From Lost in Jeju: Take the Foreign Worker Test!

Fill in the blanks with the correct response:

1. Most foreign workers accept that they have a daunting task to obtain a
visa and maintain their legal status in ______.

2. "These recent hurdles have to do with historic, traditional ______
xenophobia. Suspicion of people, from abroad, coming to ______ doing something
in _____.

3. "You know, there was a time in the early '90s when a foreign worker was
actually sought out; particularly in business, in consulting and finance. Then
as the ______ economy got more on its feet and _____ resurged in all kinds of
ways the pendulum swung the other way,"

See the other three questions on her post, or head to the Chosun Ilbo for the answers.

2S2

The community that meets every 2nd Saturday is taking in a Louise Bourgeiose exhibit, a collection of Korean actor's photos, and Chekov's The Cherry Orchard with English subtitles. It's led by Paul from Paul Ajosshi. For a more detailed itinerary, check out the official 2S2 blog. As always, it starts at 2pm at the Twosome Place in Insa-dong, near Anguk station on line 3.

Building a better teacher

No, we're not talking about the robots that Korea might introduce someday. From a lengthy but excellent article in the New York Times:

But what makes a good teacher? There have been many quests for the one essential
trait, and they have all come up empty-handed. Among the factors that do not
predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score
on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth,
enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try.
When Bill Gates announced recently that his foundation was investing millions in a
project to improve teaching quality in the United States, he added a rueful
caveat. “Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn’t have a clear view of what
characterizes good teaching,” Gates said. “I’m personally very curious.”

When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to
find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in
disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston
school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it,
and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once.
It was the tiniest decision, but what was teaching if not a series of bite-size moves just like that?

Lemov thought about soccer, another passion. If his teammates wanted him to play better, they didn’t just say, “Get better.” They told him to “mark tighter” or “close the space.” Maybe the reason he and others were struggling so mightily to talk and even to think about teaching was that the right words didn’t exist — or at least, they hadn’t been collected. And so he set out to assemble the hidden wisdom of the best teachers in America.

...

I met one such teacher, Katie Bellucci, this winter when I visited Troy Prep in Troy, N.Y., just outside Albany. She had been teaching for only two months, yet her fifth-grade math class was both completely focused on her and completely quiet. Pacing happily in front of a projector screen, she showed none of the false, scripted manner so common among first-year teachers. She moved confidently from introducing the day’s material — how to calculate the mean for a set of numbers — to a quick cold-call session to review what they had already learned and finally to helping students as they tackled sample problems on their own. She even sent a disobedient student to the dean’s office without a single turned head or giggle interrupting the flow of her lesson. Her cold calls perfectly satisfied Lemov’s ideal. First, she asked the question. Then she paused a slightly uncomfortable second. And only then did she name the student destined to answer.

Nearly 20% of Korean salaried workers moonlighting

While the article is almost a month old, it's still interesting. From the Chosun Ilbo:

About one out of five salaried workers has a second job, according to a
recent survey of 1,074 salaried workers released by jobs website Incruit on
Wednesday. The proportion of moonlighters has been rising steadily to 18.2
percent from 12.9 percent in 2008 and 15.5 percent last year.

When asked why they are working two jobs, most respondents or 49.2 percent
said extra income, followed by self-improvement (12.3 percent), a preparatory
step for opening their own business (11.3 percent), provision for retirement
(10.3 percent), and hobby or recreational activities (7.2 percent).

© Chris Backe - 2010

This post was originally published on my blog, Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.