My new job has me a bit distressed.
The students and owners of the center are Korean. Koreans have incredible demands with regard to education. I am SUPPOSED to give 10-15 vocabulary words that the students must write sentences for and have a spelling test for each day. I am also supposed to give out massive amounts of homework.
To give an example:
Today I was trying to figure out how many pages total I have to cover for one class. This class has 4 books and I see the students 3 times per week. The duration for the class should be 3 months. This is about 39 classes, an hour and a half each, total. The books have approximately 410 pages to be covered total. That means that I should be covering 10.5 pages per class!
I was so shocked at this that I talked to the owner about it. She said that I should cover 4-5 pages in class and assign the rest as homework.
This is a tuition center, most of these kids are already in school. This means they have schoolwork AND a shit-load of homework from the center as well. This is normal for Asians, it is scandalous to people with my particular mindset. When do the kids have time to be kids?
I have more adjusting to do at the center, obviously. I am there to do things their way, I am the employee, not the owner. I know the other Western teachers feel the same as I do.
Oh well, when in Rome...
I know it sounds like a lot, but kids having time to just be kids gets them into a lot of trouble. I think all the extra work builds non-lazy kids in the end.
ReplyDeleteOn other note, our Chief in Command gave a huge education reform speak last week. Not a "I think we should change things", more of a "This is what will happen dawg!".
Its going to be pretty intresting. :)