Last night, one of my advanced students stunned me with one of those overly frank and penetrating observations that seem far-too-frequent lately: they said that I lacked "charisma." For a moment, I almost thought I had misunderstood. But it was too close to the mark (vis-a-vis my insecurities about my qualities as a teacher) to be a simple misunderstanding.
Another person recently remarked that my blog wasn't the "real" Jared. In essence, that it lacked authenticity, I guess. And again, guilty as charged.
Last week, the thing that had me so frustrated was a remark by my boss Curt, when he said to me something to the effect that "If you can't control your class, you must not be a very good teacher." And, by Korean cultural standards, there are definitely classes where I'm certain I'm perceived as not being in control. Of course, he also said that if I couldn't make the clearly inadequate curriculum work in my classroom, then I wasn't trying hard enough.
I'm not even going to try to reason through the connections between these three observations. I don't know that any of them are inaccurate. I also can say, from the "inside," that they aren't the whole story, but that doesn't leave me feeling any less discouraged.
Lastly, it was announced yesterday that RingGuAPoReomEoHagWon (my employers) was going to be folded into another language academy venture just acquired by the parent holding company. And this other language academy has a stunningly bad reputation vis-a-vis quality and management, from the little I've heard or observed. Nothing stays the same for long. But given how I'm currently feeling, I can almost guarantee that when the moment comes to re-negotiate my contract, I'll opt out.
Life will go on. What's next?