Korean Job Discussion Forums

[earthquakez]

Referring to what somebody said on pg 1, recruiters are part of the problem in Korea generally and that includes GEPIK. I was privy to emails sent between somebody and a recruiter. Their friends contacted me, so desperate were they to offer their friend advice re a recruiter for GEPIK and a job offer from a GEPIK school.

I asked if I could see the emails although I don't know the person and they sent them to me. It was a revelation to see just how unprofessional this fellow was (the recruiter). Wriggling out of answering questions, accusing the person of things that had nothing to do with their emails - they were doing what smart people do and asking for information.

The final email was rather hysterical - as in not funny but over the top nonsense, personalising the issue. I pity anybody who comes up against him because obviously he won't have your interests in mind. He's clearly out to make a quick won as soon as he can and is into bulldozing the foreigners he deals with.

Makes me grateful to be doing my hagwon work - fairly long hours but little nonsense and the ability to make a real difference in students' lives because of the low numbers in class and the interaction hagwons have with their students.
If you can put up with shorter vacation (10 days unfortunately but it's doable) good hagwons are the way to go if you want to cut out public school nonsense including the kinds of recruiters they get.

[Riker]

After working manual labor all of these posts seem so trivial. I would love to have these "crappy" jobs.

Hopefully everything goes smoothly on my paperwork and I will let you know when I start GEPIK in about 3 weeks.

[Wiltern]

[sirius black]

It used to be a PS job almost always trumps a hogwon job. Even a decent hogwon but it appears the gap is narrowing. The vacation time seems to be the most compelling reason. That is on average an extra week each summer and winter. I know of a few hogwon teachers who simply take up to a month off after their contract when re-signing with the same hogwon. Their bonus pays them for that month. Not the same but it works out to it almost.
Overall, the PS jobs are better than hogwon though I think. If PS jobs get any worse it may not be the case for much longer. Jobs in Korea comes down to who you have work for. A great boss is a godsend for any job and can make a hogwon better than a PS job in a lot of cases. Bottom line is do your research. Talking to a former teacher or two is a MUST nowadays.

[Artris]

I think that, as foreigners, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that we are being singled out or persecuted. Sometimes we will be right, but many times we will be wrong. It is certainly a toss of the dice though when you apply for a school. It all depends on how well you can get along with your co-workers, and also how well they can get along with you.

I just wanted to mention that, regarding the forms about vacation, Korean teachers have to fill those out too. I believe it is a recent development set into motion by the new administration. I was asked to fill one out before flying overseas for vacation and was told that a Korean teacher who was flying to India had to fill out the same forms (I really do trust the source in this: my co-teachers are great).

I can understand why they would want to know where you are going: what if you get stuck there, etc. This is the first I've heard of forms involving personal expenses though. Those may be tax related, or you could be right. It isn't far fetched that the school may be worried about you not coming back.

[Illysook]

I'm lucky My co teacher is very kind. I get a certain amount of flak about my ls lessons being too difficutl but there are so many smart student who are stuck sitting ther bored because while the material is supposed to be for high school level, it's more like romper room.

One thing that bugged me at the hagwon last year was that I was expected to enter the hagwon and just teach as if I'd been doing it for my entire life. Of course I'd never done it before and it sucked being a new teacher. Kids pretended that they could't understand the most basic instructions and acted out at every opportunity. It drove me crazy. Anything that I learned was through trial and error, mostly error.

I imagine that during my first year of teaching. GEPIK would have been as bad ir worse than that hagwon. There was some training at a retreat center but it wasn't that great, but they did at least try to train me. I feel grateful to be at this school where they do not constantly ride me.

Having said this, There have been some problems. My co-teacher is taking a year off to care for her new baby, and her maternity leave made my life a little bit difficult. My open class with a male teacher who is 100% creepy adjoshi was a disaster. He barely let me teach at all and then because he had my phone number, he thought it was a good idea to drunk dial me one night saying that he "just wanted to hear my voice." I told him that was nice. Then I said that I was busy so I'd see him at school the next day." I should have asked him to put his wife on the phone!

This would be a good school for someone who has a little experience under their belt. There is a certain amount of deskwarming, but they usually let me go home at lunchtime and I don't have to come back. I'm sure that if I were giving them as many problems as I gave my hagwon last year, it would be different. However, I don't really mind that I was a difficult person at the hagwon. They didn't put any effort into making me comfortable there, so they got what they got.

[earthquakez]

Memo to Illy and all new to teaching - Come Prepared.

That rule applies in every case wherever you work, when you come in as somebody with no experience. My first ever English teaching gig was in a different country and I went with texts I'd picked up in bookstores, cheap teaching materials found here and there, and my own attempts at lesson planning before arriving.

I didn't use much of the content of the lesson plans I made but it was good practice for my job's requirements. I just can't understand why anybody, fresh out of uni or not, would arrive for an English teaching job anywhere in the world without making an effort first to learn about teaching English as a second/foreign language. You don't have to have a teaching degree but you do need to have done your homework and made use of the many resources whether you buy them (you can get cheap material) or get them off the net.

I agree, however, that the Korean employers who employ foreigners because they are white, young, very attractive/attractive/good looking, come from Canada and the US without having any record of relevant skills for the job etc, deserve the clueless, the totally inexperienced, the inexperienced, the inexperienced whose degrees have no relevance to English etc.

That's not to say a fresh graduate with no real job experience can't be a good English teacher in Korea or wherever. However, the priorities of Korean employers especially at hagwons end up being self-defeating fairly often in Korea. I agree that if they employ somebody with no prior experience and often no idea then they should provide training. However, surely as adults we all need to be prepared for a new job especially if it's something that hasn't been part of our employment history.

[Illysook]

Some preparation would have helped, a TEFL course or a book would have been nice. A friend who taught ESL to immigrants at church gave me a folder with a few worksheets, but I didn't really know what to do with them. So, when my school handed me a phonics book and said "go to it" I felt a bit panicky. It was very difficult, but I did the best that I could with what I had. I made a lot of flash cards and I learned some teaching techniques over the internet. This is my second year and I'm still working on it. The GEPIK training was slightly helpful, but when I was supposed to take the same training over the internet six months later, I didn't manage to finish it. It was too similar and I was bored...and how gay was that trainer anyway?

[methdxman]

Look, I feel for people having a bad experience, but it has nothing to do with Korea.

Your employers are in a position of power. They have a huge pool of teachers to choose from, because you guys can't get jobs anywhere else.

If there were few English teachers and a huge demand for teachers in Korea, you guys would be treated like kings. That's just not the case.

[MacLean]

"Look, I feel for people having a bad experience, but it has nothing to do with Korea."

[winterfall]

Besides digging up a 3 yr old post.

@earthquakez. Its very hard to come to korea prepared when you have no idea what English level or age group you'll be teaching. If you go the hagwon route you'd be teaching everyone from kindergarten to middle school with random outliers bunched together. If you go ps, your requested age isn't guaranteed and even their orientation workshops are pretty useless because of all the level variation between schools in different districts and even between multiple elementary schools in the same district.

A PS rep openly said during a workshop "When the government started the foreign teacher program they made certain assumptions that weren't true. The education system was not and still is not ready for Foreign teachers. Even very high level academic and foreign language high schools are not as high as we expected."

Translation: Culture and Rampant paper work magic skewed everyone's perceptions. You've just got to hit the ground running. Welcome to Korea!

[NYC_Gal 2.0]

[Illysook]

[some waygug-in]

For those of you who may think that most or all the problems with GEPIK or EPIK or any of the other public school districts are specific to Korea....


Check out the China forum.

Check out some of the other forums from other countries.


The EFL industry (if you can call it that) is rife with problems no matter where you go.


When I first started out in Mexico, the place was filled with whiners and complainers..... I was one of them.

What I wouldn't give to be back in good old Mexico now.

[NohopeSeriously]