Jason Ryan on teaching English in South Korea.

As I'm sure you've already seen by now, Jason Ryan of kimchi-icecream has put together a series of posts for native speaker English teachers in Korea. Pieced together from orientation guides he wrote a couple of years ago, they're an interesting read on a number of different facets of our life. Here's what he's got so far:

* 8 Tips for Foreign English Instructors Co-teaching with a Korean English Teacher

* New Foreign English Instructors -- First Day In Your New Apartment Checklist

* First Day At School For New Native English Teachers in Korean Public Schools -- Checklist

* Introduction For New Foreign English Teachers To The Korean Public School Environment

* "I can’t think of any English lesson topics . . ." Lesson Plan Topics List For New Foreign English Teachers In Korean Public Schools

* Extra English Conversation Classes: Setting them up; Mixed levels; Getting paid; class size limits and levels of students in the class

* TESL/TEFL Teaching Method and Theory Books, Lesson Plan and Teaching Resource Books For New Foreign English Teachers In Korean Public Schools

* Korean English Co-Teacher Issues: Techniques, Challenges, and Strategies

* New Foreign English Teachers in Korean Public Schools--Summer and Winter Camps Checklist

* New Foreign English Teachers in Korean Public Schools -- One Foreign Instructor's Take On Some Major Cultural Differences

* New Foreign English Teachers in Korean Public Schools -- Health and Homesickness in Korea

Jason also has the, um, interesting task of teaching teachers once in a while; he just started a six-month stretch of an intensive program. I've mentioned Jeollanam-do's own teacher training program a couple of times, and by now just about all of the English teachers at my schools, all 12 or so of them, have attended the camp in Damyang either over the summer or for a month-long stint during the school year. Baby steps, I know, but I've questioned how effective the program ultimately is. The teachers generally do have fun, because even though it means being away from home during the week, and I know that at least some of the native speaker teachers there put in a lot of time and effort preparing lessons. As I know from trying weekly teachers' workshops at school, it can be a really tough crowd.

But one of the challenges is trying to demonstrate the effectiveness of communicative language teaching to a group of teachers who were raised, trained, and hired in a system in which it's totally inappropriate. A couple of my colleagues have returned from the camp---which they admitted they didn't want to attend because of how inconvenient it is to be sequestered away from their family and students for an extended time---having learned some new things, but ultimately unsure what to do with them. Baby steps, I know. Here's something I wrote on an earlier post:

Funny anecdote, a colleague came back from spending a month at the teachers' training camp in Damyang. You know, the one where twentysomething white people show Korean teachers with twenty years' experience how to teach English? Yeah, anyway, she really enjoyed it and learned a lot, but told me that she won't use any of the activities at our school because her students don't like speaking English. Nice, a month of free training that amounts to little more than upward mobility and promotion points.

In the context of the earlier post I was comparing the numerous training and professional-development opportunities our Korean colleagues have with the absence of any for us. Not only that, there sometimes seems like no thought whatsoever is given to what, exactly, native English speakers are supposed to accomplish in the classroom, or why they're there in the first place. Teachers who don't bother showing up to class or who never attend the weekly workshops are given month-long training opportunities; yes, I know they don't see them as "opportunities." Moreover, and I'm not sure if this is a program similar to Jason's, teachers here can attend a six-month intensive program; five months are at a university here in Korea, with the final month spent at a university in an English-speaking country. If they choose to get an advanced degree from such a university they are permitted to leave school and will have half the cost of tuition covered by the government. As far as I can tell, though, none of these teachers have returned with any insight into how to teach with a native English speaker, or with any intention of introducing communicative competence into a subject taught solely for tests.

Anyway, let me bring this back around. In that first post on the program in Damyang I cited a blog of a teacher recently hired to teach there. I happened to check it just now and I see her final post is "The pros and cons of working/living at JETI," JETI being the name of the the training institute which holds the Jeollanam-do teachers' training. Long story short, she left after only five months, and her complaints are ones we see repeated on blogs all the time, including this one. But I hope those aren't the only ones that informed her decision, because things like the rural location and the consequent sparse transportation and amenities are things that go without saying in an isolated area like Damyang. Likewise some of the cultural differences, such as a lack of communication and the impression that there is "no room for negotiation or having an opinion" because

You must do what you are told no matter how much you disagree because in the end you never win a battle in Korea

are things that, quite frankly, you need to just deal with when you work and live in a foreign country. They can be exceedingly frustrating, of course, but that's basically a reflection of your own degree of (mal)adjustment. So I'd recommend that new teachers take the information provided by Jason and others not from the perspective of "how can these Koreans help me get what I want?" but from "how can this help me do my job better?"