RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

You are my minion and you know it. Dance for me minion. Dance!
Go fetch me a bowl of nuts and while you are it get me that goddamn photo you promised me. Raise your hand high in the air with your thumb up, to signify your minion status, for me, Zola.

Just for that public disrespect: you now have 12 hours.

PS. you aren't one of those cute yellow cartoon minions from that movie either. You are more of a minion in the style of Igor from Frankenstein. Or wormtongue from Lord of the Rings.

Kind of odd. If I'm your minion, how come you're the one that follows me around and gets all worked up about me? I don't give two shits about you, but you and a few others seem to be borderline obsessed and triggered by me.

You are my minion and you know it. Dance for me minion. Dance!
Go fetch me a bowl of nuts and while you are it get me that goddamn photo you promised me. Raise your hand high in the air with your thumb up, to signify your minion status, for me, Zola.

Just for that public disrespect: you now have 12 hours.

PS. you aren't one of those cute yellow cartoon minions from that movie either. You are more of a minion in the style of Igor from Frankenstein. Or wormtongue from Lord of the Rings.

Kind of odd. If I'm your minion, how come you're the one that follows me around and gets all worked up about me? I don't give two shits about you, but you and a few others seem to be borderline obsessed and triggered by me.

Look at this libtard everyone. I triggered him. I triggered him good. You cuck. You alt right. I don't follow you around. I don't even know who you are.

Anyway, where the bloody hell is the photo I requested? The deadline is well past. Don't you dare show your face around here again.

PS. You are my minion. My delightful little minion. You are also so triggered.

My theory to makes Koreans more careful at driving is to make them all drive manuals.  Automatics make it too easy to be a shitier driver than they already are.

True that! I learned on a manual but I also learned how to drive safely. Driving a manual means that they [Korean drivers] would need to concentrate more on the road but given that they don't already check mirrors and indicate BEFORE changing lanes then I foresee more accidents. Also, how can they hold their phone and change gears at the same time?

Not sure if it is the same system here, but in England if you learn and then take the test in an automatic car, then you can only drive automatics, unless you 'upgrade' when you pass the manual test.  If you take a manual test, then you can drive both.

New Zealand used to have that rule. If you pass the drivers test in an auto = can only drive an auto; pass in a manual = can drive any kind.
About 3 - 5 years ago, they got rid of it, and if you pass, you can do anything now.

Absolutely!

I drove an auto for the first time in my life, while visiting the states during the holidays. I hated it so much and can definitely see how it can (not will) make you a worse driver. First, it's the acceleration, when you push your foot down on an auto, there's a delay before the car accelerates as it has to first compute the amount of pressure you applied with your foot and relate that to how fast you're going to apply what it thinks is the appropriate amount of acceleration.
This lag can be incredibly dangerous.

It also felt like I was fighting with the car, the car didn't feel like an extension of my body, it just didn't feel intuitive at all. Forcing a driver to select gears and use the clutch means they develop an intuition about the surface of the road, the speed you're traveling and the cars response to your foot is immediate.

Absolutely!
I drove an auto for the first time in my life, while visiting the states during the holidays. I hated it so much and can definitely see how it can (not will) make you a worse driver. First, it's the acceleration, when you push your foot down on an auto, there's a delay before the car accelerates as it has to first compute the amount of pressure you applied with your foot and relate that to how fast you're going to apply what it thinks is the appropriate amount of acceleration.
This lag can be incredibly dangerous.

It also felt like I was fighting with the car, the car didn't feel like an extension of my body, it just didn't feel intuitive at all. Forcing a driver to select gears and use the clutch means they develop an intuition about the surface of the road, the speed you're traveling and the cars response to your foot is immediate.

In Dutch, cars are called autos, so when I read this comment I was very confused for a few moments.

Just in case this is news to anyone, which it shouldn't be..  Personal attacks, trolling, inappropriate language and the like are still not permitted in this thread.

Thanks 

Just in case this is news to anyone, which it shouldn't be..  Personal attacks, trolling, inappropriate language and the like are still not permitted in this thread.

Thanks 

Just in this thread? haha

do i teach kids who are absolute morons?

if you've been studying english every day for over 5 years, and can't read the word 'pencil'...

anyone else have similar situations?

do i teach kids who are absolute morons?

if you've been studying english every day for over 5 years, and can't read the word 'pencil'...

anyone else have similar situations?

UGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHH We learn one sentence over 2 weeks. Let's play __________ (insert sport here.)

Then, on the last day there's always the clueless kid.

  Let's what?

  뭐?

  *Points at the picture. There could be no confusion as to its baseball-ness*

  뭐?

  Let's p---------- what? What sport? Let's ppppppp--------------- *grunt noise*

  야구?

  Internal monologue ----> FFS, what the F have you been doing for the last two weeks?

My personal favorite:

Me: Tell me what this zoomed in picture is!

Student 1: Cheese!

Me: No. 

Student 2: Cheese!

Me: No! 

Student 3: Cheese!

Me: NO!! 

Opened a small seasoning packet of sesame oil without paying attention.

You don't realize how far a little oil can go until it gets into every ****** thing within a five foot radius.

Rant 1

Just love the double standards of Korea, here's a list of my Tuesday school CT's achievements:

- Nice Person, but ridiculously shy and meek
- Terrible at English and managing a class in general
- Does nothing but hand out my worksheets during class
- Takes at least a full week off every month, since the beginning of the year.
- Haven't seen her since the start of the term and just got a message that she's sick and will be coming back in November
- Her husband's a VP at another school and he's rarely at school either

Now I'm not disputing whether she's really sick or not, though she's never shown any symptoms while at school, but the cold truth remains, if you can't be at work, you shouldn't be employed. Friend of mine, a few years back, got really sick and took 2 weeks off to recover. Her contract wasn't renewed.

Rant 2

The same school has the English room wired so that you can't engage the ceiling fans without turning on the ridiculously blinding fluorescent lighting. So, either stuffy or blind.

I have a 2nd grade boy who gets bullied a lot by everyone, including the girls.

To be honest, he can be childish and annoying. Not in that loud sort of way, but he likes to keep playing playground types of jokes on others and doesn't know when to stop until people get angry with him. So I get having a short amount of patience with him.

But the kind of hostility and animosity that comes from some of the students towards him is above and beyond. He's not a bad kid, just a little socially awkward. He doesn't pick on anyone, never tries to hurt anyone, he doesn't dig through people's shit like some of these kids do. He really doesn't deserve how a lot of the other students treat him.

But he's an easy target. He's a small, little guy, smaller than the average, and doesn't really know how to make friends outside of being what he thinks is playful. I feel so bad for him.

I have a 2nd grade boy who gets bullied a lot by everyone, including the girls.

To be honest, he can be childish and annoying. Not in that loud sort of way, but he likes to keep playing playground types of jokes on others and doesn't know when to stop until people get angry with him. So I get having a short amount of patience with him.

But the kind of hostility and animosity that comes from some of the students towards him is above and beyond. He's not a bad kid, just a little socially awkward. He doesn't pick on anyone, never tries to hurt anyone, he doesn't dig through people's shit like some of these kids do. He really doesn't deserve how a lot of the other students treat him.

But he's an easy target. He's a small, little guy, smaller than the average, and doesn't really know how to make friends outside of being what he thinks is playful. I feel so bad for him.

Sounds like he falls on the Autism scale?

Sounds like he falls on the Autism scale?

Possibly, but I don't personally think so? He doesn't exhibit any real symptoms outside of not knowing when to stop with his annoying but truly harmless pranks. He just hasn't grown up out of his primary school phase, yet, and doesn't have any real friends to help him learn the ropes because everyone's just kind of written him off already. So no matter what he does, he's already starting off on a bad foot. He's basically just a fish out of water who needs a little guidance, but no one is willing to give that to him, so he's falling back on antics because it's the only way he knows how to get attention from the other students.

A true omega as I've ever seen one. Most of the students are indifferent towards him, but how they respond to him is overly unkind, and he's targeted a lot by the less benevolent ones. And the KTs just ignore him.

Times like this I wish I knew enough Korean to have a more meaningful conversation with him.

I've found it's impossible to control what the students do outside class, obviously, but in the class I can.  I watch my students a lot during class and also during breaktime and how they interact with each other.  Generally, if I have those kind of socially awkward students, I would try and find a kindred soul for them to sit with, all the while keeping the other less nice kids away from them. 

Years ago, I had three bully boys in a group of fifteen, with two of the other fifteen being slow learners.  These three boys always wound up one of the slow learners, who himself was not always innocent of starting things.  But I made in no uncertain terms that IF in my class he gets upset or is made to cry by you then YOU will be in trouble.  Not him.  When I made the seat plan the three bullies were always separate and never near him.

It's really difficult and something you'll wrack your brains trying to solve, but in the end it's kind of out of your hands.  In your personal space, you can do something to make them comfortable, but outside of that you just have to let them grow up.

Yeah, there's not a whole lot I can do except control how the students behave in my class, but I can still see a lot of passive aggressive behavior meant to hide what they're doing. They think it gives them plausible deniability, and the boy, obviously, also denies anything's going on because he doesn't want it to come down on him later.

It's frustrating, especially when the KTs don't seem all that concerned about it (most likely because they don't know what to do about it, either, so it's just easier to ignore it... and also possibly because they might believe that bullying is the best method for learning social etiquette and your place -- it's how a lot of things are done in Korea).

The problem, though, is that pigeonholing is common here and hard to get out of once you're in, and the students have already made up their minds about him. He's fighting an uphill battle, no matter what he or anyone else does at this point. Younger students are more flexible with their attitudes, but once they hit middle school their attitudes become more rigid. I feel like a lot of his antics is more how he tries to cope with all of that, and to force the students not to ignore him.

I mean I'm thankful he's at least not a wang-ta, but he's at a stage in his life that he needs someone to talk to, and he doesn't have anyone.  All I can do is hope that he figures things out until he can move on to a better time in his life.

Whenever you see advertisements for adult English hagwons, the commercials are often along the lines of, 'Isn't English terrifying? Doesn't it make you SO NERVOUS AND SWEATY?! Come to us and we'll make it SO EASY!"

누구 영어를 말했어요?

The ginger tea mix I bought tastes like it was brewed in nail polish remover. Wasted 5k won.

50 minutes into a mandatory CPR training session being conducted in fluent Korean. My poker face has gone; I'm sure I look visibly pissed off, and now it looks like I'll have to demonstrate "what I've learnt".

50 minutes into a mandatory CPR training session being conducted in fluent Korean. My poker face has gone; I'm sure I look visibly pissed off, and now if looks like I'll have to demonstrate "what I've learnt".

    Insist on a human volunteer to be your test dummy, and then "accidentally" make 5 inch chest compressions rather than the standard 2. Proceed to blame the pulmonary herniation, hypoxia, and various other manifestations of thoracic trauma on the language barrier. Guaranteed you won't have to attend CPR class next year!

Update: It's break-time. I informed my colleagues that I didn't think I should be there because I didn't understand and I'd be a danger to someone in real trouble if I was expected to perform CPR on them. They didn't fight it too hard, thankfully. They kept saying it's okay and I could just practice on the dummy... I'm really taken-aback. Why do I keep having to explain why training someone in life-saving techniques in a foreign language is a bad idea?

In summary, don't go into cardiac arrest around me because I'll probably just crush your rib cage while counting to 11 in Korean. Or electrocute you with a fancy machine that I don't understand.

50 minutes into a mandatory CPR training session being conducted in fluent Korean. My poker face has gone; I'm sure I look visibly pissed off, and now if looks like I'll have to demonstrate "what I've learnt".

    Insist on a human volunteer to be your test dummy, and then "accidentally" make 5 inch chest compressions rather than the standard 2. Proceed to blame the pulmonary herniation, hypoxia, and various other manifestations of thoracic trauma on the language barrier. Guaranteed you won't have to attend CPR class next year!

Hey! This is incredibly relevant because based on what I thought they said I thought that I was supposed to do 4 inch compressions. I stand reassured that I definitely shouldn't be recorded as being CPR-trained. I hope not going-with-the-flow doesn't come back to bite me in the ass too hard.