taking stock

The rumblings began on a Friday.

The coordinator called me into the office after work. I prepared myself. It wasn't often she sought out teachers. She was precise and quick. Apparently an English teacher for a special camp in Cheongju had dropped out and would I, since I had the requisite experience, education, and desire - I had complained the day previous about the lack of challenge I was experiencing in the classroom - be willing to prepare seventeen students for a one year stay in the States by giving them lessons on cultural appropriateness and study habits?
Sure, I said, when does camp start?

Monday morning I was on a bus to Cheongju with a contract in my hand stating I was to be paid half a month's salary, in cash, for the week's worth of work I was doing. I felt good knowing that this was on top of my normal salary. I didn't know that something was wrong, terribly wrong. I had forgotten that some people throw money at a problem to make it go away. I was about to find out that money simply wasn't enough to smooth things over at this camp.

My coordinator mentioned that the camp director was disorganized. She was wrong. The level of complete incompetence he displayed was astounding. It began rather innocently, I suppose. On Friday, he sent up a copy of the textbook the students were to be using. He had haphazardly photocopied three hundred pages from a textbook, covering American history from 1750-1880. I thumbed through it in the office on Friday night. A useful document for students who were supposed to be learning how to integrate into American culture and daily life across the Pacific.

I received the schedule, a rather scant sheet with hourly slots, from 9 am to 8pm, each hour designated by a simple word - introduction, conversation, writing, reading, history. I asked for a detailed outline of what they expected and was told that these simple words were my outline. I would have the freedom to do what I wished. The faint may have crumbled under such an auspicious sign. Indeed, this camp director was setting a teacher up for failure. How could one put together a cultural program with simply nothing but his wits to guide him? I suppose that's why the original teacher pulled out of the contract leaving this camp director in a lurch, and why I was being paid a ridiculous sum to come to Cheongju. The success of the program would rest on me, the only foreigner in what was supposed to be an immersion program with teachers from the States. And I'm not even an American.

I began to teach and soon found out that I was teaching the lion's share of classes, six hours a day, while two other teachers and teacher's assistants split the remaining two, math and science. It didn't bother me much until Tuesday when I heard the students complain about the program. Someone said they weren't happy and had left. On Wednesday things got worse and though I pressed ahead with my lessons on freewriting, scanning, paraphrasing, and speed conversation drills I felt that I was doing something wrong.

I found that the director had begun a campaign against me, slandering me to my coordinator for things I did not say. This bears no importance for the story save this, my classes on Wednesday were cancelled and I was not told until I went to class. A straggle haired teacher's assistant clutching her walkie-talkie intercepted me.

Your class has been cancelled.
Why?
We're moving your class to later tonight, to eight.
No you're not. I don't work after seven. It's in the contract.
You can't go in there.
Fine.

I came prepared for the next class.

Your class has been cancelled.
Tell me what's going on.
The boss has come from Seoul.
Oh God, I thought. Someone's told him that I think the book is useless and that we won't be using it. Or worse, I haven't presented any plans of what I've been doing or what I plan to do.

But it was worse than that.

I found out that the meeting had nothing to do with me. I began to feel good because despite the camp director's efforts to put me down and generally ignore my requests for simple things like getting photocopying done on time he was being trodden on. I found out that the science teacher he hired made several students uncomfortable. Perhaps it's not surprising that they were all girls. Eleven students left that night. The science teacher's classes were cut and he was forced to observe my classes.

I felt strange with Joe - he could have chosen a better name for himself - in my class, his ratty moustache sitting dirty on his upper lip. He tried to help the remaining six students but they too shied away from him.

The week crawled to an end and I found out that though my contract was up that the camp was scheduled to continue for another week. The camp director who spent most of his time watching baseball on his laptop and having the scores related to him by walkie-talkie by his second in command, had hired another teacher. The students met her Friday afternoon moments before I left.

I would have stayed if I had not been going to China the next day.

On the plane I got to thinking about Korea and the English business. I had heard that bungling the English business was just as big as the English business itself and now I had proof.