::A Geek in Korea::

Our paperwork helps us do our job. I’ve got to accumulate test scores, grades, journal scores, and every other single number I’ve gathered about the students while they sit it in my class. I grade them on homework, behavior, class room assignments, speaking tests, and attendance. All of this is complied in an attendance folder the teachers guard like a treasure, since it’s the only common link that allows two or three teachers to teach the same class during the week without going crazy.

Every two months we are given evaluations to fill out about our students. I’ve got about sixty to seventy of these to do over the weekend. I was handed a bag full of evaluations sheets and attendance folders and told "Finish this by Tuesday." My pile was slightly less monstrous than my coworker, but I’m still buried in papers, journals, and everything else I need to keep myself organized at school.

My wife was doing some grading as I was going through one of my absolute worst classes. I had copied down their grades, but I needed to work on their commentary. Nothing was coming but, "Die in a fire," or "Buy a cage for containment so that the evil doesn’t spread outside your house" sort of sarcasm that would totally be lost on mothers that pay the money they do to send their children to the school. Since I was at a loss as to what to say, I asked what the Korean teachers had written on their section of commentary.

My wife read a few comments from my worst students:
A boy that recently stabbed another boy in class with a pencil and got thrown out by me this week was, according to the Korean teacher, "Not taking his studies seriously enough."

The boy I called my "Naughtiest" in a post previously was simply, "Not realizing his potential and was lacking in self-confidence." Some of the descriptions given by the Korean teachers were glowing, some where outright lies.

On Friday, my foreign coworker and I were talking about the number of evaluations and how much work they were. I asked my Korean head teacher about some of her comments. I asked her if she was simply being creative or did she really feel that way about the students. She didn’t come out to say, "I was lying,"  but she strongly hinted that what was written on the paper isn’t what she actually thinks about each students. Since she has a direct line of communication between the parents and the director, I can imagine she’s probably hearing about the things she is writing far more often than I am. I don’t blame her for trying to let the parents and students save some face. I just hope most of the commentary given by Korean teachers was helpful criticism, and not "cover your ass" sorts of distortions that I’ve seen so far.