Last Tuesday, the full-time Korean English teacher quit.
Apparently, he had sent a text message one hour before he was scheduled to
work. This is the third full-time Korean teacher in the four months we have
been here. Not wanting to scare mothers, our boss has taken it upon herself to
teach all of the classes and run the business.
And I thought things were stressful before!
As a result, many of our classes have been combined. This is
very confusing for everyone. One class is the perfect example of chaos and
confusion. Five girls have been put together into a class. Three girls are in
the middle of book one, one girl is in the middle of book two (but is smart
enough for book three), and one girl has just started book three (but needs to
review book two).
I ask which book to use, I get “Use their normal book of
course!” (They have this way of making you feel crazy for questioning these
things). I explain to my boss that they are using three different books,
perhaps it would benefit all of them to use book two. This is impossible
because parents will complain that their children are re-doing books and
jumping ahead. So, we just need a new book. So now it my responsibility to go
through the hundreds of sample books to find a suitable book.
Fantastic. None of the books have been kept in order, so
grammar, reading, listening, high school, middle school, math, Korean, and used
books are mixed together. As I am searching, my boss comes in and picks a book
off the shelf, “Use this one.”
“Okay! Great!” Not even dwelling on why she couldn’t have
just chosen that in the first place and saved me half an hour. The first unit
is this: “Hi, I’m Anna. What’s your name?” “I’m Dan.” “Where are you from?”
“I’m from America.” “What’s your favorite food?” “My favorite food is a hot
dog.” The next page goes on to give four countries and different variables to
favorite (sport, food, hobby, etc).
Grammar mistakes aside, I have to teach a class who cannot
even remember “I like blue,” four different lessons in one unit. Yeah, that is
not going to work well! Not only that, there is no writing at all, not even a
vocabulary match-up. I go in search of a better alternative, finding a
listening book that focuses on only one of those topics at a time and has some
writing and a vocabulary section. I propose this new book to the boss.
“Yeah, that will be too difficult for them.” The boss
replies. I explain how I feel about the book she had chosen, but she insists
the book I have chosen would be too difficult and to just stick with the book
she has chosen (Even though the listening book uses the exact same language
with better grammar just broken into clearer lessons). I begrudgingly agree and
set about trying to figure out how to teach the bloody book.
Ten minutes later, the boss comes back in, goes to the shelf
and says, “See, you have some reading books here and some listening books here.
You can choose one you think is best for that class.”
“Ok…what about the one I just picked out?” She again
reiterated it was too difficult and pulls out a reading comprehension book,
“This one is good.”
“Yeah, I can see that this is good, but they cannot even
identify the words “pink” and “purple,” I don’t think a reading comprehension
book is the way to go.”
“Well then you can choose the book! Just check it with me!”
Face palm. It’s pretty much been like this for all fourteen classes.
