Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The OTHER coteacher

So, I have a few coteachers. Usually, one who has the responsibility of actually helping me, and another who just loses a class every week to watch mine bomb in time they probably think could be better used (my last two lessons have been less than dazzling).
At the boys' school, the other coteacher is also named Mrs Kim. Which is pretty easy. She doesn't know quite as much as Suk-Gyong, but she is still nice. SHe's shy, because I think she is a little embarassed that she's less than fluent. But she definitely knows enough to be a good teacher. Aside from the fact that she runs out of class before I can talk to her, I like her a lot.
At the girls' school, however, it is a totally different story. My other coteacher is not shy. And he is certainly not embarassed at being MUCH less than fluent. He is very very arrogant, and interrupts my classes constantly to "translate" what I am saying, which I am very sure he is doing incorrectly. Just in case another teacher who knows him finds this blog, I should conceal his identity. His name will be Mr B.
Half of the interruptions to my classes are caused by him. He talks to the class all of the time, while I am teaching, and to the best of my knowledge, he is flirting. At least, that is how it appears sometimes. And he feeds students answers, which means that instead of all the students getting at least a chance to participate, his favourites, whom he stands behind and chats with get told answers.
To give you an idea of just how unqualified this man is, here is a gem that I am faced with deciphering almost every Monday and Tuesday.
"Matthew, I you pick up after school home."
This, of course, is his way of asking me if I want a ride home. The first time it happened, I was a little shocked, but I figured it was okay, since most of the teaching is done right out of the textbook anyways, so he can just read it. But, in spite of the fact that I have corrected him on numerous occasions, he continues to do it to this day, almost two months later! If that isn't enough, he does that horrible "I'll repeat the last word of your sentence back to you so that you think I understand what you are saying" thing. As in:
In car: "Mr B, will you please drive me to the store tonight? I need to get groceries."
"Yes, groceries."
"I think the store is this way..."
"Yes, store."
"Okay, I guess I'll go home and drop off my stuff first..."
In front of apartment building: "Goodnight Mr B, thanks for the ride home..."
Now, I might sound a little ungrateful. That is because I am. I don't really seem to be allowed to say no to a ride, even though I really like walking home. Usually the store is just a cop-out, and I just get a yogurt, and then walk home. But he gets pretty offended when I turn him down.
On Monday, I ran into Robert, the other foreigner in Yeongam, at the grocery store after being dropped off at the grocery store by Mr B. Robert used to be at the girl's school full time last year, so I asked him if he remembered Mr B.
It turned into a fifteen minute dialogue on incompetence.
Apparently Mr B is just at a point where his seniority is so high that he cannot be fired no matter how little he does. And he could not do less if he tried. Unless, of course, he had my job. And my english speaking ability.
Yesterday, I was locking the lab where I had spent the last hour of the day. I couldn't get the lock to work, and he just told me to forget it, and then ran for the door. The man is out like a bolt of lightening every night at five o'clock. On the nose. This is followed by a few minutes in the car where I try to figure out what he is trying to say...
Anyways, I don't like putting down people so harshly, but this guy is honestly just shocking in about 30 different ways. But I guess that he's here and I'm here, so I might as well try to work around him as unconfrontationally as possible.
Speaking of working around/with him... oh, this is good. I got my other coteacher to write a bunch of words in Korean so that he could translate them for students if they needed the help. A lot of them were new words, but if I explained them, acted them out, drew pictures, most classes would be able to guess them. Anyways, I gave him the list, and asked him to read the word in Korean is the students were struggling. I introduced the lesson, started to talk about the first word, and he interrupted and started reading the whole list, one after the other. He got through eight before my constant drone of "Excuse me... Excuse me... Excuse me... Excuse me..." in the background finally got him to stop. Basically, he had killed about a third of my lesson in about 40 seconds, so now I had a bunch of extra time to kill.
If that wasn't enough, when I did ask him for help translating, he went on and on and on in Korean. To translate a word, you need to say one, maybe two words. Now, I am short on time again. Thank you.

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