Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bcjinseoul]

The 1990s: The few in Korea were essentially doing tons of private lessons and part time jobs and making money hand over fist, many didn�t even have a degree. It was a free-for-all. Japan was the place to be then, anyway, like in the late 1980s.

Pre-2006: Hardcore teachers market, THOUSANDS of jobs available, great exchange rate for American teachers, tons of time off with any public school or college gig, no paper trail for a visa. Public schools en masse begin opening their doors to foreigners. Most people don�t even know about Korea, because facebook hasn�t become big and hasn�t started open registration.

December 2007: US Recession begins, and coincidentally, first harsh visa laws are passed. County wide criminal background checks are required, with state apostille. Those all-new to Korea have to now have an interview at the consulate at a major city like NY or San Fran. This is the very slow beginning of the end of the Golden Age of ESL in Korea (like Japan 15 some years ago)

Early 2008: Public schools in the Gyeonggi-do province around Seoul become so desperate for people that they begin allowing those with AS degrees or even 60 credit hours earned at a college teach for a smaller wage.

Fall of 2008: Worldwide implosion of financial markets hits, exchange rate is horrible for American teachers, unemployment and layoffs start toward the tail end of 2008.

2009: The Great Recession in full effect. ESL market becomes more crowded, as more and more 22-25 year olds with liberal arts degrees, debt, and no job skills give Korea shot because they can�t find anything decent in their own country. Later in 2009, statewide criminal checks become mandatory, with apsotille from the state, and vacation time with most public schools becomes replaced with mandatory, unpaid summer and winter camps for most Native English Teachers. College gigs in major cities lean toward only those in the country with MA�s and relevant college teaching experience and go from 3-5 months vacation to 6-8 weeks vacation. Exchange rate flounders up and down. Thanks to Internet 2.0 and Facebook, suddenly EVERYONE knows SOMEONE in Korea, like it�s a fad.

2010: As the old decade passes away and the new one begins, Korea borders on a fully saturated ESL market like Japan/Taiwan, minus the most horrible of hogwons or rural of public schools which always seem to be hiring. Recruiters are inundated with resumes. Exchange rate still ain�t great for American teachers. Older and more experienced teachers are shunned. Vacation time at most public schools is halved and quartered. College gigs in the country are getting people with MA�s. In the middle of 2010, American teachers are required to have an FBI check apostilled by the US Secretary of State and a notarized and apsotilled copy of original college degree. The number of applicants later in 2009 and earlier in 2010 for public school mass hirings outnumbers positions available several to one. Those who are already in country and changing jobs find themselves with a very few �good� positions left to fight for, and a lot more �bad� positions (low pay for long hours, little time off/benefits, etc). English Villages seem on their way out, too.

Summer of 2011 (present): GEPIK, or the public school system of the Gyeonggi-do province is about to be shut down over the rest of the year. Other metropolitan offices of education should follow suit. (EPIK, SMOE, etc) For those in Korea with connections, the future looks alright, for those new or in the middle of their first year, things have waned. Later this year, hundreds (maybe thousands?) of teachers will have to decide between either a)going home, b)taking the worst possible hogwon gig (eg, 9am-7pm, 1.9-2.1 M KRW a month, 2 hour classes, no return airfare, no pension, 1 week vacation, horrible apartments, etc) or c) going to China, or somewhere else altogether. There won�t exactly be tons of jobs in Taiwan or Japan to apply to, that�s for sure.

2012-2015�and beyond: Every college gig in every major city will demand a PhD, or at least an MA, and get it. With most public school gigs gone, there will be an upswing in after school programs, and more hogwons will be staffed. Job boards like Dave�s ESL and Work n� Play will continue to reflect a tighter and tighter job market, and begin looking like Gaijin Pot or Ohayeo Sensei in Japan. Most hogwons will be as bad as they ever were, and after school programs might end up making their hours and shifts as long as most hogwons (a jump from 6 hours to 8-10 hours). College gigs will be the only gigs with full benefits, job security, and more than 2 weeks vacation, and minus those in rural locations, will continue to be as picky as they have been in recent years with applicants. Even with unemployment ticking up better and better in the States, the word is out about Korea, like Japan back in say, 1993. The Golden Age is definitely in the past. That�s why there�s China.

[ZIFA]

[some waygug-in]

Yes. +1

[SeoulMan6]

[wylies99]

The schools get a lump sum of funding once per year that is supposed to pay for all of the costs for the foreign teacher. Is it enough money to cover 100% costs for the foreign teachers? You better believe it is. Schools usually have enough extra money to do renovations, buy new equipment for classrooms, and do who knows what with all of the funds. Then, from time-to-time, the Korean government passes extra funding for high-performing schools or to set up model school programs.

The Provincial school authorities could save a great deal of money by selling off 1-2 of those money pits known as English Villages.

[happiness]

yep, in 1996, the salary was about 1.3 million, but that went a long way locally (even if the exchange rate was not great)

but it was easy to make double that
not saying i did , but it was a great time.

tgi fridays was always empty exept for a few K families and the military.
movies were cheap. I had internet in my office (nice boss), and there was subway and burger king, and i could get coffee if I looked hard enough.


man, those days are gone, but its still good here, if youre smart.

imf time was great if you stuck it out. plates of imf galbi, 1000won per person. man, i ate a ton. i bought some cool suits for 30000won (stores had to go out of business) (they werent shiny though).

korea has some spoils left ....

[ippy]

I know this sounds twee, but one of the valuable things that a body on the ground provides (over and above the talking head via skype), is chaos.

Wait, dont stop!

I mean this.

When we are teaching in a school, we're also chatting to the kids after class or off our teaching schedule. We also meet them outside school and have short conversations. Now i know it might sound silly, but when you are chatting with a kid that doesnt really understand you and you dont really understand them, so long as youre both patient enough to work through those limitations it teaches strategies to communicate WITHOUT the necessary language skill. I appreciate that the obvious role of the pro teacher IS to give the student fluency, but part of the process of acquiring fluency is dealing with spontaneity or those trickier situations and working through them.

Often the kids want to talk about stuff that has nothing to do with the textbook or what theyre learning in class. Its much deeper and more personal. And they dont have the language skill to cope with it. But that 5 minute interaction where they 'have a real conversation' in english with their teacher in a much less sheltered (though still somewhat sheltered of course if the teacher is at least a little bit decent at their job), environment will do them the world of good.

Sorry if im mangling this point. Im trying to make the case for something that might seem unimportant.

Those little moments of (organised) chaos help motivate students to use english in the real world. This isnt to say that this is the best! its just to say that its a supplemental part of what the NET brings that shouldnt be forgotten.

Let me explain:

The JET programme in Japan is very clear on what your role as an ALT is: Internationalization. You are NOT the language teacher. Its a bit nebulous i appreciate, but the general gist is that you are there to be precisely that chaotic element to the test. We are there to counterbalance what was perceived as an understanding of english with an inability to use it.

My old supervisor in japan LOVED the JET programme. She was completely gung ho about it. She was also one of the best teachers in the prefecture (i watched her teach once and she was phenomenal).

She told us this little point to try and get us to understand just how far things had come.

"Twenty years ago, before the Jet programme, a foreign teacher would walk into a school and all the kids would look on wild eyed amazement, giggling and whispering to each other 'gaijin da!' 'gaijin da!'. Twenty years on and no one cares."

For her it was one of the great achievements of the JET programme that interactions between japanese school kids and their ALTs was a normal everyday occurence; they could approach their ALT just as anyone else.

Switching to screens puts english into a pure controlled environment. Sure, itll have the spontaneity of an actual human being at the helm, but its still a very organised, controlled and sheltered environment that makes a very clear delineation between this rarefied classroom practice area where someone feeds you understandable lines within a clear understood context, versus the chaotic world out there. I think an NET helps bridge that gap a little. Not necessarily during class time, but also during lunch time, during break times, during cleaning times and also on the way home.

But then again, maybe im a product of the jet system more than the net system, so internationalization is still my primary aim as a NET (even if language education is supposed to be my actual remit here in korea).

Still i'm kind of a bad English teacher, but i realise out there in the Daves world are good teachers that can do both those things, and i honestly feel that talking heads on tv screens just cant internationalize as well as educate, and that 'internationalization' is one of those things that korea maybe overlooks in its second language education.

[silkhighway]

Hey ippy,

When I worked for GEPIK I used to help clean the English classroom with a group of kids. For me, it was an excuse to get out of the insufferable teacher's room, for them, they were assigned to it as part of their homeroom duties. After spending a year with them, I really think they got more out of my presence than any class or anyone else did. One of the girls had pretty decent English skills but she was shy, and just my presence everyday eventually made her really open up by the end of the year. Some of the other students were not great English students and were in the "low-level" classes. Still, I think just that they were with me for 15 minutes every day actually acomplishing a real task made a huge difference to them. By the end of the year, I really do think they were much more comfortable to just *try*.

[ZIFA]

[PigeonFart]

I agree with the internationalization theory, especially for those outside of Seoul ---> 'Gyeonggi-do' can still be quite different to Seoul in spite of its close proximity.

Just taking a day trip outside Seoul exposes me to the stupid hellos, pointing, staring, gasps, and giggles i once endured on a daily basis when i lived outside Seoul. This doesn't happen in Seoul, people are more cosmopolitan through more exposure to non-koreans.

This provincial mindset would lose a business deal much quicker than a lack of language skill, because it actually makes people hate the hangooks. I would never view someone negatively because their English is poor, but if they effing point and laugh at me they're digging themselves into a hole.

So the Gyeonggi-do kids will lose out on the valuable daily exposure to seeing other non-koreans as real people (i can't believe i actually have to write this, but that's how backward some of these hangooks really are). I feel sorry for the teachers losing their jobs too.

[brakattack]

[tideout]

I have a signed contract with SMOE for August this year. In fact, I'm already traveling outside of the States in anticipation of arriving in Korea later.

Sorry to ask such a stupid question but how am I affected if I'm affected then?

As of today, I've heard nothing new from them or any coordinators there.

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

tideout

[rainism]

[PatrickGHBusan]

ippy I agree that a teacher on the ground and in person offers significant advantages for the students.

Those advantages are however in large part intangible. Cost is on the other hand a hard measurable thing.

Note the post about how JET is in decline. These programs were ALWAYS meant as temporary measure to plug a gap for a time. They also cost the school system and in times when budgets become limited, foreign educators are the place to cut. When you factor in how technology is taking a larger role in education and at a fraction of the cost of hiring, paying, and housing an on site foreign teacher, well an administrator will think twice about how to spend his or her budget.

Then add the fact that distance education WORKS and can be effective and you get a trend or at least an option. Thinking that EPIK and GEPIK are permanent programs was not something that anyone should have done. When you read up on how and why these programs were created you clearly see the temp nature of them.

You also seem to gravely underestimate how distance education can be effective in a classroom. I actually sat in on a class in Busan last winter where they used video conferencing with a US teacher as part of English class. The response of the students was off the charts. It was not some pure control environment either. The US teacher interacted with the students as it was a TWO WAY video conference. She was able to use multimedia to support her interaction and the on-site Korean teacher was part of the lesson as well.

This is still in development but frankly speaking, the teachers in that school were thrilled as was the US teacher with whom I chatted via skype after the lesson.

[tideout]