Korean Job Discussion Forums

[kchax]

does anyone work in Kids Club in GwangJu?

I've heard many horror stoires.. but how about the ones in GwangJu?

[wylies99]

Why play with fire? BE SMART and avoid big chain hogwans like Kids Club, Kids Herald, Wonderland, and Kids College. They are on the blacklists for good reasons.

[banillaq]

LCI Kids Club? They don't pay pension and don't give you Korean medical insurance. Their contracts are 130 hours for 2 million.

[dukekorea]

I was contacted by them by phone a couple days ago. The hours were very long and he said you don't have a choice to work overtime, you are told to work overtime. The head teacher who called was friendly and I am sure he will find someone who is unaware of the schools reputation.

Duke

[mike_gwangju]

I'm sorry to resurrect an old thread (well, a week), but I worked at the LCI Kids Club in Gwangju up until Friday, January 19th. I was there for 9 weeks and then done a runner.

I hated the school and the fact that foreign teachers aren't brought in to teach. In fact, as soon as I arrived at the school, and even before meeting the Korean teachers, I was marched into a classroom and left alone. I hadn't been told anything about what to do. Foreign teachers do not get any assistance from the Korean staff whatsoever. Because of this, the children know they can run riot, beat each other up, steal and whatever else, without getting into trouble for it.

The accommodation provided by the institute was not the 5 or 10 minutes walk (as promised), but instead it was more than a mile away and took closer to 25 minutes. The apartment was inadequately furnished, filthy and cold. I've put some pictures online - http://www.mjk.org.uk/apartment/ (these were taken just a couple of days after moving in). I was also expected to live without hot water for the first three weeks in Korea and was constantly fobbed off by the director, who told me that the water in Korea is much colder than anywhere else in the world. Even if that were true, I couldn't understand why my water would be luke warm for 30 seconds before going totally stone cold!

I thought that teaching in Korea would look great on my CV and I was sure that I would get some reward from it, but at the Kids Club, you are nothing more than an overpaid babysitter, looking after children who can't speak English now, and probably never will!

The particular school that I worked at was performing very badly. Over the Christmas period, a number of children left. Yet no new students came along to take their places. And it still seems to be happening a lot - the student numbers are falling at quite a rate. The director of the school has already told the Korean teachers to expect job cuts in the coming weeks and has suggested that the school will probably be closed by early March. However, if "thirty or fourty" new students sign up (and quickly), the school may survive.

But even knowing that the school may be closing in little over a month's time, they are still recruiting a new foreign teacher. What a total waste of time that is going to be. I can't comment on other LCI Kids Club institutes, but this is definitely one to avoid.

[wylies99]

[valentino]

I was contacted by a Canadian girl named Bronwn in Busan. I think she was representing Kids Club in Busan, not GwangJu. Everything sounded cool on the phone. Are all these stories I'm hearing conected? Is the entire franchise rotten and closing? eddie-

[willneverteachagain]

LCI is just as bad as the regular kids club

[i_teach_esl]

sheesh, mike, no wonder you left. those pictures are ugh. sorry you had to go through that.

[mtmelton]

Let me say first there are two different Lci Kids Club in Gwangju. The one the OP is talking about is not the one is Sangmu. I have heard that it is not a franchise school anyways. That the school only copied the name to bring in students. LCI kids in sangmu is a good school to work at. There are 10 or 11 foreign teachers here at the moment. No one has done a midnight run this year or last year and the boss is a good guy here who takes care of his employees. You get paid on time every month, has monthly group dinners and helps you out whenever you need it. And for Banilla Q the contracts are not 130 hours they are starting off at 2.1 salary. Any work after 6:00 is considered overtime. Any other questions you can pm. I hope this clarifies that one of the LCI's is probably a rip off but not all school's are the same.

[ttompatz]

[ilovebdt]

[mtmelton]

Yes i mean the one in Gwangju in the south not Gwangju city near seoul.

[wylies99]

Taking pics of the apartment shortly after moving in was a VERY smart thing to do.
Place looked bad.

[CoDeReBeL]

I'm supposed to start teaching English at a Kid's Club in Gwangju later this month. Is that a link to the good Gwangju or the bad Gwangju? I think it's in the south so that's the good one, right?