RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

I want to rant about something SOOOOOoOooOOoooOOOOoooOO bad.

But I can't get into details because then I could be identified by a KT.

But I am absolutely SEEEEeeeeEeeeeEEEeethInG, and I am about to broil over.

I try not to vent about things over text, but I don't have a choice. This can't wait for girls' night out.

GaWd tHiS yEaR iS GoInG tO sUCk

Can always PM me about it if you want to vent.
I don't have anything to do, and am happy to listen :D

Me too. Please spill the drama!

I was really expecting more from a rant thread. I could have given some epic rants about the academy I used to work at.  Like has anyone been forced to take vacation days on the weekend when you never work on the weekend. Or being asked to design a debate course three months after you have started teaching for the first time. Or randomly being given super beginner classes/phonics classes suddenly because your boss is just tired of hiring new teachers after teachers keep quitting because he treats them like garbage. I got up to thirty hours a week of teaching while having to edit and upload 70+ videos a month of students mindlessly reciting speeches that they would forget in 5 minutes.  On top of that, I had to go through and correct all of these speeches beforehand.  Is there wasn't this slow ramp up to the overwork, I wouldn't have been able to get used to my classes well enough to wing all of them.  I was honest to the teacher who replaced me, but they epicly failed to ask the questions that they needed to.  They ended up suddenly quitting after 2 months.  The weirdest thing about that academy was how oblivious they were to thier own responsibility in the problems they were having.  In an effort to be progressive, they would constantly change the curriculum which made it impossible for teachers to become experts in the subject matter.  If a student complained they would immediately chew out the teacher instead of asking for an adults side of the story. Because the owner was too busy taking vacation while never giving his emplyees vacation days (myself excluded although he did his best to cheat me out of them), he asked the teachers to give him anal retentive amounts of statistics and other information to save him time. Somehow I was able to maintian my civility in order to get the letter of recommedation that I needed to get into the EPIK program.  Now I am sitting at school and posting here with all of my free time.  I am so low stress that I don't feel the need to drink myself to sleep every night.  I am sure there was more instances of stupidty and more details I could have given in the moment of these instances, but time passes and there is no point in dwelling on it.  I was also too busy being busy to know this site existed.  The one thing that got me through was some truly amazing students. (and the alcohol)

Can the Koreans I talk to stop saying that the "weather is bad" and "Oh, the dust."

It's not weather. It's pollution. A heavy rain on a Saturday is bad weather. This ain't that.

And it ain't dust. Dust gathers on your mantle and you gotta clean it off. This is pollution. POLLUTION.

It's like renaming a murder to something like.......... Life Taking. Call it what it is. It's pollution!

Even if the whole world says otherwise, I still maintain that Confucianism, with it's two favourite principles of saving face and shifting the blame are the reasons air pollution will maintain the euphemism of 'fine dust' and that diddly squat will be done about it.

The last few days I made the decision to renew this year, giving me time to finish my distance learning while earning an income and then move on. Im hoping this toxic poison wont have any long term effects if I leave within the next year or 2.

Can someone explain the phenomenon of dust coming from China and ruining the Korean air quality? (I am not being sarcastic, I would like someone to link me to a source which is reliable so I can research please).

I am always hearing bad stuff about China from Koreans and well I sometimes question things, when everything is blaming China...like wut?

Blaming China for any and all problems is standard in most of East Asia, it seems. That said, there's SOME truth to China contributing to Korea's air pollution.

Of course, it has nothing to do with everyone driving giant cars, smoking, etc....just China's fault.

I was really expecting more from a rant thread. I could have given some epic rants about the academy I used to work at.  Like has anyone been forced to take vacation days on the weekend when you never work on the weekend. Or being asked to design a debate course three months after you have started teaching for the first time. Or randomly being given super beginner classes/phonics classes suddenly because your boss is just tired of hiring new teachers after teachers keep quitting because he treats them like garbage. I got up to thirty hours a week of teaching while having to edit and upload 70+ videos a month of students mindlessly reciting speeches that they would forget in 5 minutes.  On top of that, I had to go through and correct all of these speeches beforehand.  Is there wasn't this slow ramp up to the overwork, I wouldn't have been able to get used to my classes well enough to wing all of them.  I was honest to the teacher who replaced me, but they epicly failed to ask the questions that they needed to.  They ended up suddenly quitting after 2 months.  The weirdest thing about that academy was how oblivious they were to thier own responsibility in the problems they were having.  In an effort to be progressive, they would constantly change the curriculum which made it impossible for teachers to become experts in the subject matter.  If a student complained they would immediately chew out the teacher instead of asking for an adults side of the story. Because the owner was too busy taking vacation while never giving his emplyees vacation days (myself excluded although he did his best to cheat me out of them), he asked the teachers to give him anal retentive amounts of statistics and other information to save him time. Somehow I was able to maintian my civility in order to get the letter of recommedation that I needed to get into the EPIK program.  Now I am sitting at school and posting here with all of my free time.  I am so low stress that I don't feel the need to drink myself to sleep every night.  I am sure there was more instances of stupidty and more details I could have given in the moment of these instances, but time passes and there is no point in dwelling on it.  I was also too busy being busy to know this site existed.  The one thing that got me through was some truly amazing students. (and the alcohol)

No offense, but I was expecting more from your rant given your first sentence. This all seems pretty minor to me.

Now that I've finally gotten the schedule for my new middle school, I'm dreading it.

Classes are divided by grade and skill level, like my previous school, but since there's not enough time in the week to teach every class once, the classes will rotate each week, meaning that some of my lessons will be taught over more than one week. I could barely understand the schedule just looking at it, and even my CT who made the darn thing was confused as hell.

This is gonna be fun. 

Classes are divided by grade and skill level

Oh my god, that would be amazing.

Classes are divided by grade and skill level

Oh my god, that would be amazing.

On paper, it sounds like it would be great. But in reality, because people are bad, a lot of the times the low skill classes are paired with a low skill teacher who just does the bare minimum because nobody's expecting anything of that class. Which is really sad.

Classes are divided by grade and skill level

Oh my god, that would be amazing.

On paper, it sounds like it would be great. But in reality, because people are bad, a lot of the times the low skill classes are paired with a low skill teacher who just does the bare minimum because nobody's expecting anything of that class. Which is really sad.

I'm going on the assumption that if my school were to divide classes based on level, I'd still be the one teaching all of them. I'm not out there winning awards or anything, but I like to think I'm a competent teacher. I'd love to be able to teach classes where everyone was at or near the same skill level.

Classes are divided by grade and skill level

Oh my god, that would be amazing.

On paper, it sounds like it would be great. But in reality, because people are bad, a lot of the times the low skill classes are paired with a low skill teacher who just does the bare minimum because nobody's expecting anything of that class. Which is really sad.

I'm going on the assumption that if my school were to divide classes based on level, I'd still be the one teaching all of them. I'm not out there winning awards or anything, but I like to think I'm a competent teacher. I'd love to be able to teach classes where everyone was at or near the same skill level.

We did this for a year at my school and I really enjoyed it.  Because the classes were split they were smaller so I could help the students much more efficiently.  It was a lot easier to give the higher levels more challenging material and go much slower with the lower levels.  It's a shame we only did it for a year.

But to touch on #basedcowboyshirt's point, yeah that definitely happened at my school.  When they weren't seeing me, the lower level classes were taught by another contract teacher who usually just let them sleep, watch Youtube or clean the classroom.  Quite sad.  Her contract got renewed as well haha.

Classes are divided by grade and skill level

Oh my god, that would be amazing.

On paper, it sounds like it would be great. But in reality, because people are bad, a lot of the times the low skill classes are paired with a low skill teacher who just does the bare minimum because nobody's expecting anything of that class. Which is really sad.

I'm going on the assumption that if my school were to divide classes based on level, I'd still be the one teaching all of them. I'm not out there winning awards or anything, but I like to think I'm a competent teacher. I'd love to be able to teach classes where everyone was at or near the same skill level.

We did this for a year at my school and I really enjoyed it.  Because the classes were split they were smaller so I could help the students much more efficiently.  It was a lot easier to give the higher levels more challenging material and go much slower with the lower levels.  It's a shame we only did it for a year.

But to touch on #basedcowboyshirt's point, yeah that definitely happened at my school.  When they weren't seeing me, the lower level classes were taught by another contract teacher who usually just let them sleep, watch Youtube or clean the classroom.  Quite sad.  Her contract got renewed as well haha.

I did this for a year and agree with both the negative and positive points above.

Positive- The classes were much smaller and I could tailor my classes to their needs much better. It meant the high level classes were actually challenged and the low level students weren't just hiding and having the whole lesson go over their heads without anyone noticing.

Negative- They were definitely given the "worst" teacher and worst classroom. She wasn't actually a bad teacher but she was the youngest and a contract teacher. The room we were given didn't have a whiteboard like all the others (which blew my mind since they needed the extra materials more) just a tv screen you could barely see. When you put kids in a low level class...they start to believe it, meaning they didn't try hard or make any effort..their attitude was "I'm bad at English anyway" since that's basically what they've been told. You also lose the high level students who support the lower levels in team activities.

Classes are divided by grade and skill level

Oh my god, that would be amazing.

With regards to everything said above, it's been my only experience teaching thus far, so I can't really compare it to anything. But I've always had the same co-teachers regardless of skill level. I will say though, the classes that are "mid" level are usually the most troublesome, as they're good enough to understand, but not motivated enough to advance any further. Low level students are usually all pretty relaxed, while high level students have the most motivation.

This is my 8th year teaching here -at nine different schools so far- and I've never taught a class that was divided by level. I've taught plenty of classes that weren't even divided by grade, let alone level. I can barely even imagine what it'd be like, haha.

This is my 8th year teaching here -at nine different schools so far- and I've never taught a class that was divided by level. I've taught plenty of classes that weren't even divided by grade, let alone level. I can barely even imagine what it'd be like, haha.

If it wasn't divided by grade, how was it divided?
Am genuinely curious. :o

This is my 8th year teaching here -at nine different schools so far- and I've never taught a class that was divided by level. I've taught plenty of classes that weren't even divided by grade, let alone level. I can barely even imagine what it'd be like, haha.

If it wasn't divided by grade, how was it divided?
Am genuinely curious. :o

It wasn't, haha.

Well, it sort of was, I suppose. They were afternoon classes with all the 1st-3rd graders in one class, and all the 4th-6th graders in another. It was... interesting.

They were afternoon classes with all the 1st-3rd graders in one class, and all the 4th-6th graders in another. It was... interesting.

That's like the opposite of what I do lol How does that even cover all your work hours? Do you have like 5 schools or something?

They were afternoon classes with all the 1st-3rd graders in one class, and all the 4th-6th graders in another. It was... interesting.

That's like the opposite of what I do lol How does that even cover all your work hours? Do you have like 5 schools or something?

With after school classes, they are usually only 1 - 2 times a week (based on my experience).

They were afternoon classes with all the 1st-3rd graders in one class, and all the 4th-6th graders in another. It was... interesting.

That's like the opposite of what I do lol How does that even cover all your work hours? Do you have like 5 schools or something?

Not all of my classes were like that, haha. I suppose I wasn't being very clear. 

I still had the normal textbook classes that were divided by grade. I just had those afternoon classes in addition to my textbook classes to cover my required hours, since the schools didn't have enough classes to fill 22 hours with only textbook stuff. The textbook classes weren't divided by level, of course. I'm still legitimately surprised to hear that that's a thing that happens for anyone teaching here in Korea, haha.

Can always PM me about it if you want to vent.
I don't have anything to do, and am happy to listen :D

Me too. Please spill the drama!

Aw, thanks, you guys.

It's fine, there's a lot of info, and a friend ended up calling me and I had myself a good, long, rage-induced exorcism. I honestly don't have the energy to get into it again, lol.

But to give you all a taste, the drama involved a certain previously mentioned person I complained about before and a few other unnamed persons. They basically tried to bully me into making my personal, private life their business.

Of course none of it flew, but the fact that they think this way AND tried to act on it AND honestly thought that I would stay quiet about all of it (really, wtf?), means that I'm dealing with some mentally unstable muthufuckus.

They know how to toe the line, though, and I think they'll keep their heads low for a bit, but I'm in for a fun year.

Can always PM me about it if you want to vent.
I don't have anything to do, and am happy to listen :D

Me too. Please spill the drama!

Aw, thanks, you guys.

It's fine, there's a lot of info, and a friend ended up calling me and I had myself a good, long, rage-induced exorcism. I honestly don't have the energy to get into it again, lol.

But to give you all a taste, the drama involved a certain previously mentioned person I complained about before and a few other unnamed persons. They basically tried to bully me into making my personal, private life their business.

Of course none of it flew, but the fact that they think this way AND tried to act on it AND honestly thought that I would stay quiet about all of it (really, wtf?), means that I'm dealing with some mentally unstable muthufuckus.

They know how to toe the line, though, and I think they'll keep their heads low for a bit, but I'm in for a fun year.

You're welcome! :D
This week, cause of no classes, and the new textbooks having not arrived yet (1 actually arrived when I started to type this) I haven't had anything to do so far this week lol.

get the new textbook about 7 minutes before my class, and was expected to make a full PPT for the class in that time. D:

Scheduling is particularly chaotic this year and involves me leaving classes early and running between floors to start other classes outside of the official scheduling. This is all because one member of the cafeteria staff left and the kitchen team requested a single lunch period so they could cope. Cue chaos. Apparently the cafeteria is so busy at lunchtime we're now cutting 20 minutes off 4th period (all lessons are officially 40 minutes) so some grades can arrive at the cafeteria earlier. Main colleague and I agreed that this is obviously unworkable and have moved all classes from this condensed pre-lunch period to later in the day. However, other grades cannot be moved and should go to lunch 15 minutes early so we've resorted to eliminating breaktime between 3rd and 4th period from some grades at some times under certain conditions.

I've been here long enough to know this won't last but it's frustrating nonetheless.