To be a good educator
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By Shin Chul-ho
I know a vice principal. I have worked with several principals and vice principals but the one I am talking about was one of the hardest to work with.
I have mostly taught English at elementary schools.
It was considerably difficult for me to teach English alone to about 30 students at the school where this vice principal worked. The school had a native English teacher but I only taught half of all the English classes with her.
I felt like I went through hell every class, teaching alone and fighting against clamor and uproar from the students. One day, two girls interfered with my teaching so much that I made them stand at the back of the room.
One of them misbehaved there, too. I rapped her on the head. That was the source of my trouble. An hour later, a woman teacher came to me and said that the girl was an actress and appeared in a movie "Run, Tortoise!” that I had never heard of. It meant she was a special girl and it became a problem.
The vice principal came up to the English room and said, "Do you want to improve their English? They all learn it in hagwon and come to school. You don't need to teach hard."
His remark left me dumbfounded. The man, whose responsibility was to reduce private education expenses by ensuring the internal stability of public education, was going the wrong way.
Another native speaker came to school as an English teacher.
He was very active. He proposed that he would teach English to any teachers after school for free. About 10 teachers, including me, expressed their intention to attend his English class. Among the teachers was a teacher who majored in dance and we decided to learn dance, also.
A couple of days later we let the principal and the vice principal know what we planned. The female principal said she would like to attend the workshops if she had time while the vice principal firmly opposed our plan. He said if he approved English and dance workshops, he would have to approve other workshops, too. But there had been no workshops for teachers at the school. He should have encouraged self-improvement meetings rather than be afraid of other meetings.
First he wielded his power by deliberately opposing what we wanted to do. The teachers' complaints increased and the problem was settled with English classes on and dance claases off.
Many teachers tried to evade the vice principal’s sight. When I had something to talk about with him, I was almost always bombarded with rebukes. He seldom gave me an opportunity to talk but one-sidedly and ceaselessly went ahead with his own version of the situation.
It was a real drag to listen to him. I thought that was only my unpleasant experience but I found other teachers who felt the same way. Communication is a process in which people find common ground while listening and talking.
All this reminds me of the need for enhancing the system to single out less than qualified vice principals to keep them from moving up to higher posts.
The writer teaches at an elementary school outside of Seoul. His email address is heemy123@hanmail.net.