Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gwangjuboy]

Recently the government launched extra English classes in public schools.
The intention was to ensure the poorer communities weren't being disadvantaged in the hagwon rat race, while forcing change in the hagwon industry. It is also hoped that this will impact negatively on those directors who circumvent the tax regulations. At my institute this has already had a negative impact on student numbers, and this is exacerbated because the area is poor. The director has already began to think about gearing her marketing campaign to the parents of kindergarten students. Despite the common belief that a foreign teacher is a marketing coup, the neighbouring school has no foreign teacher, but is still ebbing away at the hagwon's custom. What's your postition on this? Has your hagwon felt the pinch yet? Is this going to impact negatively on the Korean economy? Is this going to create problems in the job market? Are Korean graduates going to suffer further woes? I personally think that this is a policy which will do nothing more than disadvantage decent hagwons. It's also disgusting that public school teachers will benefit from the demise of their hagwon counterparts, despite their own positions already being much easier. This is a blatant example of the misuse of state power. I think this will backfire on the government.

[rapier]

There's been no impact on my hagwon yet, but I'm waiting with interest...
I guess hagwons could be in serious trouble this year. But parents will still prefer their kids to be taught by a foreign teacher, so there'll always be jobs here in Korea...

[sadsac]

We haven't seen any impact on our numbers yet, but it is early days. I do agree with Rapier's comment, that parents do prefer their children to be exposed to a foreign teacher. Some of those hogwans that offer a very limited class exposure to a native speaker, may be more disadvantaged than others. Koreans are only too aware of how dismal their public education system is. I don't think that they will believe the additional classes in English will be any better than the regular school classes.

[Cogito]

Recently the hagwon that I work for has lost quite a lot of students. Today was another one of the students' last day, because he is going to middle school and according to him he will be having classes there until late in the evening. I can only assume that some of those will be Enlish classes.
Gwangjuboy:
"The director has already began to think about gearing her marketing campaign to the parents of kindergarten students."

Strangely enough most of our new students seem to be very young - roughly 5 or 6 years old (this hagwon does not really cater for kindergarten students).

[Snatch]

Will have to see what happens at mine, but we've just started a new year and we seem to have a record number of students.

Most of our kindergarten kids have come back to afternoon classes, kindergarten is filled up again and our schedules have been pushed to the max.

Granted, our kids are younger, up to 14 years old. Are they having the extra hours at middle schools only?

[FUBAR]

[OiGirl]

This guy: http://168.131.50.85/ has done a lot of research on the "English Divide." Unfortunately for many of us, most of it is in Korean!

[crazylemongirl]

a lot of public schools are starting to employ waygooks. The school system I just started in has 9 teachers. I think the major problem with the public schools (from my first week there) is the size of the classes and the lack of frequency. I only see a class for 45 minutes once a week.

[Butterfly]

I believe that schools these days are not what they used to be, in terms of English language instruction. Having met many school teachers I have come to realize that the traditional approach to learning English in Korea is slowly becoming a thing of the past and school teachers are slowly adopting new, interactive and effective methods for learning. If they are effectively teaching students, I don't see why the schools shouldn't take that business away from the hakwons, and indeed the better foreign teachers among us will get jobs in public rather than private education establishments which will probably mean less horror stories.

Schools providing the free or cheap services previously provided by the expensive hakwons may just mean more disposable income for parents, which will hopefully enable them to have more children. That would be a positive outcome surely.

It may then prove to be a solution to the steady drop in the birth rate, which is another factor causing the demise of many hakwons.

I also remember an elementary school teacher complaining about how students were learning things which were contrary to the national curriculum in a Maths hakwon. The hakwons have a pretty bad reputation, and do need to shape up or drop off the face of the earth, and I don't doubt for a second that yours is a good hakwon Gwangjuboy, but I think the good ones are going to have to adapt and reinvent themselves to survive. I don't really see much wrong with that.

[Gollum]

I'm one of these new public school teachers. Actually, my school is called "private", but it's really public, and accredited. Anyone in the area can come here, I think. It's just privately owned/founded.

Us foreign teachers still get the feeling that we are "window dressing" here. Some generic job stats: Currently, my schedule is 17 hours per week (50 minute classes). My full day is about 9:30 to 4:10 or so. Actual school hours are 9 to 5, but the foreigners always take off, which has been what they've done in the past (they had 2 foreigners last year). I see about 60% of my classes twice a week. These are elective classes, from what I'm told, and they are not graded.

The other 40% of classes are currently taught as a co-teacher type thing. Those classes are more serious. All classes vary in size from 25 to 40 right now. Pay is an even 2.0. I have about 2 1/2 months of paid vacation a year, plus holidays. They put 2 down in my contract, but I'm told it's more like 2 1/2, since we don't work when they have finals.

The Korean teachers are very kind about the co-teacher thing, but didn't quite know how to handle their co-teacher classes. The school has given little direction to any of us on the issue.... they admit it's new ground for them too. The co-taught classes I only see once per week. I have been careful to let the Korean teachers (who plan a very fast/intense lesson) teach, and sort of either give me time for an activity, or use me to explain some things in English or pronounce. We've kind of hammered this out thusfar (only in my first week here).

The rooms all have large-screen TVs hooked up to a vintage Win95-type computer. They have some multi-media rooms I haven't used yet, and they are building another one now. This can make the lessons more interesting.

The only problem so far was a miscommunication. One of the Korean teachers asked me how I wanted to teach the class. She wanted me to teach one full hour one day, then her teach the other class the other day. Sounds fine, but she didn't want me to teach from the class book. Since we only see the kids twice a week between the two of us, I told her I thought this wouldn't be good. I told her we should teach from the same book and create a plan together. She misunderstood me, and thought I told her that I couldn't/didn't know how to plan a lesson for the class. GRRRRR.... so over lunch, I had other Korean teachers asking me why I didn't know how to make a lesson plan.

We've worked things out, though. Each Korean teacher seems to prefer a different route. One of the teachers (in a reading class) is a very good teacher, however her English pronounciation isn't great. She asks me to read stuff, and then the kids listen/repeat, etc. Then she asks me to explain certain words, and she follows with a Korean explanation where needed. Sometimes I take 10 or 15 minutes of the period to do an activity of my own.

Another teacher is very kind, but she is obviously scared to have me around (she was shaking the first day). I cringed as she read stuff, and had students repeat... complete with "washee", "hand-uh", etc. Inside, I know these teachers are really self-conscious about their speaking ability, and I am trying my best to keep a happy relationship with them and not do anything to cause them to lose face due to their ability to speak.

As for worrying about if we are "taking jobs away" from hagwon workers.... I doubt it. Maybe we are taking a few students, but in my Korean experience, it seems some people from this country seem to enjoy finding and blaming their misfortune on whatever the hot topic of the day is. For example, I had a bar owner tell me all about how he was losing so much business because the USA invaded Iraq, and no one wanted to leave their house to go out any more (he was serious, too).

Maybe we do give a few parents reason not to send their kids to a hagwon (because of interaction with a native speaker), but I don't think it'll make THAT big of a difference.

Besides, when I did my Visa run, I met two other guys who were starting similar jobs for public schools. We were all happy to have the chance to teach in a public school. At least we aren't worried about getting paid, etc.

My housing is smaller, but is top-notch (new building).

We've already talked this "hagwons will die over this" issue to death in at least two other posts. I think some people are being alarmist about nothing.

By the way, if any of you worry you might be left-out because your not American or Canadian, the other two foriegn teachers happen to be Aussie. They guy I replaced from last year was actually a gyopo. He left to do his Masters. My job is funded by the gov't, however, where his was not. I'm from the USA, btw.

[Ilsanman]

Actually my hagwon's enrollment has really increased over the last month.
Unrelated to this public school thing, of course.

Maybe this new thing will just weed out the hagwons that suck. Ones that show real results will stick around, me thinks.

I don't fear for my job. Parents are fully aware that a majority of public school teachers are unable to teach english properly.

[Gollum]

[Gwangjuboy]

[Ya-ta Boy]

I've always wondered, in a country with higher than desirable unemployment among young people and with public schools under decades-long criticism for doing a poor job, why there isn't a movement to expand the number of schools (or at least increase faculty) in order to reduce the number of kids in a class.

It seems to me it would kill several birds with one stone.

[Derrek]

Ya-ta, sometimes I think this country is obsessed with not stepping on peoples toes.

By gosh, we wouldn't want to do something obviously BETTER, like make people use garbage cans for trash -- it might cause all of those old garbage-picker people to lose their income.