Just days after arriving from South Korea, Fort Lee School Superintendent Raymond Bandlow on Dec. 10 welcomed Hea-Kyung Lim, the chief superintendent of the Busan Metropolitan City school district, which oversees 600 schools within the second largest city in South Korea.
During a tour of several first grade classrooms at School 1, Lim and members of her administrative staff had the opportunity to observe some of her teachers interacting with students and collaborating with Fort Lee teachers.
They also took a tour through the pre-school learning disabled classrooms at the Good Sheppard Church, which are part of the school district.
Through the TICKET program (Total Immersion Course for Chinese and Korean English Teachers), now in its third year, seven teachers stay in Fort Lee from October through April 2011 to pick up techniques and skills they can apply in their own classrooms back home.
Readers may remember Superintendent Lim from October when it was announced Busan will begin evaluating native speaker English teachers.
The article goes on to say the six-month program costs $16,000 per teacher. It is aimed at further preparing Korean English teachers to conduct their classes entirely in English, and presumably to watch and learn classroom techniques conducive to that.
For a couple other posts on similar trips, with plenty of reader comments see:
* February 5, 2010: Korean teachers going to the US for further training.
* March 8, 2010: More Korean teachers going to the US for further training.
4 comments:
Wow. It's been a while since I've felt confident enough to say "what a complete and total waste of money". I love the irony of dropping 16k per teacher while they complain about our salaries (and I definitely know I'm not the only one who feels that way). Allow me to rip into this one...
While I agree that training is useful and definitely necessary, the reality that the valuable things these teachers learn abroad can't and won't be applied to a Korean classroom setting due to:
a) class size
b) discipline problems/culturally expected discipline techniques (i.e. hitting students is normal yet expelling students is almost impossible)
c) parental expectations (high grades only: nothing to do with learning)
d) pressure from the principal to support for his/her own sake c)
e) pressure from the principals (most of which are old school and who are totally inflexible to new methods and strategies ( c) doesn't help either)
f) the fact that like home, some teachers are unfit for the job and that no amount of training will make them suitable as a teacher.
g) 6 months training overseas may not help improve the English much of some of these teachers and fluency is arguably half of what is necessary to reproduce decent results in the classroom. Enough said there...
I still can't get over how they bitch and complain about our "overpaid" salaries and yet are willing to drop 16 k PER TEACHER on training that can't and won't be applied when they return. It absolutely baffles me but I have lived here long enough to expect nothing less unfortunately.
Never thought I'd say it, but when the new superintendent here axed this training program, it was probably the best and most efficient way to save the money and I agree with him totally. I know what they'll probably spend the savings on though...so I'm not sure if it is a win, a delayed fail or both.
I find it odd that in the SMOE, there are protests about free lunches and yet the BMOE is willing to blow this kind of money. If I were Korean, man would I be furious...
Good catch Brian. I hope more people speak up about this kind of wasteful spending.
What's sad is that it's not like there aren't recognizable, worthwhile TESOL training programs out there. School for International training, CELTA, etc..
-Require a legit TESOL program for foreign teachers (yes, I'm biased against the $200 online tesol courses).
-There are also very good and time tested curriculum like the Headway series (as well as others). Nothing's perfect but the hodgepodge of approaches by both foreign teachers (well intended as well as drunk and indifferent) is as much a part of the problem as is the Korean side ie. this latest high priced experiment which won't get the job done.
It's a shame that so much time and money is wasted on something relatively straight forward in other parts of the world.
I've only been here a short time but it's obvious that the education system here serves a number of interests other than education. Korean publishing companies, Confucian culture - focus on testing,better ideas being buried to not offend and so on.
There was an article not long ago after the G-20 meeting here by a columnist who was noting that the biggest barrier for Korea is going to be overcoming these "ideas" more than their determination etc..
To add to (and slightly extend) what tide said:
1. TESOL/CELTA courses are not enough. They don't cover some of the most important aspects of classroom teaching (such as classroom and behaviour management). These courses are designed for Western language schools -- not public schools.
2. I agree absolutely that there needs to be more coordination and sonsistency in terms of training and curriculum. There are no learning standards/objectives and not enough support/training for foreign teachers.
There are, I believe, ways that the quality of language education in Korean public schools could be improved.
First, integrate foreign teachers fully into the system or take them out of schools. It's not necessary to have one full-time teacher per school if they are used inefficiently/ineffectively -- like eye-candy, pronunciation robots, or idiom/slang teachers.
Then, creating a national speaking assessment system with notive-speakers as trained testers would be a good move. Having meaningful grades from classes with foreign teachers should be the minimum.
If these two things at least are not implemented, native-speakers should teach only after-school programmes for extra credit... and with students who actually want to be there and improve their fluency.
Teachers in this system should then be properly trained and supported. Here again, a set curriculum is needed.
Speaking of training, I feel strongly that teachers who have never taken any kind of teaching course should not be hired. On top of that, they should have experience in public schools or be trained extensively in classroom management.
As it is unlikely that it is feasible to hire qualified, experienced teachers for most Korean public schools, good support, training, and curriculum are essential.
Please excuse typos... was rushing.
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