So I’m not sure how much longer I can stay here at Singa Elementary School and in Korea, the ridiculous that is KYY and the defense of her and her behavior. It floors me how much she’s allowed to get away with in Korean Korean culture.
Here are some of the highlight defenses of KYY:
- She’s Korean and doesn’t speak English.
- She’s Korean and I’m a banana. So I’m not a real person.
- She’s from a small city (Ullsan) that’s not cultured or civilized – which is bogus because I’m from Song-tan (a farming village in Kyunggi-do) and one of my other co-teachers is from a really small town in the central part of Korea and Ullsan is one of the richer and nicer cities outside of Seoul and Busan.
- She’s always smiling and polite to people of position and power in the school.
- I’m not being a good Catholic to her. So how can I say that I’m Catholic???
- She’s trying and it’s hard to be around non-Koreans for her.
- She’s Korean and I’m not-really-Korean, so it’s all good.
And now the new principal has said that my job as the NSET is to support the Korean teacher, she’s the main teacher and what she wants to do is what I should help her with. When I asked the English supervisor does that mean that I should throw out everything that I’ve worked on and just play the CD-ROM the entire 40 minutes of class and have the students only listen and repeat, she only would say, “help and support KYY.”
In addition to swallowing my tongue and my opinions, forcing myself into a mold that I really don’t fit in, and having to keep things secret*, I feel like I have to live a double life just to kinda get by. And now I have to let KYY spit on me and follow her lead.
I know that I can stick it out for the rest of the semester and I was wanting to resign for at least another semester (as long as KYY wasn’t here next semester). But now I’m not too sure and I’m not too sure if changing schools at the end of my contract is necessarily the answer either.
Life's Important Question: F.O.B. 
I’m having up and down days as well, lately. I’m not sure how I’m feeling about staying another year at the moment, even though I was fairly certain I wanted to stay last week. I think a supportive atmosphere really makes or breaks the experience. When I feel like the other teachers actually care about me, I am pretty sure I want to stay. Unfortunately, that’s changed a lot from last term. At the same time, I don’t think I have anyone that’s comparable to K to the double Y. I’m sorry that you’re having such a hard time – and I’m sorry for your school that they don’t realize they’re going to lose a great teacher because they refuse to protect her from one that they would rather do without.
She’s told people that because she’s Korean and I’m just a kyopo, that she’ll be protected, that she’s automatically okay because she can throw the nationality card on the table and everything will be fine for her. And so far she’s been right.
SMOE doesn’t help or protect any of their NSETs either, saying that the last thing that they want to do is embarrass the school and make it lose face. And as long as KYY doesn’t kill me, there’s no reason for them to step in.
Supposedly Jon will go to bat for me if I want to stay, saying that there have been really bad extenuating circumstances, etc., but none of it is my fault if Singa writes a bad report about me. But I don’t believe it too much.
I really don’t want to substitute again.