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Today I got right pissed and started talking loudly to one of the Korean teachers about how I was asking around about other jobs. About how maybe teachers at other hagwons don't have to do half the work we do at Herald. You see, Test Week is fucking balls and we have one every month. This ballooned today's workload up to about 12 hours, what with making tests and stealing tests from Mike and photocopying tests and giving tests and marking tests.

The worst part about the whole situation is that the tests truly reveal how retardedly behind some of the kids are. We're talking miserable failure here and in the case that a child happens to be a miserable failure, we can't really tell his parents. Oh my, no! They would certainly blame the teacher and the school indignantly move their business (and retarded kid) to another hagwon. It's certainly not the child's fault that they spend 40 minutes of their parents' well-earned money trying to hide in classroom cupboards and jabbering like a monkey. It's certainly not the parents' fault for overenrolling their kids in so many taekwondo classes and piano classes and goatherding classes that they fall asleep in English class. Hells no!

So when the kids fail, I have to set the bar lower. When they can't use sentences, I fall back onto spelling. When they can't spell, I get them to speak. When they can't speak, I smile and nod my head and give them a fucking cracker. I write glowing notes for them to take home and stick on the fridge, lying with every twitchy pen stroke about how their kid is a magical prodigy.

I'm sure I'm just bitter because I'm seeing all my free time eaten up like Smarties. Some of the kids actually perform quite well, and I have no problem telling their parents that they should be proud. But if a young Korean is a real donkeyface, a shit disturber, then I feel I should have the right to tell doting mothers exactly how subpar Darling Angel really is. I should be able to burst that bubble. But teaching ESL is a business, a big juicy cater-fest, and nobody wants to hear that their beautiful baby is going to be a garbageman and not a doctor.

So I'm pissed off but I'm not really going to quit, because I've been working cushy jobs for far too long. I need to develop some kind of work ethic and it has become wonderfully apparent that Herald is Where Work Is At. It's probably best to learn to put up with it now and not act like such a prima donna. And really, the days sweep by, lightning fast, when Test Week rolls around.

Posted by Chris at 09:50 AM >> Commentations (1)