Korean Job Discussion Forums

[knelly]

I work at Poly Mokdong...which will probably make me a shill for the man in the eyes of some posters here....be that as it may...I've been here over a year and I think I have a pretty fair perspective on the place. It's a good job...but it's not your average slacker hogwon gig. You really do have to work...prep, teach, put in long hours, and put forth effort on those "big books". Poly has around 10 locations...so yeah, they do hire pretty much regularly. As always it's a trade off...do you want to have loads of free time and little money, or are you here to make money? By the way, some of the info regarding pay is inaccurate. Check the job listing and you will see that it does not take you three years to get to 2.4m. won...it takes an Ed. degree. I'm glad to see that some of the posters are actually standing up for Poly even if they didn't choose to work here. The deal is pretty straigh forward and the staff are always willing to give you the pros and cons. Anyway...I do enjoy the good bit of uninformed jackassery posted by bitter folks...keep it coming.

[gi66y]

[crazylemongirl]

[phaedrus]

If you are teaching for six hours per day there should be no prep, or very little.

The teaching day should be about three to four hours, and three hours prep, that sounds right.

[seoul'd out]

I have a few freinds working at Poly schools. They work 1-9pm (two hours of preparation) or 9:15- 6:40 (or 7:30). They get around 2.4- 2.9 respectively but do work their asses off. I am constantly hearing about complaints how tests are made every month and the work load is quite heavy. They do say the kids have a great knowledge of English as most have spent time overseas. All teachers have Ed degrees or something similar. If you want to do actual teaching and can handle LONG days then the schools from what I hear is the best in Seoul.

[own_king]

Now I can only speak from my experience and I do not really mean this to be a negative post although after re-reading I can see that is sounds like that, but here it goes anyway. I worked for Mokdong Poly for one year and found it overall a good experience as the kids were nice and generally well-behaved and also very strong in their English ability, even in the ESL program. For me, the children are the most important aspect of any teaching position, so I put up with a lot of crap, that I normally would not have.

If you have a B.Ed you will be paid 2.4 million for the aftenoon shift or 2.8 for the Kindy/Elementary shift. For this shift, you will work your ass off - no doubt. Most teachers can not handle this workload. The 1-9 shift is a little more easy to handle, but the workload is still heavy. The directors do not want you marking homework in class except during exam periods whic occur every month, rather "our homeowrk" should be done during your prep, even if the kids are using those books the same day. The directors feel that the teachers should always have more homework than the kids. With regards to pay, Poly does always pay on time. Only once did our pay come a day late, but that was due to some mix-up at the bank. They will, however, try to work the numbers at the end to make your last pay (and severence) as little as possible. Also Poly expects the teachers to be standing all day long. We had our director threaten to take all of the teachers chairs out of the rooms if we did not. He said that he has done it before. As a teacher at Poly, you can expect the directors and administration to always be in your face about something petty, so expect a lot of hassles. I have seen female teachers at Poly reduced to tears over something that seemed very trivial. I have seen other teachers threatened with their job if they did not get all the homework marked correctly on a more consistent basis. Also in your apartment, you can forget about getting hot water in the winter. It will be lukewarm at best and since the bathroom is not heated you are going to have some pretty cold mornings. The school did make some efforts to get the landlord to do something about it, but still the problem persisted all winter for most of the teachers, because in the end, nothing could be done. It had something to do with the pipes and it would be too costly to fix so you have to "just endure".

I have friends who still work at Poly in Kangnam who tell me that the situation is much worse now. They are constantly expected to do extra chores re curriculum development and other more menial tasks that eat up their entire preps, so they have to come in even earlier than before. Also they have installed cameras in the classrooms and teachers' room, but I heard the school later removed the one from the teachers' room over some legal issue.

After learning all of this and after considering my own experiences, I decided that maybe Poly is not for me anymore. If you just want a normal teaching job for 6 hours a day, without all the pressure and petty griping then maybe Poly is not for you either, but if you can handle the crap for a little better pay and a lot better kids, then give it a try. For me, it is really a toss up.