Antipodal

I’m writing this instead of the rant that was threatening to bubble over all morning. I had a rough morning.

Something that’s been floated recently in the Gwangju EPIK Facebook group is the idea of evaluating our coteachers. Basically, we are evaluated by our coteachers as our contracts wind up, and they decide whether to recommend that we be asked to sign a new contract; however, we have no opportunity to give feedback to our coteachers.

In theory, everyone should welcome the opportunity to get some feedback on their teaching and their ability to co-teach (not the same thing by a long shot). I have one coteacher, for example, that would benefit greatly from someone telling him that he shouldn’t worry so much about befriending the students as much as he should worry about maintaining some kind of order in the class. I do wonder, though, if we are the ones to do it.

We (as in, the average EPIK teacher)  aren’t trained as teachers, or in co-teaching, or in English grammar. We’re here to speak English as it is generally spoken, where we come from. Our coteachers are frequently older than us, and they have more experience and training than we will probably ever have. No one likes being told what they’re doing wrong by someone who is unqualified. Also, age and seniority are a big deal in the workplace (and not, as some teachers suppose, only in Korea) and being told what you’re doing wrong by a junior stings, even on matters where the junior is more qualified – in our cases, pronounciation or natural phrasing.

It’s hard to see how a “feedback” session could work without doing more damage than good. A coteacher who has been under the blissful misunderstanding that their native speaker is happy with the way they conduct classes would be mortified if an Office of Education feedback document landed on their desk, outlining all kinds of problems they didn’t know about. A one on one approach, while not embarassing your coteacher in front of their bosses, could seriously damage your working relationship if you aren’t careful.

What seems to be called for here is someone to make sure that we have the ability to talk to our coteachers about issues without compromising ourselves. And that, unfortunately, is something we should be able to do without the Office of Education getting involved, but we don’t want to. I’m definitely guilty of this – I am having some significant communication problems with an older coteacher that are leaving me confused and frustrated on a weekly basis (this morning being an example), and as nice as it would be to complain loudly at a feedback form or a third party and make someone else find a solution, things are just never going to get much better without sitting down and addressing these things with my coteacher, one on one, in a calm way.

Which isn’t easy. We have a lot of reasons to bite our tongues, not least because of the language barrier. Making a problem clear without being uncomfortable blunt is difficult even in English, and with a language barrier, it can be prohibitive. The coteacher I’m putting off talking to, for example, has such poor English that we have had serious miscommunications because she confuses “last” and “next” and tenses in general. Poor English comes across as rude, or accusatory, when it may not be intended as such. I do have to try, though, for the sake of getting along for the next year.

I recognize that there are problems that a quiet chat aren’t going to help, and for that we have our handlers, and Mark and the rest of the Office of Ed staff. They’re here for when problems persist, or when something happens that is severe enough to require a third party. For run of the mill issues, though, I question whether involving paperwork and bureaucracy will improve matters more than just talking about our problems as they come up.