Korean Job Discussion Forums

[le-paul]

just my little weekly reminder not to work there...

[Joe666]

Ya, thanks a lot!! Your late with this one, pal. Where were you 7 months ago!!

[le-paul]

he he

[Juregen]

I have one in my neighborhood, what is so bad about them?

[Andyc24_uk]

Why?

I work for them, been here nearly a year and about to extend for another six months. I work less than 6 hours a day, no forced overtime; I've had to attend two saturday events in a year which is fine IMHO; I have a fantastic boss who's always willing to go the extra mile to help me out; three friendly and supportive Korean co-workers; and about 80 pleasant, mostly well-behaved students who I really enjoy teaching. Sure, the in-house books suck badly at times (Magic books are useless, and some of the basic reading books are just, well, weird...) but working here is a hell of a lot better than many other places one could work in Korea.

Of course, some people will be unlucky and have a bad manager or coworkers and an unpleasant experience; but that's not the fault of the company. Seeing as Eastern seem to focus more on actually teaching the kids English and less on just giving test after test to generate a stack of scores for parents to be impressed with (a la EG, Avalon, YBM etc); I'd say they were one of the better chains in the country!

My advice to anyone thinking about a contract with an Eastern franchise is - forget the company, see how you get on with the boss and your co-workers, and if they check out then go with it!

[le-paul]

i know 4 native teachers who have had nothing but bad expereinces with Eastern English.
Considering the teaching materials are so bad that that you basically end up doing all your lesson planning yourself, anything else on top of that can lead to you having a miserable time with Eastern.
as you so rightly said, having a bad howan owner is one of these contributing factors. But that might not happen.

I also know for 'a fact' that the reason they havent moved on with their teaching materials (as for example Junchul etc have) is becasue they all got together and decided that mr waygook must do all his own lesson planning and that if preferable, they shouldnt give him books at all (feedback from insider at regional meetings). IE - they dont give a toss what were doing as long as it saves them/the parent money.
If you have a class of ten kindergarteners etc that are bored rigged with the books no matter how many (mod edit) handstands you do to amuse them, its not much fun.

and yes they do give test after test, the system is designed to give test after test either written or with the aid of a computer.

id also say that since the system has very little with regard to phonics at a basic level and moves directly onto memorising books/texts and seems to give grammar a miss generally, this isnt congruent to effective teaching either (coupled with the fact that your teaching materials are mostly usless and arent juxtaposing in any way most of the time to what the korean teachers are doing so your out there on your own in terms of direction/structure) - your on a the way to nothing (unless your prepared to put the hours in).

but apart form that - youve got a 50/50 chance of getting a good hogwan boss.

so itll probably be ok.

[Skippy]

God! I work for an Eastern School and I am loving it! Le-Paul I looked at your previous posts and I have little idea at which Eastern school you are talking about.

I AM SICK AND TIRED OF NOT GETTING DETAILS!

I can do this too.

How about this do not work for the Hagwon owned by Mr. Kim that is in Daegu.

Hell with that setence I just told you that over half of the hagwons in the city are corrupt.

Where is the school located? If you are worried about name a dong just name a city.

How did they F you over?

If this is a weekly gripe why not at least post something a cut and paste from a saved rant against them, links to previous posts, something anything then just another simple "I don't like this blah blah".

God to boot you post with out the capital letters that make it looks like a bloody idiot seventh grader using his handphone. You want to be heard or be helpful be professional!

[le-paul]

my criticism (if im allowed to have an opinion on the subject), is of easterns 'teaching methods/system', therefore it is of little importance which hagwon i am refering too. I am suggesting that anyone who has any pride in their work (in my opinion) will have to compensate for lack of decent system/resources with their own time/resources. I will be quite happy to debate this.

I am not rubbishing your exeriences with Eastern nor am i asking sympathy/understanding of mine. I am trying to be objective and was hoping that the teacher who is due to replace me would notice this thread so I can save her the trouble/personal problems that I have been through (which is down to the director mostly - but thats my problem) with mine.



''I AM SICK AND TIRED OF NOT GETTING DETAILS! '' ????
I think you need to get out of the house a little more often mate...

'I can do this too'?? are you looking for a fight? im pretty sure my dad is bigger than yours if you want to go there! but i wouldnt if i were you cos ive studied taekwond and im a green belt!

I am genuinely sorry that you are so upset about this thread.

[Skippy]

Thank You for clearing some of the contusion up

My problem is this...

Everybody wants a blacklist! But there is none so they learn to USE Dave's. But time and time again. Somebody has a problem with a school (legitamate or not) they write a little blurb with no substance/details or just all emotion. Which is summed up as usually my school screwed me over and I am angry. AND ??????

Many posters and readers of Dave's want to hear the juicy details. Even if we may not or can not help we want to know the story. I mean it would get aggravating that if you had a friend that has many adventures. And every time you see him he goes 'Wow last week was awesome!". You are waiting for the hook, the punch line, and he says nothing. AND ???

I KNOW I Know , Dave's has the moderators and they do prune those messages down at times(which most people think is due to said schools advertising here". But it would really help if people at least posted something and then something with details.

Another little gripe of mine. Is somebody complains of a school and it is a chain like Jungchul, Avalon, or ECC. The typical post goes Do not go with ECC. Once again which one? Not all are bad, some are okay.

It does not body any good or saves heartache if people do not tell which school is the problem.

[Andyc24_uk]

I agree in part with you, Le-paul. The books are poor. the storybooks are very big on repeating the same sentence over and over again with slight modification - Easy to memorise; but not much use in the real world as there is little in the way of explanation, which leaves the kids at a loss as to how to use the new vocabulary correctly (By way of example, I have one student in particular who replies to every instruction he doesn't like with the phrase "You can sleep in the barn!" because he learned it from a story book where one character tells another to go and sleep in the barn...!)

The Magic books are dire - completely disjointed, liberally scattered with errors and following the most bizarre, inexplicable, logic-devoid plot arc stretched across eight books. However, the new 'Iris' books which are replacing Magic are much, much better. I disagree on Phonics - I'm currently teaching some Bridge Books/Eastern-produced Phonics books, and they're pretty good. Some of the pictures used as illustrations are a bit questionable - they could have chosen more obvious examples - but overall one of the better phonics books I've seen.

I spend pretty much zero time preparing anything extra for classes - but I rarely go into a class assuming that all we're going to do is book work anyhow. I work on the basis that the book is a guide, a prop just like the board or a set of crayons or the soft-toy penguin I occasionally throw around the class to keep the kids on their toes It sometimes has useful things in it, and sometimes it needs skipping over. I quite often spend only maybe 10 minutes out of a 45-minute lesson with the books open - Yes, my students complete selected exercises from the textbooks, but mostly they spend the time discussing with me in English; drawing cartoon characters on the board and filling in their speech bubbles; playing games that teach the vocabulary; or role-playing situations - None of that needs any real preparation, except for maybe a few minutes to think about what might work well in the class.

I'm far from being a brilliant teacher, but after a year here (and previous experience teaching both in Korea and back home) I know what gets my students learning, and it doesn't involve either sticking rigidly to the book OR spending hours on end painstakingly preparing extra activities. The system may well suck, but the trick is to neither follow it nor to directly oppose it (either way will lead to madness!) but to treat it as more a set of very loose guidelines to be subverted at will...

I really hope your situation improves, and if you have a bad director then you have my sympathies - that in my opinion is one of the biggest issues in Hagwon teaching, and I am lucky in that I have a director who pretty much trusts me to do my own thing. However, I don't necessarily think you can stigmatize an entire chain of schools just because *some* of them are bad.

Feel free to PM me if you have any specific issues with the Eastern setup you'd like to discuss, or if you want any ideas about what I've found works with certain books/topics. Good luck!