Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Genevieve]

[lowpo]

[Biblethumper]

Yes, I realize that public school teachers work hard for their students too, but do you not think that it is much more likely to be effective when teaching ten students in a class five days a week rather than forty students once a week?

[Zebra12]

Relax. Learn to play chess. Exercise on the tube. Get a girlfriend--that'll teach you how to salsa. Remain alert. Get a 3 Dan blackbelt. Save some coin...get a boat and do the Seven Seas...master a flying jib schooner. Be a skipper--not a looser. Buy a boat, and sail to tropical ports; teach ESL to the natives. Think 2025. Go digital...fly a wireless kite. Freedom 35. Avoid Arctic shores...and hungry polar bears.

[regicide]

Regarding "older people" by the newly adapted Korean version (in the States you would still have a long way to go on your mortgage and would be admired by people for having experience): I worked my ass off in the United States until I was 38 years old. 13 years ago and my wife and I decided to give up living in our big house and jobs with pensions for a chance to work abroad. We would have never had that chance otherwise but kiss my ass if you Koreans or Taiwanese gave me something I should bow down to you for. It was just a life choice and in the past I never heard of being put down for doing something to enhance my life although I didn�t need you ( Korea or Taiwan) to put food on the table or save for my retirement. My daughter was conceived and born over here and that was a blessing. Now that I am really old and still doing this I want to tell you all one thing:

When I was in my twenties and the American economy was at it's worst in recent history I worked my butt off, with college loans dragging me down, with a liberal arts degree from a weak university, and made just fine thank you.

Additionally, if you want a difficult situation, try being in Vegas, with it's California girls, when you are in you mid-twenties and compete in that situation with a mediocre job.

I see a lot you twenty five and thirty year old PUNKS over here thinking you are so smart with a decent looking girl. Again, to the best of you , you are a big fish in a small pond. I grew up as an average guy in a market that was way above me and prospered.


You young wooses , as we used to call them make me sick. You make a bunch of extra money here, many of you are cheap assees, and all you do in return is sit on your ass and complain here on this board and then some of you have the audacity to call us 40 or 50 year old�s OLD>

Again. Go back home big man. ( you 25 and thirty year old punks in your university jobs or whatever)

And make it there.

[NightSky]

[SirFink]

[jazblanc77]

Definitely.

[some waygug-in]

[fustiancorduroy]

I have been in Korea for about a year and a half, and so far I have worked at hagwons exclusively. This is changing starting next year.

While I cannot complain about my current job in terms of pay and teaching hours (3.4 million a month for, currently, 12 or so hours of teaching per week), I am not satisfied personally or professionally. The nature of hagwons means that profit comes before education, which has really started to bother mean in the last few months. Factor in a lack of communication and organization, and hagwons become even less desirable. And it doesn't help that my organizational and eductional suggestions go mostly unnoticed.

Lucky, I was able to get a job at Dae Won Foreign Language High School, the best in Korea and, according to the Wall Street Journal, the 13th best high school in the world. It seems that there I will be more respected as both an educator and an adult. And it will be nice to work with high school students who are all proficient at English, who have been my favorite students at my current job (at a TOEFL hagwon). I won't make nearly as much money for the year, and I will have more classes to teach overall, but I feel this will be a change for the better. Besides, with my four months off, I will be able to write more textbooks and teach high-price private lessons (one of the current teachers charges 150,000 an hour simply because he is a Dae Won teacher), so I should be able to make up the money lost and then some.

[Genevieve]

[Bryan]

[fustiancorduroy]

Yes, I do make 3.4 for teaching only 12 classes per week. There are a couple reasons for this. First, I (along with another co-worker) used to write the monthly textbooks used by my academy. To produce around 300 pages of (in my coworker's and my opinion) professional-quality textbook material each month took at least 25 hours of work per week, on top of teaching 10 classes each week. Only this month has my workload been so ridiculously easy. Second, my academy does not have that many students at the moment (partially due to the problems I mentioned in my previous post), so there aren't that many classes (none of the teachers have more than 20 classes per week). So, I get paid good money to do a fairly small amount of work. But does not mean I am satisfied with the job. Hence my move next year.

I have a B.A. in English from an American state university. I have written one textbook for Compass Publishing and am working on another. I do freelance textbook writing as well.

I got my job at Dae Won not because of my educational credentials (as most of their other teachers went to Ivy Leauge schools and/or have advanced degrees), but more because of my experience as a writer and the strength of the demo class I had to teach for the interview (the students were so impressed that they applauded me at the end of the class, and the interviewers had glowing evaluations as well). Not to sound too arrogant or cliche, but they were practically begging me to sign on.

Having smaller classes at a hagwon can be much more effective in theory. But this is offset by a standard characteristic of hagwons: high student turnover. I have taught only a handful of students for more than three or four months, and even then I have only observed modest progress (this is partially because I teach advanced students). Moreover, I teach a given class for four hours per week at most, so it is not as though I am guiding the students along the entire time.

Dae Won is a foreign language high school, not a normal public high school. The English classes have 15 students at most, and while they are still bigger than most hagwon classes, they are quite a bit smaller than the ones in most public schools. Will I see a lot of progress with these students? Given the fact that this is best high school in Korea and based on my observations of the students' English skills, probably not. Some of these kids probably speak (academic) English better than most native-speaking kids their age (I don't think I fully understood the meaning of the word xenophobia when I was in 10th grade, but at least some of the students in the demo class I taught did), so I am probably not going to observe dramatic improvement in the students even after a year. But I will take comfort in the fact that they will understand and absorb more of what I teach than just about any other student in this country. And for me, this is what matters most.

[yingwenlaoshi]

Nah. Contradictions and/or non-sensical/queer "facts" all over the place.

Nice try, though.

[richardlang]