Video repost from last year around this time. For those of you (though by no means everybody) about to get completely screwed, I salute you.
“My fuhrer… Your coteacher has just called us and informed us… That you have to deskwarm this summer.”
Hitler hates English Teaching Robots.
“Can a robot give a child a high five??”
from thewaygookeffect: “ This is all meant to be a fun joke, and I intend no disrespect towards Korea. The public school system here is fantastic and I love my job. Korea is an awesome place to live and work.” echoed here.
[via thewaygookeffect.com]
A MAGIC class management TRICK
[I teach high school girls for those new to this joint. And glad to have you.]
My students have no incentive to do work in my classes because there’s no grades or tests, so this semester I introduced a Hogwarts style ACHIEVEMENTS chart into my classes. Basically, if they do very well for that day and follow all the rules they get a POINT [a red mark next to their class number.] If they get 5 points they can trade them for a movie day, and if they get the most points by Christmas they get a pizza party [for this reason it is also called the PIZZA chart.]
I was pissed because all week it hasn’t really been working. They didn’t really care about it and I couldn’t figure out why. The reason I made the chart is because Korean students are insanely competitive. They really are. And so it really should’ve worked to have them competing against each other like that for prizes they really want.
However, something incredible happened this afternoon. I introduced the concept that if they are a PERFECT class they will get two points instead of one. This happened because I was too chickenshit to deny classes points afterall and so I needed a way to distinguish the actual good classes from the bad. Well, they were crrrrrazzzzzyyyy for it. All of a sudden wailing tired moaning jumping out of their seats mechanisms of teenage angst are all hearts and flowers and ALSO UNDERSTAND ENGLISH. Or pretend to. It’s glory personified. These are the students about which I’ve dreamed. [knocking on wood knocking on wood knocking on wood.] I don’t know exactly why that made such a difference but I’m not going to question it at all.
So that’s working out well. Also, randomly, I read that one of the ways Hitler would lull people into a happy-to-follow trance was to have them chant things instead of letting quiet moments happen [Walmart does this to their employees apparently.] So I’m having them chant things, like the rules, the vocabulary, and IT IS WORKING. Chanting, not just repeating, appears to work like a charm. All attention to the sungsangnim for whole actual moments!
Hope that these continue to work and don’t just stop working like they would in a discouraging dream.
Hitler has to desk warm.
Desk warming is when foreign English teachers are required to come in to school during winter or summer breaks and sit at their desks even though there are no students and very few other teachers there. You basically have nothing to do but frivol away the very long hours of the day by poking around on the internet. It is very inefficient and frustrating since you know you could be using that time to travel (or just sleep late). But you also know that you shouldn’t really be complaining since you already get more vacation time than you probably would at a job in your home country.
Anyway, I laughed way too much at this video. It was spot on, and spared neither the frustrating aspects of working at a Korean school nor how whiny—But justified, damn it! Wah!—we foreign teachers can be.
(Reblogged from jegidong: carrieabigstick; via The Waygook Effect)
I haven’t seen a more accurate Korea video since this. I was literally LOL-ing while watching, especially since during both winter and summer vacations, I’ve had problems with my school with vacation dates AFTER we’ve confirmed it with one another and AFTER I bought my plane tickets. During the most recent vacation incident, however, I just reacted with a laugh and a sigh. Oh, Korea…what you’ve gotten me used to I would never have tolerated back home.
I’ve been really fortunate regarding vacation dates being arranged in advance and then being immutable [but really because I don’t have the desire to travel like most of my counterparts and because this summer due to renewal my dates were set in stone by the contract] but this video is everything I wanted it to be and more. It’s so accurate. One really can’t describe the feeling of deskwarming to one who has not done it.
