Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rojees]

Ive been trying to find out how good/bad is the curriculum that they use?

If bad, dont they get complaints? i dont mean from the teachers

In general, how are the kids? is there a co-worker that teaches with you?

[soviet_man]

They use 3 main textbook series, all produced in-house by the company.

Roughly speaking:

1st, 2nd graders: Wake Up
3rd, 4th graders: Playground
5th, 6th graders: Odyssey

None of these books are spectacular. But 40 minute lessons do go fast, the books are structured to do 2 pages per lesson, plus 2 more pages in a workbook, plus 2 more for homework.

The question will be what you can value add to their materials, such as supplements, board examples, games, activities, class discussions etc.

[wisernow]

Unlike the franchise ECC schools the company owned ECC schools follow the base curriculum more strictly and even get supplements from the head office to enhance their base textbooks, which is not bad at all and probably beats most kiddle schools whose curriculum can be really terrible or even illegally copied from other publishers textbooks.

For teachers who have no teaching experience but enjoy teaching children the structured program at ECC can be a godsend compared to less developed programs out there. The T.G for the base text is well laid out and will be very useful when you teach the 40 min classes.

The YBM ECC program is mostly 40 min classes unlike CDI that can have three 50 min classes with the same students or SLP that has an 80-min class. If you have to teach any 80 minutes or longer classes to the same students you better have lots of supplements as the students (kids or adults) will be restless

[xeno439]

Some ECC's will milk you to death. They will get you to work ridiculous classes like 8:00 am adult classes, 9:00 adult classes, kindergarten, and the normal, structured classes that have been mentioned above. Some ECC schools will not say no to any opportunity proposed at the expense of their teachers' sanity.

[melvaughn]

I agree that ECC is a school disguised as slave labour. I'm half-way done an ECC contract right now and I've taught up to 13 classes a day without a break. I've had to teach Kindergarten, plus my regular eight class a day scedule on top of staying until 11:00pm to teach Junior high.

Our intensives consisted of 15 classes a day for January for all foreign and Korean teachers!!! I can't get over that some schools teach only 4-6 classes a day. That would be so easy! I call what I'm doing right now "factory teaching".
Our foreign teachers right now are like machines...they can teach and teach endless classes without complaining and never seem to get tired. It's creepy. It's like they've all been drugged.

[twg]

I'm at an ECC franchise now.

The only downside thus far has been the slow ramping up of pointless paperwork. Other than that they've treated me well. No surprises or extra classes unless I had to cover someone who was sick. My classes are all in a block, from three until ten. With a long break in the middle. I'm pretty happy with them thus far.

Then again, I've honest to god been screwed-over here, so I have gained bit of perspective. And I've learned that the name doesn't matter. It's the size. The smaller it is, the more likely you're going to get ass-raped

[wisernow]

If you are teaching adults at ECC you must be working for a franchise ECC as company owned ECC schools don't have adults. I used to work for a company owned ECC myself many years ago. What's the name of your ECC location that teaches until 11:00 pm as ECC is mostly kinder and elementary age students. Some ECC do have junior high students I heard but any ESL schools that have junior high students will finish late like YES Yongdo, etc

[plato's republic]

I have a question regarding company-owned ECC schools so I'll just jump in on this thread and hope someone can help me out.

Does anyone currently work at or has anyone worked at any of the company-owned ECC schools in the northern Seoul area? I'm particularly interested in any info regarding the ECC school near Mia station. Maybe Sangbuk ECC? What's your situation like?

Thanks for any help!

[plato's republic]

Actually, now I'm not so sure if the school I'm thinking of is a company-owned ECC but if anyone can comfirm this I'd be grateful.