Miscommunications

There are some things I don’t like about this job. On Monday, the other foreign teacher at my school (the other native English speaker who teaches conversation classes) called in sick, and I had to cover two of his classes – a 6th grade class and a middle school class. The front desk girl who brought me the revised schedule told me that the 6th grade class would only be for 30 minutes. Now, most of my own classes are 6th grade 30 minute classes that meet twice a week, but I was under the impression that this particular class of my coworker was actually an hour long class. So I asked her to double check that time block with the administrative/scheduling women in the other building where my coworker teaches (my school has two campus that are in separate building, right next door to each other), and she came back to my classroom and said “yep, it’s a 30 minute class.” So I prepared for a 30 minute class.

The time for the class rolls around, and I’m looking at the students, explaining how their normal teacher is sick, and I continue to have this inkling. So I ask them what time the class usually ends, and just as I was thinking, I find that it’s usually an hour long class. But I had confirmation from the main schedulers that I was to teach for 30 minutes, so I figured that maybe they just decided to make the class shorter to give me more prep time. So I teach for 30 minutes, release the class, and run back to my own building to prepare for my next class. The minute I walk into my building, I see that the front desk girl is on the phone, and I have another inkling, so I don’t bother going to my classroom, but wait for her to get off the phone. When she does, I ask “I have to go back there don’t I?” “Yep – that class is for one hour.” …..Of course I knew it, I knew, I knew it would happen, but at the same time, hadn’t prepared for a 1 hour lesson. So I go to my classroom and make some copies of an old lesson that I’ve done with my students and trek back over there.

Obviously, it’s not a major deal – they recognized that it was their mistake, not mine – but it was really frustrating for that to happen after I double checked what the schedule was supposed to be.

Similarly, about a week ago, I taught one of my usual 30 minute classes. At the end of class, I said goodbye to the students and released them. Immediately after that, the front desk girl comes in looking rushed and frazzled, with those same students trailing behind laughing. She comes into my classroom and closes the door on them, and as they are all peering in through the window of the door, asks me “nobody told you that this class is 1 hour today?” “Uh…what?” That class had missed a class a few weeks prior, and apparently they were scheduled to make up the missed time by adding on 30 minutes to that day’s lesson, but the school failed to tell me this. Of course the students knew, but this is one of my two worst classes – both are all boys, 6^th graders, who hate coming to class – so of course they’re not going to tell me.

So there are just little things like that that are really dumb. I’m not sure if this is a typical Korean thing to just be on the fly, or if there are communication problems given that a lot of the staff don’t speak very good English, or if this particular school is just disorganized, but it can be a little absurd.

At the same time, there is also a lot to be said about such a low stress job. On my busiest day, I teach 5 classes for a total of 2.5 hours. Of course I have to put in some preparation time, and I’m given essays to grade every week, but even so I have a LOT of downtime. It’s nice to have that time to write emails to people back home, catch up on blogs I follow, research whatever strikes my fancy, catch up on current events, or write my own blog posts like I’m doing now.