GET IT IN WRITING

I knew…. I KNEW better than to just take a ‘yea that’s ok’ as an answer. But I did. Because I really, really wanted that to be the answer. Friends/family/stalkers (hello there!) may remember a few months ago I had to raise a bit of a stink with my main middle school because they wanted me to come in on Saturdays to teach English camps. I tried to compromise with them-
A) Why not do the English camps in the summer like it’s ALWAYS done? My contract gives me Saturdays free.
CT’s answer: impossible summer camp.
ok fine, so how about B) I’ll teach the Saturday camps, but for every 2 half-days I come, I get a compensatory day off in the summer break- when no one is at school anyway.
CT’s answer: impossible give day off.

I said well fine, if you can’t compromise, then you can’t compromise. They found another NET to cover the camps (the number of which, by the way, magically changed to only 2 half-days instead of a dozen half-Saturdays).

Come end of first semester. High school camp lined up, Gibuk camp lined up- which is AWESOME. I am/was SO stoked to be able to do a camp with my gibuk kids. We’re gonna have a blast. I figured though, that the Gibuk camp was there to make up for the lack of Gigye MS camp, since, you know, she’d told me summer classes were ‘impossible’.

Come AWESOME opportunity: 2-week camp in another city. I signed up straight away on the win-win of not spending money on a summer holiday and earning money on the summer holiday.

I ask my head co-teacher, and inform her that last year I was able to help out camps at other schools no problem. (Technically on EPIK contracts, it’s illegal to have ANY source of income outside our school. However, if the principal approves, we can be ‘loaned out’, basically, to other public schools.) She said no problem. Said she’d ask the VP. Said again, no problem.

Lo and behold, appear other co-teacher! Head co comes up to be a bit later- “middle school co teacher is asking about your summer schedule to plan English classes.”

me: WTF?

MS co-teacher is now insisting that I fulfill my contract to the letter- 22 teaching hours, 8:30-4:30 days, even (especially?)  in the summer. She has reminded me no fewer than 5 times that once the high school, gibuk, and middle school camps finish (around 12:30), I must remain at school until 4:30. Fulfilling the contract doesn’t bother me- I agreed to it, duh. What bothers me is that SHE is insisting on it. And that I have the sneaking feeling that if I had agreed to give up my Saturdays (and seriously- if I had known it were only the two, I wouldn’t have made a fuss at all), she wouldn’t me giving me this crap now.

The scheduling conflict is thus: There are 4 weeks and 2 days in our summer recess. 1 of those days (plus the last day of school) is a Teacher Trip that I have agreed to go on (dear God, please keep me safe, sober, and moderately well-fed). I have two days of High school camps, 4 days of Gibuk camps. One day is a Korean holiday. That leaves 2 weeks, 4 days of possible vacation time for me. 2 of those weeks was dedicated to this extra camp. 4 of those days (only two of which are consecutive) were to be contracted vacation days. Co-teach is now insisting that I must teach 5 days of middle school camp (oh sorry, this was my favorite part- they’re not ‘camps’, they’re ‘classes’. There were always going to be summer ‘classes’, but impossible to do summer ‘camps’.)

Fought with her a bit about dates, and I reminded her that Saturdays exist as well (doesn’t she remember trying to force me to come in Saturdays??). We went to the classroom and asked the students who would come to camp on XYZ days. They were all keen- even the one class that would have to have a Friday-Saturday camp (2 grades, 2-day camp, 1 grade a 1-day camp; 5 days of camp). Alas, now she’s saying, nevermind, I cannot teach on Saturday in the summer, so I must do the camps on a Monday-Tuesday, and thus miss an entire day of the extra camp, which makes me a lot less appealing/useful to them, not to mention (like I’m doing now) completely letting them down at the, well, maybe only the 10th hour. The 11th hour would be day before the camp.

In the end: I apologize for this sounding like a semi-whiny (or very whiny) rant. It is a rant. I’m more apologizing about the whiny part though. I’m rather upset about all this. And worse scheduling conflicts have happened with other NETs (eg conflicts involving already-purchased, non-refundable plane tickets). But let this be a lesson to my future self and any NETs in Korea: always, ALWAYS get it in writing. Also, be wary of the petty co-teacher. Far too many exist. And don’t stoop to their level. I’m tempted to respond in, well, when it comes down to it, a very ‘tit for tat’, dishonorable manner. Instead I’m going to pray that I get to do this extra camp still, attempt to look on the bright side if I don’t, apologize like mad to the coordinator whom I was supposed to email today with the completed content for the 10.5 hours of camp lessons, and eat half a bar of chocolate when I get home. I’m also thinking about asking my head co-teacher to go to bat for me….