Elementary and secondary schools plan to create a black list of ``incompetent'' native English speakers and to ask immigration not to reissue English-teaching or E-2 visas to them.
Also, the schools will share individual assessments of foreign teachers among themselves. About 23,000 instructors are working in Korea, among them 8,000 are at the schools.
. . .
The National Institute for International Education (NIIED) will team up with the association to evaluate their performance. But it has not yet made public what objective criteria will be used in concluding whether they are competent or not.
Indeed, it will be vitally important to learn what the criteria are and whether they're "objective." As I've written nearly every time NSETs come up, no planning or support goes into using native speaker English teachers in school. If there is no plan in place for using these teachers, there can also not be a system for evaluating them. You can't evaluate teachers on certain standards when they were not held to them throughout the contract.
Furthermore, when schools aren't prepared to use native speaker English teachers, it's also likely that schools and teachers aren't familiar with the teaching styles used by them (and, vice versa, native speaker English teachers aren't familiar with the methods used among Koreans). Will a teacher get marked down for having students move around and talk to one another? Those are certainly foreign techniques to the Korean classroom, but ones that might fit in well when teaching how to communicate in English. I anticipate a lot of evaluations that say "Brian is good teacher. He is handsom guy^^" or "mr. Brian is not good. He is not smile and his class is not funny." Do Korean teachers and administrators, most of whom learned English from other Koreans with even worse English then them, really have the faintest idea how to evaluate native speaker English teachers?
When I looked at another Times article "12% of Native English Teachers Dismissed at Schools in Ulsan"---which took that angle in spite of some 88% of teachers apparently doing just fine---I brought up other reasons for teachers not to have their contracts renewed. Here's what the article had to say:
The office [of education] said that it has not renewed their contracts after judging their methods to be inappropriate for teaching students in English.
A written survey was conducted to determine how many acted decently, how faithful they were to their duty, how well they guided students and how well they taught English.
. . .
Among the dismissed were those who often yelled at students, argued with Korean teachers assisting them and wore indecent clothes. Some had to visit hospital too often for weight problems and some refused to teach after school, according to the survey.
There are of course bad teachers, unprofessional teachers, lazy teachers, and teachers who for whatever reason just don't fit in Korea. But there are also good teachers who find themselves at bad schools, or who find themselves paired with rotten co-teachers. There are teachers who want to try another school, another level, or another city. And, in keeping in line with those comments in the Times piece, there are teachers who dislike having to teach all kinds of afterschool classes and workshops, which are in fact not mandatory. You can bet a teacher who chooses not to re-sign because of a bad co-teacher, an unsatisfactory apartment, or unpaid overtime won't be given a fair hearing.
It's interesting to note, too, that native speaker English teachers aren't given the opportunity to evaluate the Korean English teachers at the school. At the end of each year NSETs are given a questionnaire where they answer a few questions about their school, their apartment, their coworkers, and so on, but it's not confidential and can be, and probably is, seen by the other English teachers at the school. Many NSETs do have legitimate complaints about their co-teachers---teachers who do not come to class, teachers who do not come to the mandatory workshops, teachers who do not participate in class, teachers who sleep in class, teachers who are violent with students, teachers who can neither understand nor use English, or teachers who are just not very good---yet nobody learns about it. Instead it's the NSET who pays for bad relationships and bad classes, it's the NSET who isn't re-signed, and it's the NSET, if this plan goes into place, who will be blacklisted.
Today's article continues:
NIIED, which runs the English Program in Korea, or EPIK, will play a central role in operating training programs for the foreigners.
The government also plans to mandate new native teachers to participate in training programs for 10 days or more. During the programs, they can learn about skills used in teaching and managing classes along with Korean culture.
I've been reading about these evaluation programs on Facebook, on forums, and on other blogs. I wrote about these mandatory training programs on this site and in the Korea Herald, saying
[W]hat's "practical," what's vital for native-speaker English teachers, is an understanding of the Korean classroom and how they fit into it. I've written numerous times that most of the challenges that accompany NSETs are due to the lack of planning and support they receive and to the ambiguous role they fill in the system, and any new training session needs to address these concerns.
A new teacher doesn't need a lecture about kimchi -- he'll get it often enough at mealtime -- but would benefit from presentations on lesson planning for a class of 40. A foreign teacher doesn't need a lesson on how to pour drinks Korean-style -- she'll get one from her friends later -- but will need to learn how to fit into the teachers' office. An orientation doesn't need a mundane lecture on Hangeul---teachers take the initiative to learn on their own -- but NSETs should be given the opportunity to take Korean classes while here. Teachers -- some of whom have never taught before -- need to be acclimated to the Korean classroom as quickly as possible through practical lessons from experienced NSETs, not from teachers or bureaucrats who don't understand the NSET experience.
Training sessions need to focus on the classroom and how English is taught, and thus need to include Korean English teachers. It's been several years since NSETs have been introduced, yet schools are still unclear about how they're to be used. With some co-teachers, NSETs work as pronunciation guides, with others they split time, and in some cases the co-teacher doesn't show up for class or workshops at all.
I'd like to bring it back to the article about those 12% of teachers in Ulsan; here's what the article said:
The office [of education] said that it has not renewed their contracts after judging their methods to be inappropriate for teaching students in English.
A written survey was conducted to determine how many acted decently, how faithful they were to their duty, how well they guided students and how well they taught English.
The key there is "methods to be inappropriate for teaching students in English." But what exactly are appropriate methods? I've seen co-teachers walk around the room with bamboo sticks, scaring students shitless and preventing any communication from going on at all. I've seen co-teachers sleep during our class, I've seen co-teachers leaf through newspapers when they should be helping, and I've seen co-teachers conduct English classes entirely in Korean. Don't put words in my mouth and act like I think all teachers do this, but I've seen enough classes to ask why there's so much attention paid to NSET methodology when plenty of bad Korean teachers are permitted to stay (they're not evaluated by us, the witnesses, as I've already said). I wrote about it in the Korea Herald in May, asking if English classes in Korean or classes controlled by violence follow appropriate methodology:
We recently read that 12 percent of native speaker English teachers in Ulsan were "expelled" from their jobs. The report said that the teachers were let go because they had "methods ... inappropriate for teaching students in English." It is certainly the district's or the school's prerogative to hire or fire whomever they please, and there is no doubt some that deserve to go. However, the information and the way it was reported reveal two big problems frequently seen in media coverage of teachers. It is consistent with a trend to portray foreign English teachers in an unfairly negative way, and it begs the question why Korean teachers' methods are, as a whole, not under similar scrutiny.
To put a less cynical spin on it, it leads us to ask what exactly is expected of us, what ought to be done when the way NSETs exist in the popular imagination contrast with the reality of the English classroom here. Otherwise, a bad teacher is simply a product of a bad system: either the system that couldn't accommodate him, or one that hired him without scrutiny in the first place.
Instead of announcing schools will evaluate native speaker English teachers and blacklist bad ones, and instead of announcing with much fanfare that there will now be mandatory training programs to address deficiencies, why not first come up with a plan for NSETs and see it through, and why not first offer training programs that address the problems NSETs face. By creating more ways to make bad teachers, they're simply moving closer to not having any NSETs in the classrooms at all. Hey, wait a minute . . .
23 comments:
Good post. I might like to add, that I went to one of those NEST reprogramming seminars. One of the guys who was teaching one of the classes said that he worked for the Daegu office of education. He said that he knew all of the local program administers for each of the districts, and that only half of them are "Pro-foriegn English teacher."
It is pretty disapointing half of the people in charge of running the program might be actively working against the people that they hired to do a job. Kind of a bummer, cuz the EPIK, SMOE, and GEPIK programs could have actually been valuable, if someone cared enough to actually develop these into functioning programs rather than just doing it because Japan has JET, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Great post, Brian.
My present schools (I work for three) love me because they're relatively good schools. My first school, however, hated me. They gave me the same note as you got - "David teacher not good not smile ㅋㅋ"
And you're absolutely right. They don't know how to use us, so they can't adequately judge us. And if they can't do that, they can't blacklist us in all fairness.
Three old co-workers of mine were blacklisted as "unfit" by my old employer - the same incompetent moron who hated me - and they were refused any form of visa in Korea after that. The problem was that this employer used to work on the immigration board and wielded unusual power. If you say "Mr Park you're asking me to do something outwith my contract!" he'll turn around and have you blacklisted. That's my main concern with this.
Could we get a blacklist of rip off hagwons and get immi to not allow them to apply for E2 visas?
Yes, Excellent post. The only problem with having mandatory workshops including what to "expect" or what should be "done" in the classroom as a NET is that every situation is different for each NET / school.It would be impossible to cover all the "potential scenarios" a NET might find themselves in. A workshop on mass chaos inside and outside the school systems might be helpful! Sometimes, I really question the validity of anything in this country and maybe Korea should have just remained "closed off" from the rest of the world. There seems to be a fairly small percentage of westerners who have the will to stay and teach in Korea for an extended period of time. There are quite a few runners as a percentage of the whole who just can't accept the positions they are in. Is Korea trying to decrease that percentage to 20%? 0%?
Does Korea look at the number of runners each year and wonder WHY that number is high? Do they not think 30-50% is large? If I was a government official and saw these numbers year after year, I might want to find out why. I would also be somewhat embarrased! I guess maybe I don't understand Korea and that last statement was too "western" in ideology
Not long before I left I had a heart-to-heart with my favorite Korean co-teacher. Despite the language barrier, I believe I heard her admit that Korea's teachers have an informal policy of passive resistance to us foreigners in their classrooms.
Also - I know this isn't news - her comments made it clear that ANY problem in the NSET or GET program is seen by Koreans as the failure of foreign teachers to adjust to Korea and its culture.
Finally, in re the idea of foreign teachers evaluating Koreans: you need to understand that this will never, ever happen. The best you can hope for is the establishment of objective criteria in their evaluations of you. Until then, foreigners will continue to be judged solely on how well they get along with everyone. Seminars on kimchi and how to pour drinks just might be the most useful training for GET's; and at the risk of sounding like Kushibo, as someone who has been there I can affirm that U.S. corporate life ain't all that different.
Well, we all know how contract and payment disputes are going to be settled from now on, eh?
Guys, there are countries in the world that pay ESL teachers well enough, that don't have their immigration and employment policies decided for them by a racist website.
Get out. The country isn't good enough for you.
Blacklists are illegal under labor laws (they interfere with one's right to employment). That's not even mentioning the mess they could get into with defamation and libel.
The Recruiters Association had a blacklist (and still has one to my knowledge) had to make the list private because one teacher threatened a lawsuit when he discovered his name on it.
Just as school blacklists are illegal, so these teacher blacklists will also be illegal. All it will take is one person to challenge it. I imagine the NHRCK, in conjunction with the Labor Board, would take the job.
Jeez, maybe accusing them of being disease-carriers on crack with forged degrees over and over again might make some of them leave.
I'd divide this article into two things:
One, the employer (in this case the govt.) choosing not to re-hire anyone from this list. This I don't mind.
Two, the former employer having immigration not issue another E-2 Visa for that former employee. This is wrong I believe because it infringes on the right of another employer to hire that worker. For example a hogwon may want to hire that worker, but won't be allowed. So I think the hogwon owners have a real issue to complain about. [It also infringes on the workers right to work, but that's unimportant to Korean policy makers.]
Here's some stuff about the teacher blacklist created by a hagwon association a few years ago:
Here's the reason why teachers---312 on the site---have been blacklisted:
***
Run away
학원에서 한달정도 가르치고, 급여받고 그 다음날 바로 짐싸서 도망가는 유형.
Have fun
한국에 온 이유가 오직 즐기기 위하여 온 강사.
수업 끝나면 여자들과 어울려서 술마시고 다음날은 피곤해서 아프다는 핑계로 빠져주지만
그래도 저녁에는 꼬박 꼬박 술마시러 나가는 유형.
Raise up the salary
처음 급여는 일반적인 급여수즌으로 이야기를 시작하였으나,
시간이 지날수록 좀 더 높은 급여를 요구하고 학원이 강사가 필요한 시점이 되어서는 60만원이나
인상된 급여를 요구하다가 학원에서 계약을 안하기로 하고 포기하였으나 다른 에이전시들에게도
계약 같은 식으로 접근하여 결국은 에이전시나 학원 모두에게 피해를 주는 유형.
I don’t remember what I said
처음 계약서 받아보고 이야기 오갈때는 모든걸 받아들일 것 처럼 하더니
실제로 계약서에 사인해서 서류보내기 전에 이것저것 요구하며, 자신이 OK 했던부분들에 대해서
모르쇠로 일관하는 유형.
I got angry
인터뷰 보고 서류발송하여 비자받아서 한국에 들어오고 나서는 모든 것이 불만에 사로잡힌 유형.
학원도 싫고 학생도 싫고 한국도 싫지만 한국을 떠나지는 않음.
***
You'll find the list here: http://www.kftra.co.kr/list.asp?idx=2. I can't figure out how to get any names, though, so I guess you have to know who you're searching for.
The Marmot Hole covered it: http://www.rjkoehler.com/2006/08/17/english-teacher-blacklist/
A couple Dave's threads on it:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=63723
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=104966
And information from 2007 about teachers following up on it:
http://fenceriderkorea.blogspot.com/2007/11/got-blacklisted-get-even.html
In August, 2006, I wrote a letter to the Korea Times about the blacklist, and a lot of the points I made then ring true now. The link is gone, but I copied-pasted it on my site last summer (though at the time we were still dealing with talk of "qualified" teachers vis-a-vis degree checks):
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2008/08/that-adrian-deutsch.html
Here's a novel idea: Why not just hire properly trained and/or accredited NSETs?
But this will never happen in South Korea, hence all this other smoke-and-mirrors bullshit.
First of all, consider the source: Kang Shin-who, Korea's worst reporter. Take the article with a grain (or block) of salt.
||"But it has not yet made public what objective criteria will be used in concluding whether they are competent or not."||
"Objective criteria"? Don't exist in Korea. As Michael Breen wrote in his book The Koreans, "... characteristic of Koreans in which accuracy is a distant second to feeling." (p.29) Even when students are asked black-and-white questions like, "Was the teacher on time?" they go with what they feel rather than what actually happened. I know one invariably punctual teacher who was livid with outrage when some students marked her as "sometimes late." Not surprisingly, she later quit the school.
||"Elementary and secondary schools plan to create a blacklist of "incompetent" native English speakers and to ask immigration not to reissue English-teaching or E-2 visas to them."||
Honestly, I think that we are approaching the day when you will have to be married to a Korean (and thus have an F-2 or F-5 visa) to be gainfully employed in Korea. Already, people on F-series visas can work at whatever job they want, not needing anyone's permission. Also, at my school, when they need someone and there isn't much time, only people on F-series visas need apply, as the paperwork for E-2 visas now takes too long.
||"Here's a novel idea: Why not just hire properly trained and/or accredited NSETs?"||
I've known qualified teachers who pulled runners. In the article, "incompetent" means "We don't like you." As is often the case, the use of the word "qualified" has little or nothing to do with actual accreditation.
I thought I get evaluated every year already.
Evaluations are purely subjective. They are making judgments about performance. In order for them say that we are competent or qualified, in an objective way, they would have to subject us to a written examination.
Maybe they will have some kind of point system like they do for the Korean teachers.
But in either case, they must lay out what they will evaluate at the beginning, not at the end. They have to be clear about expectations or it is unfair. It's like taking a test without being given a book or any instructions.
Most Koreans don't know what a good teacher is or what good teaching methodology is all about. How can they determine if we are good or bad when they certainly don't know anything about teaching themselves?
Brian, you are completely right. If I am going for training, I don't want to know about things I can discover on my own. I want to hear practical things that will make me a good teacher in the classroom, not how to make the principal and the Korean staff feel more comfortable with me in a social setting or to be propagandized. (I'm fortunate that I get along with my colleagues and greatly admire them.) We are here for one reason, and one reason only: TO GET OUR STUDENTS TO USE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN A COMMUNICATIVE AND MEANINGFUL MANNER.
One more thing. I am a bit tired of people saying that we are here to teach conversation classes. One doesn't "teach" conservation. I cannot hold meaningful conversations with 40 students in 50 minutes. (Most Korean kids are too shy or intimidated to converse in a classroom setting. Most of my best conversations with the kids are outside the classroom during lunchtime.) I teach my students how to communicate through tasks and games.
Also, according to the GEPIK contract I am responsible for speaking AND writing, the productive forms of language. I am not a conversation teacher as that journalistic-malpracticing moron Kang keeps writing.
Does Kang Shin-who realize that he would most likely be "blacklisted" by the news industry in most English-speaking countries for fabricating quotes for his sources?
Oh, the irony!
The point is that immigration control should not be responsible for screening the professional abilities of potential employees. This is the job of employers.
Surely all other arguments made are an aside.
Forgive me for not really understanding what all the brouhaha is about. Why is there any need for a black list? If foreign public school teachers are already receiving evaluations (and we are), then those evaluations contain any negative feedback the schools have toward the NESTs already. If a school had half a mind to be responsible in their hiring practices, they would find their way to these evaluations anyway.
So the schools plan on asking immigration not to reissue E-2 visas to incompetent native English teachers. But native English teachers CAN'T GET an E-2 visa unless the schools offer them a job in the first place. So the schools are asking immigration not to issue visas to the teachers that they deem worthy of giving a job and inviting into their schools?
Does anyone else see the circle of inane tongue wagging going on here?
Certain people in the media sure do like to paint us like an uncontrollable invasion that can't be stopped despite everyone's best efforts, but the truth is, we're sorta like vampires -- we can't come in unless you invite us. At the end of the day, who's responsible?
@Keith
"One doesn't "teach" conservation. I cannot hold meaningful conversations with 40 students in 50 minutes."
I call BS. There are certain conversation skills and strategies that we can teach the kids. Yes, they are shy when speaking with the teacher. That’s why you have them work in pairs or small groups (sometimes bringing it back to the entire class practicing the skills together when they feel more comfortable with each other) while the teacher monitors the conversations, encourages it, corrects mistakes, brings them back on task and occasional joins in with the small groups.
So the schools plan on asking immigration not to reissue E-2 visas to incompetent native English teachers. But native English teachers CAN'T GET an E-2 visa unless the schools offer them a job in the first place.
The schools--the PUBLIC schools--will not only be asking Immigration to not issue E2 visas to other PUBLIC schools, but to not issue E2 visas to ANY other school (hagwon or uni) either. They way the article is written, they want to take the "incompetent" teacher and shut him completely out of ANY future teaching employment in Korea.
Now, if it is about actual incompetence, I'm waffling. Yes, incompetence should not be employed again and again, but then again, that should be up to the school doing the hiring, not Immigration.
Of course, this will not come down to "incompetence". It will come down to being blacklisted for petty reasons: teacher won't work for free on weekends, teacher doesn't smile, teacher won't eat kimchi at lunch, Korean co-teacher resents babysitting an unqualified "teacher" in her classroom, teacher decided not to renew for another contract, etc.
These are reasons why some teachers are given poor evaluations and not renewed NOW. You think they won't be used as reasons to blacklist someone, too?
Unless there are objective standards (or as objective as possible) that are KNOWN to the teacher before he/she steps foot into the classroom on their first day, then this idea will be nothing but one big clusterfuck for NESTs.
I can hear the call of defamation and labor law lawsuits now.
I get the feeling that there's a desire among many in the offices of education to do away with NESTs in public schools altogether. But they don't feel they can do so because of pressure from parents and competition with the hagwon industry, so they come up with ideas like this in frustrated attempts to keep their NEST workforce in line. But all they're doing is creating a vicious circle; as public schools become less pleasant work environments, "high-grade" NESTs will look for jobs elsewhere. And I imagine that the constant threat of being blacklisted -- for not meeting unreasonable demands from one's principal, for not renewing the contract, possibly even for quitting with notice -- could make a public school a very unpleasant work environment indeed.
I think Peter and Puffin Watch are closest to the mark. A blacklist is a perfectly indirect way to cull NSET numbers without requiring employers to be candid or even evaluate their own performance.
My career snowballed a few years ago when my Korean wife yelled at one of my bosses - pick any one of the three divisions I worked for at the university - about a pay issue. I was not asked to re-sign, after working there for three years. This is another way a foreigner can get in trouble, but ironically, I had had a conversation with this same professor months before about the need for department autonomy.
I had suggested that our head teacher should evaluate the foreign staff on a series of criteria, and recommend us at contract time. I talked about many of these issues addressed in Brian's post. he told me, quite tritely, "We all have to do what we don't like." I've thought from day one that there should have been a global authority, like a TESL association, that would keep data about teachers and students, which various international employers would consult for hiring guidance.
I wonder how other ESL employers in other countries compare to the ROK, etc. etc. Is there a global database?
As an aside, on Koje, Korean adults are desperate to engage foreign engineers for conversation. But foreigners want nothing to do with them, and right next to one of my schools there's a foreigners-only club. I'd love just to crash the place with a class. I might even buy a round for the house just to see the results. On top of the usual shtick, Koje people want a little extra: they hate Koje, they make sacrifices, and they want foreigners who can lie about liking the place.
I doubt any of these "reform" measures can faze me. I've crossed a Rubicon of extreme disappointment with my present employer, and now it's a matter of avoiding the stress of lying about my intentions and feelings and trying not to listen to my wife's complaints about the place, which are ten times worse than mine. If my employer wants to paddle me, I'd almost prefer the feeling of vindication to trying to wrack my brain trying to understand my predicament and then play-acting for my classes.
Post a Comment