Korean Job Discussion Forums

[RBJfaraway]

Hey everyone. I'm a newbie doing research on potentially teaching in Korea, and I like the idea of living there. I've spent some time in Japan and loved the idea of staying there. Korea seems like a more suitable market for an entry level ESL teacher though. However, I am a recent college grad with no teaching certificates or experience.

As we all know, there are a lot of recruiters out there saying that no teaching experience is required. Despite this I am very intimidated by my lack of experience. Can anyone relate to this? Would anyone be willing to share their experience as a first time teacher teaching in Korea? Did you struggle with it or find it surprisingly easy? That being said, I don't expect it to be easy easy, I'm prepared to work hard. I just don't want to get in too far over my head.

I've been reading around this forum for a couple days, but I haven't heard many first timers talking about their first impressions of the job. Thanks a lot.


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[sargx]

It is not necessary to work hard or worry much. You can work on an online ESL certificate while you're there, you'll have lots of free time. It's intimidating the first week if it's your first time teaching. After that you learn the dynamics and your place and you can sit around repeating: "I am a boy, you are a girl, we are students" to your heart's content.

Don't teach kindergarten. I like public schools, some people hate them.

It's not as intense as you think it will be.

[RBJfaraway]

Is an ESL certificate something that I will be required to have, or will it help me land better positions? And thanks for the tip. Kindergarten seems like it would be pretty bad, but the jobs with elementary school are easier to get, from what I hear.

Also, from reading around this forum the consensus seems to be that private schools are more likely to try to screw you out of pay. Why is it that some people don't like public schools? Which one is more likely to honor the contract?

[andrewchon]

PS used to have reputation for doing things 'by the book'. We know now they can be just as cunning as hagwons, but PS are less likely to. PS spends somebody else's money after all. Some favour hagwons because the level of students are higher and more even. PS can range from brilliant to brain damaged (I'm not kidding!). Hagwon has smaller class sizes. PS can range from 10 to 40. You can't out shout 40.

Doing a TESOL certificate (100 hr + practice teaching) will give you 'some' insight into cognitive science (and higher pay). The way you're self-doubting because you've never done it before makes me guess that you're very much a left-brained person. If that's the case, you won't know until you do it for real. Have a think about how you teach people things, e.g. giving direction: do you umm and ahh? Do you answer in questioner's way or do you tell direction in the way you want to be told?

[oldtactics]

Public schools are hard work as a new, inexperienced teacher. Obviously it's different for everyone, but I'm having a much more difficult time than I expected - teaching 800 students a week is overwhelming even after 6 months.

I think the best advice I can offer is to read a lot about teaching methods before you get here. Even if you're only staying for a year, I think that it'll help you a lot. Good luck!

[janydc]

This has been helpful as I am also doing research trying to figure out a where to work. Any suggestions for decent Hagwons?

[iggyb]

It is useless to ask about good hakwons, because you have to check each and every one that offers you a position.

Things can change too quickly at a hakwon - especially in a time of economic slump like Korea has now. And another common thing you hear about, and that witnessed twice myself, is how a good school went terribly bad with a simple change in personnel - the owner bringing in a new manager to "get tough" with the staff to get more out of them --- which just ended up ruining the school and causing people to flee and those that remained to lose any incentive to do their work well...

You can post a hakwon's name and location here and see if anybody has heard about it.

But talking to more than one foreign teacher at each school interested in you is the only real shot you have of scoping out which is a better choice to take...

[Joe666]

Newbie here, 6 months in. It's a trip!! There is a lot of extraneous things you need to navigate through. All the "extraneous" affect your teaching to a certain degree. I feel it's not very difficult workload wise, but everything around the workload can be exhausting.

[RBJfaraway]

[RBJfaraway]

[katepult]

I've worked at a few hagwons, an after school program in the public school, and a public elementary school. I'm actually moving back to kindergarten hagwon after my current PS contract is up. Kindy is easy. Sing, teach alphabet, and do the same routine every day in class. Middle schools seems like it would be the worst, but I've never taught them.

The classload is the easiest in the public school, but the work is pretty dull, and you end up spending eight hours a day with no one to speak English to. (The Korean English teachers in the public school have somewhat low-level English.) It can get lonely and you spend lots of time on Facebook. A decent hagwon is better than the public schools, except for the vacation. I'd recommend a hagwon with a few other foreign teachers at first because then you have some people to talk to and who can help you out with the challenges that you initially have when you move here. I would have had an incredibly rough time if PS was my first job here, but I didn't get lucky with my school.

I recommend a minimum of an online TEFL course. Lots of people don't bother, but it made me feel like I had a clue when I started teaching. I didn't have a clue, but I felt more confident, which counts.

Any job here is a crap shoot. Do your research, ask to talk to a current teacher at the school. Mostly jobs are ok, a lot of it has to do with your own attitude and understanding that things work a bit differetnly here.

[andrewchon]

If you are a kind who super prepares:
then I'd say you'd better go to a hagwon with a set curriculum. One of them 'go-mun' (means torture if you're a student, high-art if you're a teacher) type of school. They'll tell you how to teach, what to teach. You may not agree with their method but at least you'll know what do, and students know what to expect.

One thing you can do is learn Korean: read,write and speak. Your stay in Japan will help. Did you learn to speak Japanese? Their grammar structure is similar to Korean. See if you can get in touch with iggyb on this site, he is a wealth of knowledge about Korea.

[Totti]

I prefer teaching at a public high school then a hagwon. All of my co-teachers are English majors so communication is no problem whatsoever, though I guess this is the luck of the draw. I alternate between using a textbook and my own material to teach the students, which is cool as it gives me a bit of freedom to make my lessons a bit more interesting. My co-teacher never really have to do anything in the class, but it's nice having them there incase there to be less discipline issues then at a hagwon, which makes life a lot easier.

Although you might have a lower base rate then some hagwons, your teaching hours are less and you have the potential to make more with after school classes.

[RBJfaraway]

Based on the latest replies, I'm sort of leaning towards hagwon now. I like the idea that andrewchon suggests, having a set curriculum and someone telling me exactly how they want the job done. This sounds like a good way to start. Also I like the idea of having other foreign coworkers.

Is it less likely to be working with other foreigners at a public school? I was under the impression that no matter where I was working there would be a few other english speakers around.

I can't say I've developed a preference for age range of students one way or another. It seems like they would all have advantages and disadvantages.

Oh, and I was only in Japan for a few weeks staying at a friends house, so I picked up a few phrases, but thats about it. I know I would have to make an effort to learn the language, because I would feel much more at home if I did.

[E_athlete]

just to let you know before you plunge into this.

In japan you take on multiple jobs without asking permission from your employer or immigration.

In Korea you have to ask them and get permission.


you have a lot more rights and opportunities in japan.