Talk about a worthless conversation....

I just got done "talking" with my boss for about 15 min. I thought I might talk with him about the fact that we've had quite a few middle school students quite the academy as of late. He thinks it's because Clinton is a boring teacher. He's not though, besides the fact that 4 of the students that have quite lately, have been from my class. As far as I'm concerned, I tried to calmly explain to him, it's at least partly due to the fact that the series of textbooks that we're using for conversation are extremely boring and pretty worthless. Granted, I didn't say it using exactly those words, but I did try to help him understand how rote and blah blah blah the books are. That and the fact that I pretty much can't use anything from the book that I'm supposed to be using now anyhow, because it's completely over their heads. His answer to that was to copy pages from the first book then. Uhhh.....that still doesn't help matters when the structure of the book is utterly tedious beyond measure, not to mention that I'd be wasting all that paper endlessly copying pages.

Him: "oh, but all the top universities use the Side by Side series, and it's one of the most popular set of books in korea. I used it and it was very good for me becuase of the repitition."

Me: "Repitition is great, however how the book presents things can be very very uninteresting for the students. I've been using the book now for nearly 10months and haven't had a class yet that thinks it's worth it. As a conversation teacher, the models that it gives are very irrelevant and mostly unrelatable to the students."

Him: "The top universities use it and they've never said it's bad. We cannot just change series because of one teacher. If we did that, every new teacher that doesn't like a series could change books. We wouldn't have any schedule."

Me: "Ok, but have you ever taught using the book?"

Him: "I've been taught by the book and taught the book and it's always been good for me."

Me (thinking): "Uh....yeah...I bet it worked for you and when you taught from it. All I've ever seen you do in your classes is translate, of which the book would be great for. I'm not here to translate with them, dumbass....I'm here to converse!

After around 15 min. of back and forths like this, I knew what I said didn't matter. Yes, I'm stubborn and don't like to admit when I'm wrong, but honestly this time....it's not just me that thinks this series of books are shit. My adult class hated it and we lost students a lot because of it, along with Joe and Clinton not liking them. As for not changing the series becuase of one teacher....it's just 2 classes that are using it anyways. One of the classes is mine and the other is Clinton's. I know he'd be more than willing to switch and it wouldn't upset the whole order of things at school, like Choi was implying. It was like I was back in the Philippines, with respect that the only reason I think he really is behind this book is because of the other places that use it. Get a clue Choi.....

Oh well...maybe I'll talk to Agnes another time. She actually teaches all day, unlike Choi, who only teaches a few translating and grammar classes, while the rest of the time doing "business" things. Her perspective is a little more realistic.