I know I wrote an update not too long ago, but today I am feeling really discouraged and frustrated and just feel like I need to talk about it. Don’t worry, I’ve been talking about it with the proper authorities first (God) before going “public” with it. Yes, it all stems directly from my job.
Ok, so I’m an English teacher, right? That’s what I tell myself every day. I have a college degree and a graduate-level certificate for teaching English as a foreign language. On days like today I feel like I must be a terrible teacher and/or I’m going crazy. It seems like no matter how hard I try, I don’t “teach” the way I’m wanted to teach over here. I know that I can be stubborn a lot, but this is genuinely one of those scenarios where I’m doing everything I can to go with the system and make my superiors and their clients satisfied (aka school administrators & my students’ parents).
As I struggle to teach well, I’ve been going back to what I learned when I got my TEFL certificate at LADO International College in D.C.. I spent 2 months of my life taking the classes, lesson planning and teaching daily, as well as highly detailed and time consuming post-course work. So far, I have found all of the LADO principles of the nature of language acquisition to be very accurate. I feel like it prepared me to a great extent to understand what and how my kids are learning. I’m already getting too detailed about this for my primary audiences, but the point is that it seems like virtually everything I was taught about the best way to teach English goes against the grain of what is preferred and expected in this country.
I am currently preparing for my elementary open house where the parents will come in to observe my class. Today I went through a test run of what I had prepared with my class while the principal and another school administrator sat in to observe. I felt like I was put on a rack. Every idea or method I have thought of for how best to “teach” my students in front of their parents has been shot down and picked apart. But even so, it’s not so much the frustration of feeling totally incompetent and pathetic, but the fact that I feel like I’m being asked to be a magician, to just wave a magic wand that will make my 8-year-old students speak perfect English in complete sentences for the 30 minutes that their parents are observing. I am being asked to do the impossible. Literally. It is difficult to explain the dynamic of what’s going on here. Suffice it to say that I tend to encourage my kids towards less than perfect but authentic conversational English while my school would much rather have them memorize answers to questions so that I can ask them things in front of their parents and they can answer back to me like robots. That is not real. And certainly a far cry from what actually goes down in my class day in and day out.
I’m reminded of this movie I watched once, "The House of Wax,” where some travelers find a really cool museum filled with detailed and fantastic wax sculptures only to find out later that they were real people that were killed, dipped into wax, preserved and put on display.
So what will I do? I know have the ability (with God’s grace) to be flexible, creative and resourceful. As with all puzzles and difficult circumstances I’ve faced in life, I’m attempting to find a way through. I’ve been trying to meet this head on and do my best to please my employers. Today I felt so humiliated and utterly at the end of myself when they finished cutting apart all of my methods and ideas. I was ready to go home. I was thinking at this point, getting fired would be welcomed and joyously received. I think I’d prefer having bamboo pushed under my finger nails than to continue allowing myself to be found in this situation where the best that I know how to offer falls short and is ridiculed.
In case any one was wondering, as soon as the Korean school administrators left my room after wholly disapproving of all I was doing, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I lost it at school for the first time and cried. In front of my students. How will I ever gain back the shreds of respect and credibility I once had? Better yet, what will the kids tell their parents? (lol).
Don’t get me wrong. I am very thankful for the little lives that I get to pour into everyday. I am also so thrilled to have my own place and be completely self-sufficient financially. I am actually saving money now and I’m having the chance to pay off more of my student loans. Moreover, I don’t like being a quitter. I detest the idea of defeat. Last month, I felt like I was ready to give up but I pushed through and was glad that I did.
However, I’m finding that today I’m plumb out of resolve. My mind and spirit feel tortured and chained. Yes (Mom) I have a flair for the dramatic, but I really feel like this today!!! I’m curious as to what others think. How “bad” would it be if I decided to end my sojourn here and try my luck back in the grand ol’ U.S. of A.? I’ve heard it’s the half way point that’s the hardest to get through and I’m not even quite there yet. Oh joy, what shall I do?
If my long-winded rant has not exhausted you yet and you’d like to read more, feel free to peruse this post I found that does a great job at outlining the issues with hagwons (private schools like the one where I teach).
The Hagwon System in South Korea – Although it was published in 2006, I don’t think things have changed much since.
