Shame and Scandal in the Family ♫

[samedi]

Some time near the beginning of autumn we had one of our teachers take a day off due to the death of her grandfather. This came on short notice - perhaps unsurprisingly - and resulted in everyone scrambling to work out a schedule on how best to cover her classes. I mean ... it's not like you actually want something like that to happen, and

Comments

[storysinger81]

Now we are inventing dead grandfathers? Although surprising, I'm not sure the truth would have been any better. If I have a job interview for a new job and my old job doesn't know I'm looking, I'd probably make something up, too (although I'd try to keep it as vague as possible--"I have a family obligation and need to take a personal day.").

Hagwon work is less stressful on a day-to-day basis, but the inability to get ANY time off is what makes it very undesirable as a job.

[samedi]

You're right that it wasn't the easiest position for my coworker, either. After all, just because she had an interview doesn't mean she was assured of getting a public school position. I've never been in that position myself, so I guess it was easy to miss that aspect of things. The closest I've come was working at a full-time job and deciding to finish my degree at a four-year university so that I could work in Korea. I gave five months' notice but also wanted to attend early registration in the spring, which seemed rather impractical since it meant missing two days of work to drive across the state. However, the store owners gave me three days off. Naturally not every supervisor is going to feel the same way, though

[storysinger81]

Most of the stress at PS jobs comes from the fact that you are teaching in another country's government-run schools. As you are aware (that whole anthropology background), public schools serve the society that creates and funds them--in developed countries it's where we get trained to be good citizens. Korean PSs do a pretty good job of training students to be good Korean citizens

[samedi]

I have very little interaction with public school teachers in Korea, so most of what I hear about the experience comes from blogs -- where it's often easier to dismiss problems as coming from how the teacher approaches the situation or their new environment rather than stemming from a legitimate breakdown in communication or differing viewpoints. For example, one LJ user I recall finding a couple years ago wrote "I hate that I can't talk to my principal without going through the vice-principal first, and all because of some stupid religion called Confucianism." Get enough examples like that together and I hope I can be forgiven for thinking that, in some cases at least, problems develop from the attitude of the foreign teacher just as much as they do from the actions of PS employees (or the system itself