RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

...

I did full make-up for this today and now for nothing! 

Take some selfies for your social profiles!

[Note:  This is not a creepy "send pics" post.]

When you miss the bus to your rural school that costs what feels like a week's wages to get to by taxi, so you take a taxi to a bus stop that is easy to communicate to the driver only to find out that the car is a 20-year-old stick shift that the driver doesn't even come close to knowing how to max out, and you just BARELY beat the bus to the stop when you should have been at least 10 minutes ahead of it.

It was also seriously the jerkiest ride I've experienced in Korea so far. Didn't have my dramamine to deal with it, either, and I'm still fighting off the headache that came with the motion sickness.

Shitty way to start the week off. But at least most of my classes are getting taken over by other teachers so that they can help the students review/cram for their upcoming exams.

...

I did full make-up for this today and now for nothing! 

Take some selfies for your social profiles!

[Note:  This is not a creepy "send pics" post.]

Haha, note taken. I suppose I could do that indeed. I'm not generally huge selfie taker.

#based, am I number 3? hahaha

My cell service keeps cutting out intermittently and today's school has no wifi (or, more likely, nobody knows or wants to give me the password. Because there was definitely wifi when i first started working here. For some reason my coT won't believe me  )

Dear Waygook.org user Chinguetti - that sucks. I'll cheer you up! Guess which waygook.org user each of these various fictional replies is from!

Hah, I got most of them. I think. A couple of them could be multiple users, tbf.

What I find funny about this taxi escapade is it's the second taxi I've been in here in Korea that was a stick shift, and the first driver was probably the best taxi driver I've ever had. His timing between gear shifts was perfect, and he actually knew how to navigate through traffic. Not sure if this second driver was just handed a stick shift car or if he was independent and bought it cheap from somewhere but hadn't really mastered how to use it, yet. Either way, the difference between both drivers was Looney Toons extreme.

When you miss the bus to your rural school that costs what feels like a week's wages to get to by taxi, so you take a taxi to a bus stop that is easy to communicate to the driver only to find out that the car is a 20-year-old stick shift that the driver doesn't even come close to knowing how to max out, and you just BARELY beat the bus to the stop when you should have been at least 10 minutes ahead of it.

It was also seriously the jerkiest ride I've experienced in Korea so far. Didn't have my dramamine to deal with it, either, and I'm still fighting off the headache that came with the motion sickness.

Shitty way to start the week off. But at least most of my classes are getting taken over by other teachers so that they can help the students review/cram for their upcoming exams.

Dear Waygook.org user Chinguetti - that sucks. I'll cheer you up! Guess which waygook.org user each of these various fictional replies is from!

1. "You should've known better. Expecting a taxi driver to somehow race a bus and then get on the bus and go to school isn't realistic. Do you think every taxi driver likes to drive fast? Do you think all taxis are brand new automatic transmissions? Just wake up a few minutes earlier and these things won't happen to you."

2. "Taxis in Korea are the best. Taxi drivers in Korea are the best. The bus system here is the best. If you don't like it, why are you here? Consider trying to understand Korea a bit better before you blindly criticize it."

3. "You must be stressed out. Would a massage help? I was partying all weekend so I'm a bit tired, but I could come over and help you relax." want sum luv motel?

4. "Dang, that sucks. I hope you get some #based relaxation time."

5. "You are SO RIGHT. Korean TAXI drivers are tHE WORsT! Next TIME one of THEM is going TOO SLoW just say PAL EE PAL EE KA JOO SAY OH PAL EE PAL EE and he might HURry UP!"

6. "

7. "Korean taxi drivers are racist!!! I was waiting for a taxi and I was constantly refused because I'm a foreigner!! All Korean taxi drivers always ignore all foreigners. Why are Korean taxi drivers so rude? In western countries, taxi drivers are respectful and professional? Why do they discriminate based on my race? I am fluent in Korean, but they pretend not to understand me! All Koreans refuse service to foreigners and treat foreigners like second-class citizens!!"

8. "I've definitely had some rough cab rides out in the country, but luckily it doesn't happen too often. My wife and I generally get lucky and our taxi drivers are pretty nice. Hope you feel better, soon!"

 

I truly, madly, deeply hate teaching with one of my CTs. She's nice and all, but has 0 control over these older students. In order to get them to calm down, she has to basically beg politely and explain to them why they need to be quiet. Erm, how about they need to be quiet because they are students in a classroom! They don't need a logical reason why this activity requires them to be quiet. It should be common practice that they aren't shouting and talking for the duration of class. That's just basic respect.

This makes it impossible to do the same activities that I have been doing for the last 3 years. Some of the things that I know would hit home runs in other classes end up total disasters this year. Today I cycled through 3 different games trying to find one that a certain class could play because they couldn't complete the other games with their bickering and shouting and yelling out incorrect answers on purpose.

If it were up to me, I'd stop the activities early and just give them lines or something. I would ask the students who keep disrupting the class to leave. However, my CT is so soft that she ends up babying them anytime I try to be tough. At the beginning of the year, I talked to her about their behavior so she started taking the problem students out in the hallway for a talk, but they'd always come back in laughing and joking together. Surprise - those students' behavior never changed. The way she plays good cop/bad cop with me comes off as really mocking.

She even babies them about learning. Every time they have to do something that requires slightly more brain effort than rote memorization or repeating, she's going on about "how hard" what we are doing is... except everything I do with these kids is so basic. I rarely ask them to produce any language themselves, I provide skeleton sentences whenever they have to answer a question, I have whittled all my activities down to the most basic parts for these kids this year!

Maybe her way works when she's alone in the classroom with them, but it definitely doesn't work when I'm there. I can't plead with them to be quiet and explain all the reasons why they should do the basic requirements of the classwork every week. It's a bummer. Usually grades 5 and 6 are my favorite to teach, but not this year.

Your teaching style is probably stressing her out, and it's more than likely that she would prefer to baby the students, plead, beg and resign herself to being a doormat than deal with the stress of trying to be a competent educator... Still, you can use this to your advantage.

No use trying to fight with her and the students, simply split the period into her time and your time. If she objects, highlight the advantages to her:

- She'll only need to be in the class for half the period.
- You won't interfere with how she wants to teach.
- Her English ability come under scrutiny as you won't be there to ask her to do difficult
  translations.

Once you've got your time, send her to her office and start teaching. Changing an ill-disciplined class can take a while or it can happen overnight, here's what worked for me:

- THE STICK COMES BEFORE THE CARROT
- identify the 'leaders' of the class, they may be the noisiest or most ill-disciplined, then
  identify the main troublemakers.
- rearrange the class, with an equal ratio of good students to troublemakers in a group or
  put one troublemaker in a group of good students.
- Have an extremely strict set of rules, make sure all the students understand them, and
  enforce your rules with writing out, staying after the bell rings and/or coming having
  detention straight after lunch.
- Focus discipline on the class leaders, once you've broken them, the rest of the class will
  follow. You could also use these students as 'sergeants', with them helping you keep the
  class under control.
- Get the HR teacher to work with you if you're still struggling.

- Once they think of you as Stalin, you'll be able to ease up on the discipline and play games.
  For now, take away all games and restrict the activities to writing out and listening tests.

It's crazy because she's the head teacher and apparently writes materials that the office of education uses. I get the impression she's really well respected as an academic but when it comes to her controlling the classroom... I have no idea what she is doing.

This is interesting to me because the head English teacher at my old school - no exaggeration - struggled to put together a sentence to inform me that there was a schedule change(ee).

Dear Waygook.org user Chinguetti - that sucks. I'll cheer you up! Guess which waygook.org user each of these various fictional replies is from!

1. "You should've known better. Expecting a taxi driver to somehow race a bus and then get on the bus and go to school isn't realistic. Do you think every taxi driver likes to drive fast? Do you think all taxis are brand new automatic transmissions? Just wake up a few minutes earlier and these things won't happen to you."
Pecan!

2. "Taxis in Korea are the best. Taxi drivers in Korea are the best. The bus system here is the best. If you don't like it, why are you here? Consider trying to understand Korea a bit better before you blindly criticize it."
Dr. Demartino!

3. "You must be stressed out. Would a massage help? I was partying all weekend so I'm a bit tired, but I could come over and help you relax."
CO2!

4. "Dang, that sucks. I hope you get some #based relaxation time."
That cowshirt fellow.

5. "You are SO RIGHT. Korean TAXI drivers are tHE WORsT! Next TIME one of THEM is going TOO SLoW just say PAL EE PAL EE KA JOO SAY OH PAL EE PAL EE and he might HURry UP!"
Smaug with a shift key error!

6. "
Sonny!

7. "Korean taxi drivers are racist!!! I was waiting for a taxi and I was constantly refused because I'm a foreigner!! All Korean taxi drivers always ignore all foreigners. Why are Korean taxi drivers so rude? In western countries, taxi drivers are respectful and professional? Why do they discriminate based on my race? I am fluent in Korean, but they pretend not to understand me! All Koreans refuse service to foreigners and treat foreigners like second-class citizens!!"
Waaaayyyyygooook!

8. "I've definitely had some rough cab rides out in the country, but luckily it doesn't happen too often. My wife and I generally get lucky and our taxi drivers are pretty nice. Hope you feel better, soon!"
Donovan!

How'd I score? 

It can help to remember that head teachers are probably not in those positions because their English is the best, or they are the best English teachers. In my experience at least, those kinds of positions go to whoever has the most seniority as a teacher, with essentially no consideration for abilities or any other qualifications.

Went to take a break for the last 20 mins of the day then I remembered that I didn't plan Wednesday's class o.o

I got told that without knowing if i'd have a budget or not, I'd have to plan and make the materials for the entire 10 day summer camp in 6 days (due tomorrow...) so I was focusing on that and forgot about Wednesday o.o

Of course I work 7 HOURS ON TUESDAYS so I won't have time tomorrow...
Luckily my wed school is severely behind so I have some extra games and activities I can recycle o.o

I blame this stupid short notice summer camp plan thing... My main school blows...

Kyndo, you got 6/8.

You were wrong on 5 and 7.

5 is piggydee, no? "Suh lay kee bo tong"? 

I feel like 7 fits more than 1 user so Idk.

5 piggydee

7 Kim Duhan

So tired of everything here. Every little thing raises my blood pressure. One more semester.

So tired of everything here. Every little thing raises my blood pressure. One more semester.

That's the spirit! Leaving here for good in 20 days. People say "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence", in this case it's not only the grass that's greener, but nicer skies, more friendly folk that don't gawk at you rudely, and less miscommunication mishaps!

I wake up happy every morning knowing I'm leaving this God forsaken job. I've actually already given up, I teach for about 10 min then ask the kids what games they want to play - half the time they aren't even English games haha.

Better yet - the administration doesn't care at all. Talk about how much of a joke this job is...

So tired of everything here. Every little thing raises my blood pressure. One more semester.

I hear that. We live on the same street.

So tired of everything here. Every little thing raises my blood pressure. One more semester.

I hear that. We live on the same street.

When i say semester, it's only in theory. I have not told anyone, but i'm cutting my contract short. Done in mid December. No need to extend the agony past finals. Sometimes i invision myself packing up all my shit in boxes and taking them to the post office to be shipped home. I can't wait for that day.

We have a lovely passive-aggressive next door neighbor.

Every morning he goes out and sweeps outside along the street side perimeter of his house and leaves the pile of garbage right outside the gate to our house.

None of the garbage is ours, mind you, but for some reason or another he gets a kick out of doing that to us.

One of these days, I am going to force myself to eat a bunch of corn (I know how Koreans love corn) and drop a deuce right outside his gate. ;)

That reminds me, I'm actually in a kind of feud with my current neighbor. Whenever we get an advert or booklet put on our doors, my neighbor will stick whatever's on his door onto MY door instead of taking it in and throwing it away like most normal folks do.

So I stick it right back on his door. It normally goes back and forth a few times before he caves in and stops trying to force his trash on me.

In our latest spat, though, he decided to throw the advert onto the floor right in front of my door. I kicked it back over to his side. He kicked it back yesterday, so I taped it down in front of his door last night. I'm giddy with excitement to see how he'll choose to respond to that.

@basedcowboy: My guesses were pretty much in line with everyone else's. xD