually speak any Korean... 

Yeah most of these changes in one direction or the other have only marginal effects. The differences in outcomes based on curriculum really aren't THAT great.

Some people seem to be under tgethe impression the Korean system is churning out drooling imbeciles while our systems back home are turning out creative geniuses, including themselves.

Having worked with lots of foreigners and lots of Koreans, not really seeing this dramatic difference in outcomes one way or the other.

And they don't endlessly waste all their "class prep time" trolling on Waygook about ways to make 4m a month with no effort.

I sometimes wonder if certain users on this websites are bots, so I wouldn't be too sure about that one

Alberta, and trust me, most can't speak French if their lives depended on it, despite some 10 years of mandatory French. And I've only met one guy, out I don't know how many, from Vancouver/BC that could speak French, and he took French emersion. I lived in Ottawa a few years too, and despite being on the Quebec border, and a quarter of the city being French speaking, most of the English side can't speak much French.

Also a funny quote from a hockey player the was traded from the Flames to the Habs, "I might be in trouble... I don't speak French, even if I have the most French name on that team.", and this guy was born in a town called Lac La Biche (granted he didn't grow up there)..

That tells you a lot about only public school education back home giving minimal instruction during the younger years.  It was a lot like when I first came to Korea.  I met kids who only got some modest English in Elementary and I interacted with them in Middle School.  They couldn't communicate in English at all.  Unlike today's hakwon extra training kids.  So many going to after school academies and self study for adults and more exposure to foreigners too.  It boosted the Korean levels.  Canada does none of this and the second language level for the average Joe is negligible.  A few who are motivated and self learn of course are the exception.

I sometimes wonder if certain users on this websites are bots, so I wouldn't be too sure about that one

Thankfully, my prep is done due to past two years prep.  Only a small minority of us actually contribute and upload here it seems though.  I worked my ass off on the stuff.  But when the next set of Elementary books come out in a couple of years, you're on your own I think.  I won't be contributing as much.  But you can take my stuff here and others and modify it for reposting if you wish.