Caveat: Curses! It’s Carl Kwan!

I have some time to kill, sitting in my classroom, and not yet assigned classes.  It's nice to have the time to adjust – so much better than the hagwon way of throwing you into the deep end on the first day.  But I can't work on my blog, because the school's internet filter blocks my blog-host's IP address.  So I turn to Carl Kwan, to kill some time.

The orientation I attended last week was pretty good.  Well-designed, well-paced, with good presenters.  But another aspect of working as a pet foreigner for the public schools system in Korea is that the central Education Ministry can come up with some ill-conceived rules, requirements, and initiatives.   I'm suffering from one of them now.

They have required everyone to complete a "20 hour online seminar" series about teaching as a foreigner in the public schools.  I think it might have once been a good idea – but the badly designed/written curriculum, combined with a stunningly irritating presenter, make the actual completion of the series of videos and quizzes excruciating.   Carl Kwan, the Chinese-Canadian presenter, likes to say his own name.  I suppose that can be an effective schtick with students, but it gets old fast.  And he loves the word "um" – which I very much doubt is effective with English learners.

Well, anyway.  Here's a screenshot of the now infamous (in my mind, at least) Carl Kwan.

[broken link! FIXME] Image002

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