I know we had been warned about major differences between the Korean & American educational systems that we may encounter, but some things still shocked me….
1. One of my coteachers uses corporal punishment in his classroom and he has repeatedly suggested that he should continue to use it in the classes he “coteaches” with me.
After I discussed my “no hitting” policy to the first class we “cotaught” together (quotations bc the coteachers’ role in the classes I teach is very lowkey), he came up to me after class and told me that though corporal punishment is technically not allowed in the school, he often hits the girls with this stick if they are disobeying him. And he said it so casually!! I politely explained that maybe (key word!) I can handle disciplining my students during my classes. Unfortunately, his English level is lower than my other coteachers, so it’s hard to judge his tone and if he understood what I was implying. Either he is obstinate or my suggestion didn’t register because he also reminded me today that if my girls are bad, I should consider hitting them with his stick (!!!). I used the pretend he is joking/once again suggest that I can handle the disciplining for my own classes approach.
2. I have 1 deaf student, 2 epileptics, + 3 otherwise special needs children in my classes (+ the however many more whose disabilities have not been acknowledged/registered)
Apparently, my school has special education teachers, but they have just assumed the policy of “reintegrating” the special needs students into the “regular” classrooms. They tell me it is better for those with disabilities to be around “normal” level students. And when I asked my coteachers how they approach teaching those students (especially the deaf student), they looked at me in confusion. “We have gotten used to having them in our classrooms. We don’t do anything special for them,” they told me. So, how do the students learn? Their answer: well most of them cannot learn much, but that is just the situation. — I was definitely shocked to hear that!
After I insisted that I would like to learn more about their disabilities, I managed to get a list of the special needs children from the special ed teachers with a discription of their particular situations (all in Korean of course). Get this – my deaf student is not even on that list! Apparently, her parents have requested for her to be treated as any of the other “normal” level students are treated… meaning that she has never received any sort of special attention from someone trained to deal with hearing impaired children!
The coteacher who helped get this information/translate it for me told me that it was nice to finally see such a list so that he could learn more about his special needs children – just hearing that was heartening. One of my other coteachers has decided to pay special attention to the special needs students in the classes we teach together, which is a huge help because I can continue to teach to the rest of the class while those individual students receive 1-on-1 attention! She told me that she’s never paid special attention to these students before, but now that she has talked to them individually, she can tell that they want to be helped. With her help, one of my students even wrote: “Akta, I have a learning disability. Can you help me anyway?”
I’ve been told that I will soon just come to accept that the system is failing these students…. but I’m not so sure.
