Thursday, February 25, 2010

Lesson Planning

Since this is my first year teaching in Korea, I really have no idea how things work here. No one has said anything about lesson plans, classes, or what the fuck I am suppose to be doing every day. So I have spent the past month on facebook, talking shit about my co-teachers on this blog, and masturbating.

Recently I heard a nasty rumor that classes are actually suppose to start next Tuesday, Monday being a national holiday. I asked the head of the Englishee dept about it. She confirmed the Rumor.

"Well do you want lesson plans from me then?" Last year she wanted lesson plans from me, lesson plans which would be filed and ignored. They did not notice that for the last 2 months of the term I was either not turning in lesson plans, or turning the same ones in, over and over again.

"Yes"

"OK, What sections do you want me to teach?" We have a book and a CD ROM for our classes that are pretty much our classroom bible. We teach from the book and the CD and absolutely nothing else. I really don't know what we need the lesson plan for, since we just go through the book word, for word in the proper order.

"I dont know, I have to tark to odder teacher." We have three non-native, new Englishee teachers this year.

"OK, where are they?"

"They not come in today."

"But classes start on Tuesday."

"Yes"

"And you want lesson plans today?"

"Yes"

"Do you see the problem here?"

Being the head Englishee teacher she made an executive decision and told me the sections she wanted me to plan for.

Another slight problem is that I do not know how many classes there are, when they are, and how often they are. all I know is there are 3 grades, so I decide just to make one plan for each grade. I worked on them for an hour or so, then turned them in.

"Oh, these no good."

"Why?" She never had a problem with my plans before, and I pretty much copied in pasted them to make the new ones.

"We not use these books this year. Distlict have us use arr new book." That seemed like it might have been a good little piece of information to share with me.

"OK..." I was a little annoyed that I had used up almost an hour of facebook time for nothing. This job is so fucking hard! "Can I have the new book then?"

"We don't have yet."

"But classes start on Tuesday."

"Yes."

"And you want lesson plans today."

"Yes."

"But we don't have the books to plan the lessons."

"Yes."

"Do you see the problem here?"

Luckily there was one copy of the new books in the office, which I now claim as my own. So I spent another 15 minutes or so, adjusting the lesson plans for the new books. I am not going to bother showing them to her this time, I have facebooking to do.

4 comments:

  1. sounds pretty typical.

    Logic is not a strong trait here. Normally, the only was to get any information is to get upset about lack of it, which unfortunately enforces the stereotype of the angry foreigner, which further makes people shy and reluctant to try to talk to us in their broken English.

    I don't need to know every little detail, but some basic information, that all the other teachers know about, would be nice. I should be at least as aware as they are about what's going on at the school I teach at with them.

    Your description sounds like you are either talking to an idiot or a slow child. Hard to believe these type of people are training their future.

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  2. Same, same, except I don't even know which school I'm teaching at on Tuesday. I suppose I'll find out when I show up on Tuesday.

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