The reality of co-teaching

I have heard good and bad things from my fellow native teachers and in fact I have had both good and bad experiences myself with co-teaching. I work at a very large school (1500 students) and so I have 5 co-teachers that I work with in different classes throughout the week. A few of my colleagues only have 1 or 2 co-teachers that they work with and from what I can gather the experience differs vastly depending on who your co-teacher is and what their attitude is toward your being there to teach. There seems to be a lot of bad reviews on the internet so let me start with the good stuff. The co-teacher I had when I first arrived as my "main co-teacher", in other words the teacher directly responsible for me, was fantastic to work with. She was organised and made sure that I got to attend all sorts of interestign programs...and wait for it... actually gave me warning about upcoming events and things I needed to do (this is surprisingly rare in Korea). She was considered to be a very strict teacher but all of the students loved her because she was fun and she really cared about them and what they were doing / achieving in class. We developed a great routine, I would do the lesson planning but she took a very active part in the lesson, questioning the students in Korean about what I had said in English and asking the kids to answer her in English. My lessons with her always felt much more in depth and like the students learned a lot more. We worked well together and we also worked well outside of class and developed a friendship. A great experience co-teaching. While this is not always the case there are wonderful co-teachers out there so do not be put off by all the bad reviews on the internet! Because I have 5 co-teachers each class is dramatically different, a few co-teachers are easy to work with, one co-teacher barely speak however the students are very advanced (compared to the rest of the school) and I feel like they probably learn more from me than many of the other classes anyway. I should also mention I am a qualified teacher and I am confident standing up in front of a class so having to manage the class and discipline does not worry me as it might worry some people...I also generally find that bribing the students with video's helps as they then start yelling at each other to be quiet! Putting it delicately I have a few classes where I have a little difficulty.... where it is clear the teacher does not like the students, does not want to be there, and so consequently the students are a nightmare. With this teacher I am constantly cut off mid sentence and frequently find myself wondering why I am even there when the attitude is that I am more trouble than I am worth. But again, this is not the case with all co-teachers! I have also had, and heard about, issues with discipline and native teachers feeling like they do not receive any support when disciplining students. In some cases the students are aware that you have very little authority and so do not offer the respect that they give to their other teachers. I have also heard a few horror stories...but I am not going to include those as you don't have to search to hard to find them on the net! Now to the "reality" side... The contract really should be re-written so we know what we are in for... it says "assistant teacher" which is why we are paid less than Korean teachers, though we do the majority if not all of the lesson planning, the majority of the classroom management and discipline and in most cases the majority of the speaking and actual teaching. It really works the other way around. Co-teaching can be fun when you work together as a team, sometimes you must expect to act as though you are teaching alone, and sometimes you may actually teach very little...it depends on the person you are teaching with, the day, their mood, the mood of the students etc etc. To be a good co-teacher you must be flexible! If it is really going to work the way it is supposed to then you must also be really comfortable with your co-teacher and both approach it as though you are working together as a team. Building some (any) kid of relationship with your Korean teacher will help somewhat! To anybody reading this...if you have had good or bad experiences co-teaching please feel free to post a comment below because I would be really interested to hear some other stories! (and suggestions perhaps on how to manage difficult co-teachers!)