Blind Faith in Foreigners

I usually only post about exciting things I have experienced, but I had an interesting week and wanted to share some thoughts.

My director recently hired a new teacher at our school. She is Korean and fresh out of university. She started on Monday. My director was aware that she had no teaching experience, but decided to take on the task of becoming her mentor and spending time teaching her the ropes. This week she sat in on all of our classes to observe the ways of the school and how each teacher runs her class. It's weird being watched like that, but I got over it quickly. As the week progressed, she was given a few classes a day to prepare a lesson for and run the class herself with the director watching and helping out where necessary. We have a new schedule and the director took herself off the schedule completely. I was a little surprised, but I knew that she has wanted to cut back so she can focus on the running of the school more.

But, this is not fully the case. She is going to spend a month with our new teacher to watch her teach and help her out. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great and I am happy that she is putting the care into her new investment. But it makes me think. I arrived and was given a brief rundown of the runnings of the school and then just thrown to the wolves. No training. No observing. No being observed. I learned a lot being immersed like this, but it's really interesting to see the difference in proceedings when hiring a foreign teacher opposed to a Korean teacher.

I had a measly 20 hours of experience when I arrived, and a simple 100-hour training course. But that, with the fact that I speak English fluently seemed to be enough.

This isn't a rant or anything, just an observation. I wonder if it's the same at other private academies. My dad said that my director just knew I was going to be awesome at my job so I should take it as a compliment. Maybe he's right. Maybe he's my personal cheerleader. But more likely, there is just this intrinsic blind faith put in foreigners who come to this country to teach. It's kind of shocking and a little scary.