Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cloo]

I can't help but have noticed that of the information on this website about POLY, most of it is secondhand or 3-4 years old.

SO, as a current teacher at a POLY school, I feel compelled to provide a first-hand and current assessment of the place.

Working at POLY wasn't my first hagwon, so I have a decent measure of comparison, especially since my first school was as bad as they come. You name it, they had every nightmarish problem imaginable. Maybe that has skewed my views of POLY in a way, but I'd say my first experience has definitely led me to raise my expectations of working in Korea exponentially, and I honestly feel those expectations are being met satisfactorily.

Where should I begin. I suppose I should first acknowledge that yes, this is only my experience at POLY and that every campus is different and run differently. Keeping that in mind, I think this will still shed some light on what it's like to work at any of the POLY schools. I'd say most people complain about the long working days. Agreed, it is a really long day, but WOW do they fly by. Classes are 40 minutes long, and heck, 40 minutes is nothing. Granted, if you don't like fast days and even faster weeks, then yeah, it would probably seem lame.

There is a break in the afternoon to prepare, but 'prepare' I'd say is a bit misleading. The way the system is set up, all your textbook pages and materials are laid out for you DAY by DAY. You never need to decide what needs to be covered on what day, or make up your own lessons, because it's all provided on a calendar. You have the books and you have pages, so all you need to do is look over the material and decide how you plan to communicate the information to the kids. If it sounds inflexible, remember, you still have control over how you teach your kids what is in those pages.

As has been said before, the kids are great. Their English is at a really high level (thanks to the pretty stringent testing to get in and most of them having lived abroad) and they mostly need guiding through the lessons versus trying to get it into their heads. POLY has pretty strict 'No Korean' rules, and amazingly, the kids DO follow this rule! It's quite entertaining to hear the kids speaking English on their OWN time (during breaks and such), even bickering and arguing in English. It's a relief not spending any time in your lessons just trying to get them to stop speaking Korean to each other. It's great knowing that you're not teaching English CLASSES at a Korean hagwon, all classes at POLY are conducted in English, and you're teaching at an English SCHOOL.

In regards to the actual material, heck, it's not perfect, but regarding previous statements about the POLY-made material being 'full of errors,' again, that information is years old. Looking over the POLY-made books currently, they have a mistake here and there, but there not humiliatingly chock full of garish mistakes and errors. Like I said, it's not perfect, but I'm just glad I'm not responsible for COMING UP with that stuff, and that POLY has it's own R&D department working on all of it. On another note, it's also important to emphasize that it's not JUST POLY-made material, but that the curriculum is also largely based on North American published textbooks, the exact same ones you would find in an elementary school back home (publishers like Houghton-Mifflin and Harcourt). I can't imagine what the parents have to pay for this sort of thing, but it's nice being able to teach the kids stories that are familiar to me or that are by familiar authors.

It happens to be my personal belief that work should stay at work, and home is meant for anything BUT work. Do I ever take work home from POLY? Heck no. Does it mean I have to maximize the prep times I have at school? Sure, but there is NO way I am going to take work home. So I don't. I know some people have known others to do it, or have done it themselves, but personally I prefer to enjoy my home time without doing anything related to work. It's a preference though, because some co-workers DO take work home, by choice. As for myself and several others, it's off-limits, and no one is going to force me to take anything home. Let's just say it requires good time-management and prioritizing the time you have at work. It's a challenge, but it's definitely do-able.

I like working for a well-established school. There isn't a whole lot of trouble when it comes to things stated in the contract like healthcare and pension. Sure, years ago, management was probably still a little rocky, but I'd have to say that for the most part, they seem to be pretty solid, if not, then pretty dang close. When I say management, I don't really mean my particular school, I mean KPS, the all-campus encompassing organization that manages all the branches. It's nice knowing that if things go crazy at your branch, your director has to answer to a higher authority/managerial organization, whom you can appeal to if need be. As for my particular school, management is above-satisfactory. The director isn't in my face about ridiculous stuff, and he speaks fluent English and teaches classes himself should a teacher be out sick.

This post of course is in no way meant to discredit the woes and painful experiences had by those in the past. It is meant to provide a current and firsthand account of what teaching at POLY is like. My only disclaimer is that every branch is different, so experiences I'm sure are different at different campuses. I suppose I could just be lucky.

[ttompatz]

Well written and informative. I only have a couple questions that I would enquire from the OP.

Do you pay into the national pension plan?

Do you pay into the national medical plan and do you have your booklet?

Do you get credit for missed classes on red days or do you get the day off but still have to fill your 120 hours before they pay overtime.

Is the overtime rate 150% of your hourly rate as required by Article 55 of The Korean Labor Standards Act?

[garykasparov]

I agree with ttompatz and do have a few questions for the OP.

1) What were your work hours?

2) How many classes did you teach per day?

3) Were you always paid on time?

4) How many paid vacation days did you get?

5) When and how did you get your paid vacation?

6) What extra stuff do you really have to do not mentioned in your labor contract?

7) Were you provided with adequate housing when you worked for Korea Poly School?

[ardis]

I got an email from them and was very interested--their webpage was nicely finished and the email was quite professional. However, is it just very young children at the school? How many English speaking co-workers did you have?

[cloo]

Do you pay into the national pension plan? = Yes

Do you pay into the national medical plan and do you have your booklet? = Yes and yes

Do you get credit for missed classes on red days or do you get the day off but still have to fill your 120 hours before they pay overtime/s the overtime rate 150% of your hourly rate as required by Article 55 of The Korean Labor Standards Act?

= I've never heard of a red day, so no we don't get the day off or miss it. We do not have overtime, but we never have extra classes. It's not in the contract that we would EVER have a class outside of what is in the contract (and each class daily is laid out, see below). Once, our building had a small fire downstairs, and the kids missed a class because they were outside. As a result, our director held an extra class late, but teachers were asked to stay on a VOLUNTEER basis (because contractually, we don't have overtime, so he couldn't pay it). About half of us stayed, half of us didn't, and it wasn't a big deal. Our director held no grudges for those of us who firmly stick strictly to the contract, and therefore, so like I said, it was a volunteer-only thing. Those of us who stayed didn't get paid overtime, but we did get a present.

As for garykasparov:

1) What were your work hours?

- POLY offers two schedules, a Morning and an Afternoon schedule. Morning is longer, 900-950 (prep), 950-130 preschool (three 40 min classes, then a 40 min lunch, then one more 40 min class), each with a 10 minute break in-between), 130-300 prep, 300-730 MWF (40 min classes, 5 min break in-between) AND on TTH, only 300-640. These times are laid out in the contract. The afternoon schedule is 100-300 prep, 300-900 classtime. I don't know any break information, since I don't teach that schedule. It's a shorter schedule and for older kids, but it pays less.

2) How many classes did you teach per day? Four preschool in the morning, and six elementary school after 3pm. The afternoon classes are in block format, so I teach 3 sets of materials, just to two sets of kids. For example, I teach the same vocabulary lesson to two sets of students in two consecutive classes, so really I just prep for THREE classes, one for each block (and, on TTH, there is just one less class).

3) Were you always paid on time? As was said by a co-worker, "If you don't have time to pay us today, I guess we don't have time to come in tomorrow." So yes, we always get paid on time (but as must always be said, so far).

4) How many paid vacation days did you get?

10 plus all holidays. It's set up so you have a full M-F off in the summer and one full M-F off in the winter, then whatever luck you have on when holidays fall (like this year, both Chuseok and Lunar New Year fall next to weekends, so those are both a full five days now). Vacations are set for the whole year, so you don't have to worry about WHEN your vacation is or if it will change, so you can buy plane tickets well in advance!

5) When and how did you get your paid vacation?

The vacation is in the contract, so it's always paid, you just always get the same paycheck every month, regardless of whether that was a vacation month.

6) What extra stuff do you really have to do not mentioned in your labor contract?

Nothing. Like I mentioned in the original post, it's all about how you handle your prep times at school. I suppose if you're really slow at grading or get distracted easily, you might end up taking work home, but I never do. Finding extra fun activities online or printing stuff out, all that is still done at work, never at home. As for extra stuff at work? Well, as an example in our case, we have a guy who plays guitar, so he likes to be the host at the monthly birthday party and play songs. Teachers are picked to be the 'head teacher' and they may have extra work involving coordination and activities, and/or meetings. Sometimes a teacher might be asked to think up hands-on experiments/activities for science class and organize them with the other science class teachers (I personally have this duty). Also, there are report cards to do and monthly writing tests to edit, but honestly, these do NOT take me long at all. I do know others who for some reason take a really long time to do those, but I never understand why. These are just some examples, but yeah, just juggle it into your prep times.

If it sounds like a lot of work, heh, it kind of is. If you kind of like just lazing around at work and having a pretty chill day, POLY probably isn't the place. It's a pretty busy day, but not so busy that we don't have time for laughs, jokes, and even potlucks in the office.

7) Were you provided with adequate housing when you worked for Korea Poly School?

Housing is one of those things that varies from branch to branch. Of course they provide it, and I can only assume it's adequate since mine and my co-workers are. My last place at my last school was an absolute palace, brand new huge officetel. My current place now with POLY is WAY older, and it's in a three story building with only like 12 units. They do give me everything I need inside (except a microwave) and I still have plenty of space (which personally, is the most important thing). It's not a super-nice officetel, but it's not a roach-infested hellhole either. I'm happy with it, but again, this sort of thing varies with every campus.

And for the ardis post:

The age of the kids. I teach preschool, the youngest group. I'll be honest, I didn't consider myself a kid person AT ALL, so I was a little nervous when I first started with this age group. My last school was middle school students, so I didn't even have any experience with a similar age, but my worries were unfounded. The kids aren't THAT young. They're not preschool like back at home, they're like kindergarten back at home, and kinder here is more like first grade. They're all Korean age 6, which could be 4 or 5, but when you work with them, they're not that small. They're a lot of fun, and it's AMAZING to see how quickly they learn, especially with the beginning Phonics books made in the States. Wow, they surprise me sometimes. And they are just so funny sometimes, like how I said I live in Korea, and one of them insisted that No, I live in the States. If you have an open mind and aren't afraid to play a little and let the kids touch you, you're in for some fun. They can stress you out too, especially with the hitting and crying at times, but heck, for those of you who haven't noticed, Korean kids are WAY better than kids back home, and crying usually is almost never a tantrum, and if it is it lasts about 3 minutes tops. When the school year started, we did have a couple of quiet criers who missed home, but now of course they're acclimated to the school and other kids so that doesn't happen so much anymore. It's certainly NOT diaper territory or anything like that, but occasionally a kid will dook his pants on accident, but hooray for the Korean staff coming to the rescue with that sort of thing! They have to know their ABCs and some of the major English commands before being allowed to enroll (there's a waitlist to get in) so it's not like talking to loaves of bread when you're teaching. And of course starting at 3pm, it's first grade up to fifth grade. The biggest issue with them is that the boys can be ungodly loud sometimes and some of the girls are always writing notes or playing with pencil cases.

Overall, I like my job. There's excitement everyday!

[eddie1983man]

Thanks for posting this. It is very informative.

[endo]

I'd recommend Poly to all newbies comming to Korea.

The best thing about working there was having 3 or more foreign co-teachers.

It's not like you have to hang out with them after work, but it's just nice to have someone to speak and relate to when you first come here.


I don't know how newbie public school trachers survive when they are the only foreign teacher. Especially those living out in the boobies.

Well actually I think some of these teachers I talk about are likely the biggest trolls on this board.

[jinju]

How much did Poly pay you to write that?

[eddie1983man]

[Typhoon]

POLY is an interesting place to work. I worked at a POLY several years ago, and overall the experience was not terrible. It wasn't good either. I enjoyed having a curriculum made for me, the library and the students. I hated the administration, the short classes where there is very little time for real teaching, the changing of policies every week, the lack of free time due to the busy schedule, and did I mention the administration. On the whole you could do a lot worse than POLY if you want to work at a hagwon. I would only work there if you don't mind long busy days, but that has been covered here by other posters.

[chinook]

I did my first year in Korea at a Poly School. For a first timer, it can be a nice way to ease into teaching since stuff is so well set out for you.

My gripes? I wasn't fond of the management and everything was always crazy last minute (typical hagwon stuff). The report cards, tests etc can be hard to get done in prep time, but I was able to do it without taking it home by the end of the year. I wasn't told about the two Saturday workshops even though I asked very specifically about Saturdays in the interview, nor was I told about teaching camp (since I was on the evening shift). Granted they paid well for that.

As for the red day stuff, no you don't have to work to make up national holidays before you'd get overtime. And you'd seldom get any overtime, basically just covering for sick teachers and it happened very seldom when I was there because the director or R&D person both could take over if needed.

When I was there they didn't pay into pension or the national health care and they *beep* you over on the severence - they have this base pay and you only got the base pay as severance, though monthly you made more with your bonus.

However, it was a fine school for a first year. Not necessarily any better than where I worked my second year, but no worse either.

[eddie1983man]

[Typhoon]

The Saturdays happen twice a year. They usually take place before or shortly after the new semester begins. The purpose is for all the POLY teachers in Korea to get together and to learn about the new books, curriculum, and to discuss problems in the old curriculum and books so that the R&D can do a better job. It is also a good chance to meet teachers from other POLYs around Korea and compare what is going on at your schools. The Saturday seminars were actually ok...unless you were in a POLY outside of Seoul, than you had to get up early and travel into Seoul to make it to the seminar. The guys who worked in POLYs outside of Seoul usually weren't too happy about the workshops, but if you are in or near Seoul they were not too bad.

The "camp" is probably the summer/winter intensive program. The people who work the afternoon shift at POLY usually get pressured into coming to work(during the mornings) an intensive program during the public school vacations. The intensives last a month and you do get paid (and well paid if I remember correctly). I believe that working the "intensive" is optional, but if everyone refuses then it is not really optional and you kind of have to do it. This always caused a lot of problems where I worked. The intensive makes for a really long and busy day you you will probably be working close to 12 hours a day for a month. The usual POLY schedule is tough, but the intensive schedule is a little but too much IMHO.

[chinook]

Saturdays weren't a huge deal, though I didn't find them at all helpful either. I found them to be a big bitchfest. However, I got an electric kettle and an alarm clock for my trouble. And the buffets were good.

Intensives were tough, and yep, 12 hour days. That said, I did them at the second school I worked at too (Heritage School of Language Arts), and they were just as long and tough. And yes, they are not optional if they need you and are if they don't. But I found them a good way to pay for vacation trips and a month won't kill you, basically. And they do pay well.

[mawz]

I'm real excited. I'm waiting for the HR guy to place me in Seoul somewhere. My only problem with the long hours is that it f's up my working out schedule....tch. Now the next thing you say is that POLY has an inter-office gym, and that's where my brain explodes.