Top Five Things I’ve learned while Teaching in Korea: Disillusions
With all of my idealistic and self-development thoughts I try to teach the kids not only the material for my classes, but also the life-long goals they can learn. Essentially, I don’t want them to make the mistakes I made. It reminds me of the quote “Experience is the best teacher.” There are what I have realized in the last three years in Korea the following:
1) Creativity is taken out of them - I’ve read several surveys on the internet about how creativity dies a gradual and painful death in elementary school. There is an excellent TED speech by Sir Ken Robinson titled Schools kill Creativity and I whole-heartedly agree with him. The presentation is a quick overview about creativity and education. Korean students creativity seems to be accelerated through the use of cram schools beginning in elementary school. I’ve seen fourth graders getting off of academy buses at one am in the morning near my apartment complex. Its really a sad thing and I’m coming to grips that I can’t help the masses, but maybe
one or two at a time.
2) Thus, Korean Students Lack Creativity - Its annoying and painful to read the same essays about Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, and the like. No offense to those great people, but these kids need to learn about a diverse array of people. However, the paradigm of math, language, and science are the best have been blown way out of proportion here. I’ve been trying to teach my kids to write, think, and read creatively and critically, however this is easier said than done. As for the best way: give them a framework, thorough instructions, and repeat it to them multiple times. After that take baby steps to teach them about creativity. Most of the time I still can’t get through them. The ones that are creative end up being ostracized and considered as a loners. It’s a total catch-22.
3) Its hard to motivate Korean students - I’ve used all kinds of techniques to try to motivate students: from trying to studying the underlying principles of motivation (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) to using money/bribing in my classes. Unfortunately, the quickest and most effective way is fear. For example, punishing physically (old school Korean system), humiliation, or the phone call to parents (which doesn’t work if the parents are apathetic). My idealistic and teaching via love and passion doesn’t seem to work well, especially if they don’t care about the subject (English, Critical Reading, and Writing). I’ve come to the conclusion my method of teaching is not ready and that I’ll have to conform or leave. I chose leaving. That’s where the whole entrepreneurial thing comes in.
4) Structure short term goals that correlate with long term goals - My new technique for the time being while I have to continue to be a teacher is this. Create these short term goals that hopefully add up to greater longer term growth.
5) Peer pressure is very effective - Koreans like to be homogenous. Anyone who has been to Korea or knows “Korean-Koreans” know this. They don’t like standing out of the pack and if they do they are again ostracized. Knowing this you can use it in your classes to encourage or manipulate them to be better.
As I write about this I find that I need to teach myself these things and its just not the Koreans, I hope I’m not the only one who needs this information. I hope this concoction of thoughts inspires and gives some useful ideas.
Peace be with you,
~Hoo
Photo: http://flickr.com/photos/mafuyou/
What I learned as a teacher and counselor in 2006
I guess I failed yesterday’s decision to write an entry before going to bed. There are several factors that contributed to that, but that’s a tangent for another time, that will most likely be forgotten, which I am okay with.
I wanted to write down a couple of things that I have learned in 2006 as a teacher and college counselor. A lot of what I learned could be seen if you just put yourself in the teacher’s shoes, which is something that I never did as a student. I lacked the developed critical thinking skills then and I’m still developing them today. I wish I had started earlier, but better late than never.
As a Teacher…
- Teachers don’t like accepting late work- it’s burdensome on the teacher. I hate it when a student turns in six weeks of assignments at the end of the term. I was being a nice guy at first and extended grace, but I don’t think it helps the student, by being nice. I don’t think it actually teaches the students responsibility. Now, of course I can see both sides of the fence, but for personal convenience sake I will have a much stricter late assignment policy.
- Why it always took my English and literature teachers so long to return work. Hey it’s difficult providing meaningful feedback for 70 students a week. I finally understand why my teachers took weeks to return essays back to us. It burns you out, each paper I read takes me anywhere from 5-10 minutes to grade, multiply that by 70 and you have a lot of work on your hands. Obviously at a certain point the quality of my work drops drastically, so if you’re the first few that I begin with my grading is better quality about 10-15 through I just don’t care. This is a problem so I’m trying to teach the students how to grade their own work, at least grammar, content, etc… It’ll help them in the future and help me too.
- Someone needs to take responsibility and do something. I’ve thought about the problems in education and society. I can blame it on the parents and media, but let’s face it, if you are just complaining and doing nothing you’re just part of the problem and not helping. I’ve decided to do my best to be a part of the solution, I can complain, but only constructively. Taking a proactive approach in trying to solve this problem is far more productive than sitting around and just pointing fingers, it seems logical and obvious, but it is easy to forget.
As a counselor…
- I’ve probably sent approximately 150 school reports for 14 students this year; it was a pain in the butt. I now know that I need to do as much as I can in house, regardless how long it takes me. I need help and an assistant next year when I have 36 students compared to 14. If I don’t start planning now it’s going to be insanity when it comes to application time this year.
- Having said that never trust anyone. Period. Students may have well intentions, but even if they sign a paper saying they will stick to the confidentiality agreement, their curiosity and temptation will take over and will disregard that issue. I know this is something I need to teach, but I’m not exactly sure what is the best way to teach it to this next batch of students, we’ll have to think about it and see. If you have any good ideas please let me know via comments or email.
I think that’s a long enough post for now. Thanks for reading and happy New Year again!!! This is the year of the Pig. I have a feeling this is going to be another mini baby boom year as there were a ton of Koreans getting married last year.
F-4 Visa
There is a special visa for Koreans who lived abroad and have Korean lineage, there are specific rules that you need to be under, but I wanted to put down a couple of things that I thought were helpful for me, and to share with others, I’ll probably edit this post in the future, but for now so I can remember that I did at least post something up for it.
Things you need:
1) 3 Official Government forms, Visa App, Foreign Oversee Korean registration, I forgot the last one
2) 60,000 Won
3) 2 Passport size photos
Flickr
