Korean Job Discussion Forums

[BackRow]

I'm in the process of looking for a hagwon TEFL job, and of the few offers I'm getting for interviews most of said schools operate a kindergarten. Why does everybody seem to say to avoid kindy at all costs here? I have no prior experience with korean kindy myself obviously, but I'm making the following assumptions:

PROS:
- co-teacher on-hand to help
- kids have just really begun to fully learn korean, so english lessons would be extremely simple
- from what I hear, kindy makes a school a good deal of money and losing students isn't as big a problem, so it adds stability


CONS:
- kids being kids (running around, fighting, trying to crawl all over you, etc.)
- teaching kindy seeing as being beneath someone?

Am I simply misinformed, or is kindy really not all that bad?

[northway]

As a first timer I don't think it's a bad idea. I'm just finishing my first year teaching the standard kindergarten/elementary deal.

Another big pro to consider, from my perspective, is that as a first timer you're usually choosing between kindy/elementary working something like 10:00-6:30 or you're going to get an afternoon kindy situation working like 2-9. In the case of my kindy/elementary versus my friends' schools who work at afternoon hagwons, my students are much, much higher level, as most of the elementary schoolers we have attended kindergarten at our hagwon, so their English is excellent. My friends who teach at afternoon elementary schools have generally told me that their older kids have less proficiency than the second graders at my school. Basically, the elementary you end up teaching with kindy can end up being significantly more interesting than if you teach afternoon elementary.

I really enjoy teaching kindy and if you're inexperienced, like kids, and have a high energy level I don't think it would be a bad move at all. But I'll probably also be flamed for saying this by a bunch of dudes who've been here since the '90s.

[edwardcatflap]

[sojusucks]

OP, if you happen to end up at a bad kindy school or have a bad kindy class, it is the most draining experience of your life. If you have no experience dealing with kindy and you think it's the same as other ESL teaching, then you'll be in for a world of hurt. It can be a nightmare.

[mm]

I don't think its the actual teaching of Kindy that is the problem but the hours that a lot of Kindy hagwons offer.

I have a couple of friends who teach Kindergarten (and just kindergarten) so it is a normal 9 to 3 or 4 type job and they seem to enjoy it.

I taught Kindergarten in China a couple of years ago and I loved it, but it was much more draining than teaching any other age group.

[Howler Monkey]

What are the schedules for these 9 to 6 kindy jobs? I don't mind teaching kindergarten and I'm not even overwhelmed with massive amounts of energy. What works for me is knowing what to teach, when to teach it, and how to present it.

That and lots of quick simple little games.

Still, even then.. 2 to 3 hours of kindy feels like eight hours of elementary teaching.

Nice thing about kindies though, you can recycle the same games over and over again. Little rotters won't even notice as their attention span and memory is about five minutes.

They even like to color and sometimes they even get the coloring inside the lines. That's massive prize day when that goes down.

Biggest trick for me is not towering over them. Stoop down to their level for the first few weeks. I tend to sit in a chair with them as I stand six foot one inch and I'm a fairly stout fellow with a full goatee. Generally, within a few minutes the kids are running their fingers through my beard trying to figure out if it is facial hair or some small animal that died on my face.

[northway]

Personally, I find kindergarten to be a lot less exhausting than elementary. Even with an elementary program full of relatively strong students, I find that they often won't understand whatever obtuse grammatical point I'm trying to get across, whereas I'm usually teaching stuff to kindies that they can and do grasp quite easily. In terms of just showing up to class and going through the motions, yeah, kindergarten is more tiring than elementary, but I'm far more exhausted by an elementary class completely missing a lesson than I am by teaching kindergarten for four hours in a day. And hey, with my kindies I can let joking and play be a huge part of my teaching style. With elementary that option is less open to me.

[Summer Wine]

I currently teach english to Kindergarten kids in my P/S.

There is an official kindergarten teacher and two teacher aides for 13 students.

This versus me in a class all by myself when I did it in a Hagwon.

I teach with a teachers aide in the class room at all times now, vs struggling to communicate with a child who is 2 years old by myself.

There is a huge difference between what Koreans expect in a public school and what the bosses tell us they expect in a private Hagwon.

Trust me, I am sure most parents are told by the owners there is no difference when in fact there are tons of differences.

[hari seldon]