RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

It's always a privilege to witness my CT in action when it comes to discipline and the effectiveness of Korean teacher training. She teaches one class by herself and I sit in the next room. If you've ever visited Earth, you might've heard the noise her class makes. In an effort to combat this ear splitting raucous, she's turned to technology by plugging in the microphone and attempting to scream the lesson over the student's noise.

Not entirely dense, it took her 3 months to realize that this ultimately doubles the noise. So she's adopted the strategy of teaching the students to police each other by permitting them to shout the words "Be Quiet" at any noise violators. Now, we've got an English lesson of my CT shouting awkward Key Expressions through a speaker while 30 students are all attempting to scream "Be Quiet!" at their friends.

This kind of stuff is so funny!

I'm really laughing, so I don't know why I'm putting it in the ranting thread. I guess because it's just so ridiculous to find these chapters in a foreign language book. I wonder what they learn in their actual Korean lessons.

"Wow! Koreans are very smart."

Now I know why the Koreans I meet act like unpaid government tour and culture guides, even after I tell them I've been living here for several years. They are taught that this is how your conversations with foreigners are supposed to go. And why they act so disappointed when I don't gush over what they think I should gush over.  I didn't follow the script 

It's almost surreal.

I've taken classes in Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish, and not a single one of them included chapters about America. I had plenty of other classes in which to learn about my own country; my languages classes gave me the opportunity to learn about different cultures and new places.

I genuinely think the English books here are doing the students a disservice. Happily, I've often been given the opportunity to teach classes about whatever I feel like teaching them, so I try to give them the cultural exposure their textbooks don't.

This kind of stuff is so funny!

I'm really laughing, so I don't know why I'm putting it in the ranting thread. I guess because it's just so ridiculous to find these chapters in a foreign language book. I wonder what they learn in their actual Korean lessons.

"Wow! Koreans are very smart."

Now I know why the Koreans I meet act like unpaid government tour and culture guides, even after I tell them I've been living here for several years. They are taught that this is how your conversations with foreigners are supposed to go. And why they act so disappointed when I don't gush over what they think I should gush over.  I didn't follow the script 

Surprisingly, I've heard this has nothing to do with the inferiority complex.
Textbook publishers have a better shot of getting rich by getting MOE's to authorise the use of their textbooks when they fill it with nationalistic drivel.
The South Korean government, just like their comrades in the North, love Nationalism and filling their citizens with it. The more Nationalistic the people become, the easier they are to manipulate and the less likely they are to care when their overlords in government/Samsung get caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.

Had this discussion years ago with my first CT when I was still working with a CT. She was a brand new teacher. She told me they get virtually no classroom management training and student teaching is like a week but it's not really student teaching, because I have seen it first hand in my high school. They come in for two weeks (high school) and spend most of the time observing senior teachers and then they teach one truncated lesson (20 mins) with the senior teacher in the room to control the students.
I actually feel sorry for Kteachers, their prep is lacking in the classroom management and child psychology areas.

It's always a privilege to witness my CT in action when it comes to discipline and the effectiveness of Korean teacher training. She teaches one class by herself and I sit in the next room. If you've ever visited Earth, you might've heard the noise her class makes. In an effort to combat this ear splitting raucous, she's turned to technology by plugging in the microphone and attempting to scream the lesson over the student's noise.

Not entirely dense, it took her 3 months to realize that this ultimately doubles the noise. So she's adopted the strategy of teaching the students to police each other by permitting them to shout the words "Be Quiet" at any noise violators. Now, we've got an English lesson of my CT shouting awkward Key Expressions through a speaker while 30 students are all attempting to scream "Be Quiet!" at their friends.

It's officially "Close the door!" season.

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I'd like to make a polite request that you stop this now.  It's gone on long enough I think.

What is it with some women in the country sounding like a slightly higher pitched Vincent Price?

You can hear it sometimes with 앵~~~?

It's like a high pitched nasally whine.

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I'd like to make a polite request that you stop this now.  It's gone on long enough I think.

Agreed. Very spammy too.

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I'd like to make a polite request that you stop this now.  It's gone on long enough I think.

Disagree.

It lets me know I should read it in the voice I made up for #theBasedOne; kind of like actor David Carradine’s.

Saw three people on my facebook feed use the term 'adulting'.

F millennials are stupid. And to think our grandparents were storming Okinawa. Get over yourselves people.

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I'd like to make a polite request that you stop this now.  It's gone on long enough I think.

Disagree.

It lets me know I should read it in the voice I made up for #theBasedOne; kind of like actor David Carradine’s.

i always read #thebasedone like it's bill from bill and ted's excellent adventure.  i don't know why....

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I'd like to make a polite request that you stop this now.  It's gone on long enough I think.

Disagree.

It lets me know I should read it in the voice I made up for #theBasedOne; kind of like actor David Carradine’s.

i always read #thebasedone like it's bill from bill and ted's excellent adventure.  i don't know why....

That works too!

This site feels so wide now.  Whinge whinge.

The happy yellow square in the tab is a bit off putting.  Whinge whinge. 

 

I hope I don't overthink (as is usual) and make a muck of things.  Should just have a good time and enjoy the present~

Sometimes it feels like I'm playing some kind of obscure Japanese RPG when I'm trying to get information out of my CTs here.

I'll ask an innocent question but if I'm not asking the "right" person (one out of a possible four), they'll kind of do this weird avoid-the-question-clam-up thing and I'm left scratching my head.  Even if they know the answer they won't tell me!  Or it'll be like drawing blood from a stone after they've told me "you should ask XXX (handler/official CT)".

They really are terrified that they'll be doing someone else's job if they answer a simple question!  Or, heaven forbid, they don't want my "handler" (god I hate that term) to get out of answering a query I have.

I know Korean people are absolutely helpful and lovely people, but I've just never gotten used to the rigid, "not my job" outlook of teachers here.  Or maybe just in my school haha!

Why can't my students understand the concept of raising their hands to answer/speak?

I swear to god, I have to remind them to do it every 5 minutes. Even the classes I've been teaching in the same manner for over a year struggle to remember.

Are their school classes just total free for alls where everyone screams and shouts the answers during the entire class? Or are they just so rarely allowed to speak that they can't contain themselves?

My neighbours are a real piece of work.

He's a geriatric ajushi, with an attitude and she's a lying little scorpion.
They regularly cook the most God awful foods and keep their windows closed so there's a constant decaying carcass smell permeating in the hallway. Before I moved in, I heard that on 3 occasions he fell asleep while cooking and started a fire. Apparently the landlord has been unsuccessful in evicting this fossil as he stubbornly refuses to move or change his ways.   

This morning, at 5AM, for the 3rd time in as many weeks, I was woken by the banging of what sounded like a hammer or mallet (probably for cooking). Absolutely livid, I banged on his door (a bit shocked that I could bang with enough force to cause the hallway to tremor ever so slightly) and told him to stop.
So, what does a badass ajushi do when a potentially dangerous person is banging the shit out is door? He sends his little 4ft 70yr old wife to investigate.
Without skipping a beat, she straight up lies and says she can't hear anything.

The landlord, who lives above, heard the ruckus and came down. He told her to to tell her chickensh*t husband to stop and she repeated that they weren't banging anything. I'm absolutely certain it's them as our bedroom is right next to their living room and I can distinctly hear it coming from their place.

Hopefully the next bang is this old sod knocking on the gates of St Peters.

CoT: What days do you want for vacation?
Me: Not 100% sure yet.
CoT: Well we need to put them in by the end of the day. Sorry I didn't tell you before.

Guess I will just randomly pick and then work around that. 

CoT: What days do you want for vacation?
Me: Not 100% sure yet.
CoT: Well we need to put them in by the end of the day. Sorry I didn't tell you before.

Guess I will just randomly pick and then work around that. 

And I have the complete opposite. No camp dates finalised and no one can tell me when I can take vacation..... and I need to pay for air tickets now otherwise it is just going to be too expensive to go home.

CoT: What days do you want for vacation?
Me: Not 100% sure yet.
CoT: Well we need to put them in by the end of the day. Sorry I didn't tell you before.

Guess I will just randomly pick and then work around that. 

And I have the complete opposite. No camp dates finalised and no one can tell me when I can take vacation..... and I need to pay for air tickets now otherwise it is just going to be too expensive to go home.

Yeah, this is awlays my problem. I wanna book a flight to Bali, yo! NOW, finalise those goddamn dates.

I take it you guys don't work at public schools.

If you did, the yearly calendar would have been mapped out long ago.

I had one school a few years ago that made crazy changes to the school calendar, but that was unusual.

I feel your pain, as the cost between booking now or later is no small sum.