More than three weeks ago now, one of my Korean co-teachers casually mentioned that "from next month" we would only have one workbook and one main book from which to teach. As the system then stood, each level of English proficiency at ILS had several things one might call workbooks, each book on different topics ranging from grammar to cross-curricular science and social studies. Each level had one central textbook, nicknamed the "main book," around which the others were organized. I enjoyed the curriculum as it was, because I noted the solid pedogogical practices embedded within the system; however, I could see the desire to simplify stdents' study needs. I thought that the aim of this new push was to hone in on one of the skill sets from one of the children's workbooks--grammar, for instance--and just use it. What my co-teacher failed to also mention was that we would, most assuredly, be getting brand new books. This was my first wiff of the change that was soon to come.
By the time word had gotten to me about the new book situation, I had already heard of the new schedule change. Starting in June, the school calendar would go from a four-week lesson plan to one six weeks long. This had fairly weighty consequences in itself: The monthly test--the only grade I ever give my students and the Koreans' method of assessing accumulated knowledge--would be pushed back by two weeks. Report cards, too, would aso be pushed back; parents would now have to wait until the beginning of the 7th week in a row to check their students' progress. The decision didn't affect me too greatly, as I was never the one to put my lesson plans together. But I was unsure what the need was for so many changes all at once--and en medius res, in the middle of everything, to boot!
Three Fridays ago, the 28th of May, I discovered the impotus behind these recent developements. A part-time Korean teacher informed me off-hand that day that our director was thinking about changing the name of the school. "I think she's going to change [it] because the ILS curriculum is too old," he said, nodding his head regally.
Jack, my American co-teacher, was sitting next to me at that moment and heard the teacher's announcement. Instantly, his countenance "fell to the floor," as I wrote in a recent e-mail. He didn't buy the reason for a split second. "The only reason they would change the name," he said, his face still downcast, "is if they owe a certain teacher seven million won. If they change their name, when people call up looking for ILS, they can say that ILS doesn't exist, that this is a different company. It's a way of cancelling their debts. I can tell you the money is one hundred percent the reason. The curriculum is not too old--none of it's topical. It's not current event stuff."
So. The truth was out. It remained only hearsay, however, until the following Monday. I could tell something was up as the halls of ILS fell eerily silent that morning the thirty minutes before the students' arrival, when normally teachers' chatter would fill the emptiness. Jack remarked on it as he came in that day. "What? Did somebody die?" he asked, tongue-in-cheek. As did everyone else, he sensed the collassal change brewing in our director's office. We all stood on the edge of something new, something tht felt like standing all too close to the edge of a precipice. It reminded of my life a year ago when I was expected to move from my home within three days of being told that the possibility might exist. Somehow over one weekend the situation went from "She's thinking of changing the name" to "It's already been changed and you'll have a meeting at lunchtime to explain everything."
As it was described to me as "a meeting with the native speakers," I fully expected to have Jack and James, my two other foreign co-workers, present with me in the meeting with my hagwon director that afternoon. But as the lunch hour slowly eroded and I had not yet been summoned to see Michelle, I started to doubt. "Jennifer, you haven't gone yet?" I was asked. "Go!"
"But the door is shut," I managed. "Someone must be in there."
Heads nodded in understanding. "Ah, Jack Teacher," they murmurred.
"She will meet with you one-by-one," Lena explained slowly, "because the schedules don't match."
I thought for a moment before I was called into the meeting. Was it really true that our meetings were different due to scheduling problems? Didn't we all have the same lunch break? I began to think that seperating the foreigners prevented us from both leaning on each others' expertise in the meeting and being able to hear answers to one's questions that must surely affect us all. Whas this separation strategic?
Michelle called me in at present, catching me in my reverie. She dutifully tried to explain the reason for all the recent changes. "ILS [Headquarters] won't let us use any other book," she began, indicating the pile of Open Court Reading resources resting on the couch beside her. "You know the kindergarten needs EFL Phonics and Give Me Five. But ILS wants this book. We've been fighting the headquarters for six months. Our [franchise] contract ends on the fifth of June, so we gonna... change the name."
"This book," she continued, holding up a shiny new hardcover student edition, "we can have for three months. This book--" she said as she held up one of the thin paperbacks from Open Court--"we have to change every month."
Her argument for the need to change the school name centered entirely on curriculum, it seemed. "But what will the name be?" I interrupted.
"Apple Tree. There's a famous... uh, hagwon... in Seoul area that's called Apple Tree--very good school."
"But can you take the name?"
"That hagwon didn't file the paper with the government." Ah. A loophole.
"Many, many hagwons do this," she went on. "After they finish the contract... they just... change the name." This was meant, I suppose, to make me feel better about the situation. But how can I feel good about infringing on another school's name just so we can piggy-back on their success?
In truth, I feel that the decision to change our name will backfire. I don't feel that they're being honest about matters and their efforts to make it legitimate feel only like free-spinning wheels. If the concern is really a quality education for students, the new curriculum choice misses the mark. Lack of educational quality is not simply a book's fault, but the fault of poor methodology. Simply changing a book without changing the mindset to teach it fixes nothing and instead perpetuates a problem. Changing a quality curriculum to something lower only exasperates it. "If, as a teacher, I present the same lessons in the same manner than I used to in the past," a handout from my days at BA reads, "[and] I seek no feedback from my students... then I have absolutely no way to become better as a teacher." I could adapt the quote for my hagwon: If as a hagwon, I change the curriculum and seek no feedback from my foreign teachers, then I have absolutely no way to become better as a school.
The problem wasn't the curriculum, I feel. Though I had my issues with it, I knew it was solid, based as it was on American education theory and convention. In the Teacher's Edditions, I could see where the whole program fit together. It was full of challenging texts for my students, especially for my EX1 class, whose little seven-year-old minds are ready to soak up more knowledge. This new set of books is touted by my director to be exactly what our hagwon needs--and yet, it's levels below my students, all of them. One of the reasons for the new curriculum's inadequacy is that we've ordered first grade books for students in third and fourth grade. But it's even too low for my ESL first-graders. The first story for them from the new book took three minutes, when it was planned to take forty. In the simplest language possible, the story was three pages of "Let's play Tug-of -War with an elephant." What more can you do with that than "Do you understand? Yes."?! It was completely disengaging for my students. My school has exchanged a solid reading program, which if wholly implemented would help students grow in their knowledge of English, for baby's milk.
My director clings to the new books vehemently, the reason being that, according to her, they will last longer. The books themselves are a series of different units from one elementary grade level. Meant as part of a longer anthology, each unit is sectioned out and published as a different book. Some of the units are combined with the next one into a slightly larger book of two units. An American first-grader, for example, might read five of these books in a year, if his teacher paced the class acoording to the curriculum's design. Director Michelle, however, suggests that a book with only one unit should last for three months and a book with two should last for six. That's at least double what they were meant for! She thinks that a book one-inch thick should be enough for a three-month timespan, yet she forgets to ask about content. How much is actually in said book and how much of what's in it can stretch twelve weeks? In our previous curriculum, a flimsy ten-inch-by-ten-inch paperback less than half an inch thick covered one unit of stories for my students and it lasted four weeks. How can one unit, even exhaustive, last for three times that? It's all in the size of the book! I feel like my director can't see the big picture of how these units work together. She forgets that they are just one part of a complete whole. She advocates for snippets of a program rather than the entire thing.
It seems that the decision to change books was hastily made. Even during the first week of using them, I started to see the reprecussions of such an ill-thought-out-decision. In one of my classes, my co-teacher burst in at the beginning of class to stop me from distributing the new book because the Korean teachers had run into a problem: One of the students had previously completed the new book and two years ago, surpassed its level. I couldn't teach from it, I was told, until this unforseen problem was fixed. What do we do with a class of new books we suddenly cannot use?
"I think the Korean teachers are all confused as well," James assured me as we walked to our apartments that evening. "We should just try to work together with them."
I winced as I took in his words.
"I don't want to complain," he continued. "I take Jack Teacher as my model. He's been here longer than us and if he can work that long together with them, it's okay."
I appreciated his honesty and knew that in that moment he was a better man than I. No matter my own reaction to this new work environment, I do have an obligation--not just from my contract, but through Christ--to work together with my co-teachers without complaint. We are all in the middle of this confusion together and complaining about it will only make matters worse.
"It will get better," my co-teacher Vicky told me last week before I left. It was a side of her that until that day, I had never seen before. And I know she's right. I have found one positive in the midst of the chaos so far: Because of the mishap about which book to use, I might get a chance to be in the conversation to decide what book is studied in my class.
In the end, I suppose the name works: In our foyer, we do have a formidable artificial tree under which I must duck whenever I go for a restroom break. But nothing else in the entire school speaks of apples. There is one other thing that might connect us to trees and apples, now that I think about it. In the students' library are several copies of a Scholastic book called The Apple Pie Tree. In it, children gleefully suggest that there's nothing better than an apple pie you've grown yourself. Perhaps the solution to our nameless hagwon is to call ourselves "Apple Pie Tree School" instead. It might save copyright headaches, at any rate.
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