Sandra's Email

Sandra wrote me an email telling about her wedding and honeymoon which included the following:

What's happening at the school? Joelle sent me an e-mail and she made it sound awful. She said all the teachers want to quit. I hope it's not as bad as it sounds. She also said that a lot of students have quit. Is it really that bad or is it the same old thing.

How to respond to that? Especially after what happened today!! (I'll fill you in on that tomorrow; it was quite a day and I'm quite proud of the way I handled things.) I wrote quite a long email with the frustrations of the last several weeks, but then thought better of sending it. It's one thing bashing people on a blog on the WWW where they're unlikely to find it, but sending an email to a co-worker who has a decent relationship with the bashee perhaps isn't such a good idea. My original email, after answering her questions and commenting on the honeymoon and making some small talk:

I'm not really sure what's going on at school. I was planning on
filling you in before you came back, so now's a good time, I guess. Are you sure you want to hear all this?!

It's hard to put my finger exactly on it, but the atmosphere is certainly different. Not terrible, but different. I know the foreign teachers are frustrated, primarily due to Joelle's lack of managing. The lack of information (even among the Korean teachers) is miserable.

As far as a lot of students have quit--totally not true. Joelle was
using that line with Tanya about how many students had quit over the last month. The foreign teachers compared classes, and if anything we've GAINED a few students over the last month or two.

One day Joelle went through EVERY SINGLE CLASS and wrote down the days that daily reports were missing from the computer, then spent the time to divide them up into which teacher was teaching that day, and then placed a paper on each
teacher's desk. No explanation, no "hey, you need to do your daily reports," just a paper laying on the desk (half of which weren't even my classes and some were from before we started using the computer system). Some of the teachers have stopped doing daily reports in the computer completely (guess who) and don't seem to care if it upsets Joelle or not.

In one of my classes that only sees a foreign teacher once a week I'm having trouble getting through the Impact book. I've talked with the Korean teacher about needing help to get through the book, but the teacher doesn't go beyond explaining the word box words, if even that much. I mentioned the situation to Joelle, and she said I needed to talk with the Korean teacher. I told her that I had already done that but it didn't change anything. A good manager would step in and address the problem at that
point, but Joelle did nothing.

They've been changing classes around without letting us know why, which is annoying. Again, the lack of information is pretty bad. Mostly we guess as to what's happening next. It sounds like, aside from the returning class, that you'll probably be getting most of my classes when you come back (a hunch).

There's extra work in the form of grading student diaries on paper again. Again, an area that hasn't been made clear, despite repeated questions. The Pink level kids aren't writing online diaries anymore, but the more advanced kids are for the time being but might not be starting next month??

Joelle just happened to mention that we have to do speaking test **in our class time** this session instead of on a special test day, yet still hasn't told us when the tests are so we know when we need to plan to give the speaking tests. There seems to be some whispering going on amongst the Korean teachers; I can only guess that they're just as frustrated at being ignored or not being told anything until they're being chewed out for doing something wrong.

So there, that's a very blunt and very unorganized idea of what's going on. I love my students and most of my classes, but the administration side of things isn't good. Mr. Kim isn't around much so I'm not sure what he knows about what's going on. Joelle is a good teacher, but she's not a good manager. I know she was forced into the role, but Mr. Kim needs to find someone better suited for the job or risk losing teachers.

And the kinder, much shorter version, which I plan to sleep on before sending:

I'm not really sure what's going on at school. It's hard to put my
finger exactly on it, but the atmosphere is certainly different. I know Matt and I are frustrated, primarily due to Joelle's lack of managing, but also her ignoring everything we say. Tanya is more easygoing. I could go on for pages about the problems I've been having with Joelle, but I won't. The last couple of months have been progressively worse; if I didn't have the finishline to look forward to, I might not have made it.

There seems to be some whispering going on amongst the Korean teachers; I can only guess that they're just as frustrated at not being told anything until they're being chewed out for doing something wrong.

As far as a lot of students have quit--totally not true. The
foreign teachers compared classes a few weeks ago, and if anything we've GAINED a few students over the last month or two.

It sounds like, aside from the returning class, that you'll be getting most of my classes when you come back. There's also extra work in the form of grading student diaries on paper again, in addition to on the internet site, though nothing is very clear, despite us asking for clarification.

So that's sort of what's going on.