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Thursday, July 15, 2010

Hitler has to Desk Warm

***UPDATE***  If you liked this video, check out my latest parody of Hitler being replaced by an English teaching robot.


Something that native English teachers complain about in South Korea is desk warming.  For public schools there are usually 6-8 weeks vacation in winter and 4-6 weeks vacation in summer for the children.  There are always summer and winter camps, but they do not go the entire time vacation periods.

Usually during this period Korean teachers are allowed to "work from home" or are supposed to enroll in a class or in some other way improve themselves.  They do not have to come to school and sit at their desk for eight hours when there are no students to teach.  Increasingly, however, native English teachers are being forced to come and do nothing during the recess periods.

There are many reasons for it that I understand.  Mostly because there is no uniform policy between all the schools.  Native teachers themselves complain about other native teachers who may be getting more unofficial time off then they are.  Offices of Education are annoyed with people whining about this so they just restrict everyone to their minimum days of vacation to be "fair".

Another reason is because they think we are helpless children and if we wander off to Japan or Southeast Asia for a couple weeks we will either get arrested or decide to never come back to Korea.

Either way, this video is a reflection of our frustration and it is meant to be in good humor.  I like my job and I love South Korea.  But sometimes things can be frustrating here.

17 comments:

  1. I will pop your cherry and say: "I loved this."
    Check out my blog/vlog on Korea.
    www.joeyriles.wordpress.com
    www.youtube.com/users/joeyriles

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think this is awesome. Perfect. I should sent it to the DOE.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is brilliant.

    Only one mistake, Hitler's indignation is no where near that of many foreign teachers haha

    great work

    ReplyDelete
  4. I absolutely love this!! Thank you for sharing!

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  5. abso-freakin'-lutely brilliant! nail on head! don't we all have our little fuehrer inside who wants to jump up and down and scream at the korean person in charge about these frustrating details...? additionally to the holiday deskwarming is the regular deskwarming during the week, if your class finishes ...say 14.00 and you have to stay till say...6.30 without ANY work to do...

    ReplyDelete
  6. This. Is. Brilliant.

    Thanks for giving me something to do while I desk warm.

    www.deliciousambiguity.me

    ReplyDelete
  7. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HSDB36T

    Something to do while you desk warm!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I've never posted a comment on the web before.... As I sit here and desk warm, I have to say this is awesome! Keep it up. I'm going to Jeju this Chuseok. I almost booked a vacation to Borneo, but they're making me come in on Monday and Friday! WTF! No students will be there and I have plenty of vacation time.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Please don't get offense by what I'm going to write here. I'm not trying to be on Korean teacher's side. :)

    I know the system looks unfair to foreign teachers who work at the public schools(Elementary-High). Both Korean and foreign teachers work for the same time, and at the same school. It's true that they must be treated as the same because their work environment is the same.

    Korean public school teachers are government employee and in order to be a public school teacher, they need to take 3 difficult tests.

    Actually, many Koreans take those tests and they fail all the time. So, we call it as a "dream job". Because, everyone wants to be a teacher.

    One of the reasons is because they could have 3 months paid vacation. This is a real unique system and it's only applied for "public school teacher". Not for all of those whom who work at for the government.

    There are so much benefits for public school teachers. They can have a paid vacation when women teachers have baby, or have to take care of 12 months less child.

    I'm sure this fact makes foreign teachers feel unfair but people who work for public school except for real government employee, they can't have a paid vacation.

    Foreign teachers still can have 8days vacation which is as same as other private hakwon(private language academy).

    It seems like foreigners who get paid and have a long vacation here in Korea are only someone who work for universities.

    ReplyDelete
  10. hello! please please please could you link me to this video? i watched it a while back and loved it.
    but the youtube link you have is private and i cannot watch it. i really want to send this video to a friend who is going through this exact situation. He could use a good laugh!

    Thanks for making this video!

    ReplyDelete
  11. This video now says it's private, could you change the settings please?

    ReplyDelete
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