Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Nilu265]

I'm getting a lot of offers for Kindergarten but have heard it is the most work. And it seems like most people don't want to teach kindergarten. Is that true? Why is that?

Then again, the hours seem better.

Opinions?

[DosEquisXX]

I heard that it was more like a babysitting job rather than an English teaching job. Why go to Korea just to babysit little kids who can barely speak Korean themselves, let alone English?

[mm]

I think teaching Kindergarten is fun, if you like little kids. The reason that most people don't want kindy jobs is a lot of the private kindy hagwons have terrible hours 9 to 7 or something like that.

Middle school kids will spend their class time trying to take English words and make them into a sentence that sounds like a Korean swearword. "She follows me," is a sentence that every Korean child must know. Along with words such as "dirty," "die," "loser" and "hospital."

[Kaypea]

I've done both, and I much prefer middle school, but that's mostly because I was really clueless when I taught kindergarten and I'm not a *natural* with little kids.

The kindergarteners will learn faster, and I think it would be a good job if you are naturally warm with children. I had to learn to be warm with children, and by the time I did, they already hated me.

The kindergarten will be a lot of work. The middle school kids can be unpleasant, but if you enjoy Beavis and Butthead, you'll be in heaven...

[northway]

[Hotwire]

I love teaching kindy. Once you've got to know each other it's basically you getting paid for dancing, singing and playing games with a group of loveable, friendly kids who will dote on you and make your days seem worthwile and joyous.

Damn that was very Enid Blihgton of me.

It's how I feel about my kindy classes though.

BUT. And there is a but...

I teach at a rural public ele school and we also have a kindergarten unit as all the parents are working the farms all day. I only teach an ave of four 40 min classes a day and kindy will only ever be one of those classes per day..

I once did a 9am - 5.30pm Kindy gig with ele / mid classes in the afternoons at an SLP and it was SO DRAINING!

Literally exhausting. Plus I was getting paid the same as the afternooon shifters who'd saunter in at 2pm and then be out at 9pm doing only 45 min classes whilst my kindy clases were 90 mins each!!

If you can get a kindy gig that is just kindy, that could be cool and you can ask for up to around the 2.8 mark if it's in a wealthy residentual area. But the kindy in the morning / early aftn and then ele / middle in the afternoons.... Make sure you get paid more than the teachers at the school just doing the afternoon shift as you will be twice as tired as them...

But if you love the littluns, it could work out for you... Just trust me it is more tiring that a standard 1 - 9 gig so imho you should want around at least 200,000 a month more than you could get for an afternoon gig. Plus they make a shedload more money from the kindy kids, so why shoouldn't your salary reflect that?

Good luck with whatever you choose...!

[mimi belle]

I think really small children make some people nervous...and other people love them. I like small kids.

[Hotwire]

Me too. ^^

One thing that's cool about them is that they haven't yet been socialised that Koreans are unique and different from foriegners etc.

Mine treat me just like anyone else. The other day one of my kindy kids asked why I was going to England in December. I said to visit my family.

Her draw dropped and she said in Korean that she thought I was from Korea!

[Daniel_D]

I like small children. I taught one year as a kinder teacher and the kids were great, but my boss sucked.

Second year I tried middle school students. Constant chattering during class annoys me to no end. However, my boss is awesome.

Need to combine small children with awesome boss somehow -_-;;

However, like the other people said.... if you like small children it's good. If you don't.... probably not so good. Watch out for unattractive 30+ co-workers that get the crush on you at kinder jobs though... it's scary.

[ttompatz]

[xanthekelsylva]

Personally, I love small children but still ran into many problems with teaching kindergarten. There were many factors involved-- some things were my fault, some were the school's fault, some were the parents' fault, some were the kids' fault. I would never teach kindergarten in Korea again. In no particular order, here's the problems I ran into:

1) The kids were starved for attention. If I was helping one-on-one with one kid, two others would start fighting, or someone else would yell for my attention. Forget making friends at that age; as far as I could tell they want an adult to pay attention and take care of them. Also, the kids were always tattling on each other and it drove me up the wall.

2) Kids that age really shouldn't be sitting in chairs; they need to be running around outside and sometimes sitting on the floor for story time and such. Not only were my students supposed to sit, they were supposed to sit like Victorian ladies and I was expected to make that happen. And not only did they not have time outdoors, they also had no windows in some of the rooms. They had very little time to play in the play room. If they didn't finish their lunch or they were "bad", they had to lose their play time. I don't believe in this because it's cruel to the kids and makes life hell for the teacher trying to keep a classroom under control when the kids have that much pent-up energy.

3) They're supposed to write despite not being able to hold a pencil properly. Wouldn't it be more useful to allow them to play with toys and color pictures to develop motor skills in their tiny little hands?

4) I absolutely despised having to get them to line up without shoving and cutting each other in the line. For some reason the four-year-olds were always fine, the five-year-olds were a nightmare. I also hated that I had to make them eat their whole lunch. Sure, it helped to ask what they wanted and how much and to only give them a little bit, but it was always the same little ones who struggled to eat, and I thought it was unfair. Why couldn't they just bring a little something from home and have as much or as little as they wanted like when I was in school? In fact, why didn't they have as much time to play and run around after lunch as I did at that age? You can chalk it up to cultural differences, but I don't think it's culturally insensitive to say that all children need play time to develop normally.

5) I wasn't supposed to go off-topic in class, but both me and the students had the most fun with off-topic discussions.

6) Same goes for "open drawing time". I had them talk about the pictures in English, so shouldn't that count as learning?

7) Not related to kindergarten itself, but one of the other teachers was actively antagonistic towards me from the time I arrived in Korea, and I regularly felt excluded and like I wasn't receiving enough guidance and help with adjusting to the job.

I don't know what frustrated me more: the fact that the kids wanted to be running around or the fact that I could sympathize more with the kids than with anyone else. I literally told the kids that if it were up to me, we'd all play outside instead of being in class. I even quoted the line from The Catcher in the Rye about the kids running around.

The elementary classes were far more chilled out, and I could handle those no sweat. In my personal opinion, no one should even be in school until age 6 (western age) at the youngest. If the parents REALLY want the little ones to start learning English before age 6, they should just invite foreigners to their house to play with the kids in English. I think they'd learn just as much from a half hour of playing pretend in English as they would from hours in a classroom. I've also noticed from babysitting that children that age tend to be much gentler and less aggressive when they're not in a group. They also tend to have longer attention spans-- my brothers and I could focus on things for hours at a time when we were really little, possibly because we stayed home.

I guess the long and the short of it is that I love the little ones, I just hate controlling a room full of them.

[Hotwire]

^

This illustrates a very important point - what type of kindergarten academy is it and how do they run the school? What are their expectations etc...?

For me, From day one they left me to teach whatever I want and I base my classes primarilly on flashcards, ppts (which are really just big f/cards on a tv) songs, vidoes and games.

I wouldn't try to get them to write in English as they are just starting to learn how to do so in Korean!

But in the Hakjwan where I taught kindy, there were video cameras in each classroom, kids had to sit on a chair at a desk, write and yes act very proper and me and my korean split shift teacher were constantly harrangued by the ajumas who would sit outside watching us on the monitors a few times a week.

They would complain that I didn't look at their kid as much as other kids... That their kid wasn't near enough to the board, that I stood wrong, that my co-teacher SAT wrong in class etc... I talked wrong, jees you name it...

Then there are some really cool independent kindies around apgu and gangnam that foster a very creative and realistic atmosphere. It's hard to judge really, so always best to insist on in person interview, tour of school, and def always speak to a present or past native teacher there.

As much as I love teaching kindy and it IS my fave age group, I would still take an aft 40 min class gig of ele / mid anyday just for the ease of it. Whilst the kids may be a joy to teach at a kindy - the institute and the way it's run may well stand in the way of it being so!

[Fox]

My first semester here I taught the kindergarteners at my elementary school as part of my class load 3 times a week (unfortunately our school's kindergarten program was ended as part of a consolidation of kindergartens in my town). I found it to be a genuine joy; the children were enthusiastic, obedient, and learned exceptionally quickly. Teaching kindergarteners in fairly small groups (15 or fewer) is quite nice. If I didn't like my current job so much, I'd consider a kindergarten job.

[discostu333]

[take a rest]

I had a single kindy class, and I really liked the kids... but yeah, it was hard. I would come out of that class charmed, exhausted and not wanting to be touched by anyone. They're like little monkeys- groping and hugging and poking, etc.

But like everything in life, it all pretty much depends on the school. A good kindy where everyone is nice and willing to help is probably better than a middle school where everyone hates you because you make too much money and smell.