Dear Ms. Lee,
I am sorry to inform you that you hired a power-hungry dictator to be the 'head teacher' in your English center. Her goal for the past year has been to make everyone else's life miserable - most likely so we would know what it was like to be her.
She has used varying methods to achieve her goals. The first we encountered were a mix of deception and outright lies. We were told horrible things about you and made to feel as if you couldn't be trusted, thereby severing our ties to the only English-speaking person who was above her in the hierarchy. (If you want specifics... Did you actually tell her not to pay for our first dinner together - as is customary for the host of such a dinner to do - as we would come to expect it every time? And did you really ask her to work us like dogs during our first weeks in Korea so we wouldn't be lazy?)
Her next method was to 'divide and conquer' the three other people working in the center - pitting us against one another. You witnessed this yourself in an explosive argument one Friday afternoon. Fortunately after so much time in the center and a previous attempt by her at this particular method, we'd grown wise to her scheming. And now the three of us are all the more wary of anything she says. (When Fran asked her "How old are you?" he was referencing the fact that she very much resembles the girls I encountered in 6th grade. Twelve year olds who regularly changed their mind about whether or not someone 'deserved' to be their 'friend' based on the person's wardrobe and music choices. These girls were also commonly known to spread rumors of the 'Did you hear what so and so said about you?' And as this particular person has actually done these very things I think he had a legitimate right to ask the question.)
Her most recent persuit is to inflict as many rules as she can possibly come up with on us. This attempts to make us a collective miserable. Because if she cannot make us angry at each other, why not make us all miserable and therefore give her reason to complain about our performance as teachers. The worst part of this method is that one of the rules shes come up with is to make us all present during all classes - even though only one or two of us are actually teaching; the others must 'observe'. She got the shock of her life when she realized that during song time, which she teaches on her own, this left the three of us to do nothing at the back of the class.
I did not come all the way to Korea to engage in combat. I came to experience a culture and teach English. I fear now that the actions of one person have managed to poison my attempts at both. I am more than willing to do my job, but my job doesn't need to be this difficult and I am better at it when I can actually focus on the task at hand rather than constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering which direction the next attack is coming from.
I cannot pretend to know what is best for the center, as anytime I have tried to help in that regard my suggestions were thwarted. But I would suggest thinking long and hard about who you have chosen to run the center from the inside, and the impact that person has on all aspects of this center. Surely the personal agenda of that person should not be amusement at the expense of their co-workers and the children who come there to learn.
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