Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Tallgesse]

Yeah that might be a little out of my range. I'm not really trained for early child hood. Of course I understand, a lot of people who go into this aren't, but since I am in an applicable major I might as well use it where it fits best. Looking at my portfolio here of college level work, I notice a lot of my lesson and unit plans, classroom management material etc. is aimed at 5th graders through middle school levels. This wasn't entirely a consious decision, its just where my ideas fit best at the time, but perhaps those subconsious impulses were pointing me to the grade level I'd fit best with.

I see what you guys are saying now, that kind of exposure, if its consistent and for long periods, may create bilingual learners at an early age but its not so much teaching at that point as care taking. The lucrative part for me was the consistency of work. I'm also usually a proponet of the idea that the path to job security is doing what no one else wants to. I feel like if you are aiming specifically for Kindy, you can get a position where your developing in a specific area, and you know that area well and just keep pushing that skill set. Where as, and I'm saying this so you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, your not likely to get that otherwise, Hogwan or public.

My understanding has been that most positions require you to teach multible levels. If your working for a public elementary school your going to be exposed to everything from 1st through 5th or 6th grade, am I correct?

[Modernist]

Hah, just like clockwork Northway will come along and tell us all how Kinder really isn't THAT bad and can be so very satisfying 'cause of the high level of language pickup and so forth. OP, just recall that Northway here is in a VERY small minority on this forum and among EFL teachers here. The vast majority of people teaching Kinder hate it with a passion and aren't shy about saying so. There's a reason you can find Kinder positions so easily--they get runners constantly because spending all day 'teaching' -5-6-year olds will drive almost any sane person out.

Steer clear. Do elementary, it is 100 times less stressful, less aggravating, less mentally and physically draining [though no picnic].

I teach PS elementary for part of my contract. In Korea English isn't started in ES until 3rd grade, but the majority of public schools will have an after-school class for 1st and 2nd graders that you will have to teach. They can be somewhat fun, but the level will likely be quite low and you will be doing an enormous amount of repetition, demonstration, chanting and singing. Any 'games' you do will have to be exceedingly simple. Personally most days I'm not a fan--3/4 graders are SO MUCH easier to work with. But I only have the 1/2s twice a week for one class, so I live with it.

[Lazio]

Personally I wouldn't trade kindy for any other age groups. I have to mention though that my situtation is different from these full-time gigs. I work between 10 and 4, making twice as much as an average E-2. Basically it's a freelance type of work and I'm an F-2. I have been doing it for more than 2 years and now I have a lot of materials prepared so there is almost zero preparation. I'm free to do whatever I want as long as the kids are happy. No stupid tests and useless curriculum. I've heard no complaints from the kindergartens nor from the parents. I have some bad days but it happens regardless of what your job is. Although the number of these bad days decreased rapidly as I gained experience and prepared a lot of things. I have to admit when I first started I had no idea what was I doing, I was unprepared many times and it was a whole lot harder. Now I know exactly what will work well with the kids and I'm all prepared. This way the job is really easy. It just takes some time to adjust. But it's not for everyone. Unfortunately you don't really know if you are good at it or not untill you try. Well, if you hate kids than better avoid these kind of jobs.

These little kids are very cute and can shower you with so much love. They also love English, unlike the older students. Not really a surprise since it's all about having fun with them.

[northway]

The advice I consistently give is that kindy's not too bad if you're really good with young kids. I am, a lot of people are not. This is something you know about yourself already; if you're not, then avoid kinder jobs. If you are, then you can probably handle them and do well. Training is less important than natural ability when it comes to the little ones. And yes, a lot of people here are actually hateful to their kinder students, but a lot of the people here shouldn't be teaching kids in the first place.

[Who's Your Daddy?]

I taught kindie at OeDae hogwon, and Kids Club. English kindergarten at the big chains is okay. The kids will study phonics, and practice printing letters, then small words like CAT. They can start reading sentences "the shark is big."

But I've also taught part-time at a Korean kindergarten. There an English "class" is more dancing around to an English song (head & shoulders), and you're more a dancing monkey. Pretty intolerable unless they're handing you a wad of cash at the end of the hour:)

[Jotun_Symph]

My Kindergarten experience was so-so. The kids made it non-stop hilarity, but it was the amount of classes we had that made it suck. I would feel great the first three classes and then chug coffee the rest of the day to stay alive. Non-stop movement and talking. If you consider yourself some sort of tough guy or serious professional person, then I wouldn't teach Kindie because you are treated as somehwhat of a clown, and it's hard not to feel like one when you're singing "itsy bitsy spider" every day.

[Tallgesse]

Well I'm not above those things and many of them are good instructional tools for that age range. My attitude is proffesional because I'm around proffesionals while I'm on this board. Understanding of course not everyone sees themselves, or us, that way, but that is their perogative.

The thing that gets tricky for me about these kind of questions on an ESL board, is that you have a lot of people, myself included, who were not profesional teachers in the states. Nothing wrong with that. Except that it can be hard to segreagate the trials. When someone mentions a problem on these boards I have to ask myself, is this a tribulation of teaching in Korea? Or is this simply a tribulation of teaching anywhere?

Obviously problems of not getting paid, not getting the housing promised, important contractual disputes, these are field specific and serious concerns. Sometimes however other problems are simply a matter of the employee isn't a teacher, doesn't want to be a teacher, and wasn't prepared to be a teacher. I feel like some issues are connected with teaching in Korea, when in reality, they are just issues that come with a teaching position, no matter where you are.

The high energy, song and dance game is common to that age range anywhere. If I pursued Kindy, I would expect these. If I pursue teaching in any country or grade level, I expect to have to communicate with parents, write grading reports, create lesson plans sometimes on my own time, attend seminars and training sessions, and assist in clubs and after school activities. These things are to me just part of the teaching proffesion (regardless of if you are in the camp that says "we're just teaching assistants' or not). I understand of course if this is a temporary thing and this isn't your target field, how those things could be irritating and depressing.

I'm starting to get a picture now of how Kindy operates in Korea though and I can see how some things are quite different in terms of structure. The age range was a suprise to me. I'm not taking Kindy off the table though, I understand the perspective of both the posters who find it rewarding and those who do not.

[fezmond]

i agree with lazio but i understand that it's definately not for everyone.

i first took kindy (and ele in the afternoons) because the pay was high, a friend recommended it and it was a job when i seriously needed one.

the first 3/4 months were rough as hell, especially the new 5/6/7 year olds who'd never been in a school before. it was equally tough for them because i'd never had experience with that age group and didn't know what i was doing.

after a while, things start to fall into place and as lazio said, you start to understand what works and what doesn't. i'm not sure if my school is typical or not but we don't play songs and dance all day. there are set pages but it's entirely up to me how i teach and what i do in the class. i'm sure i could tell them all to sleep and it wouldn't be noticed.

this is my second year (same school) and the first few months were the same - new kids didn't know how to behave. thankfully i'm much better this time around - still room for improvement - so it's not too bad for me.

these days i'm much more concerned about elementary classes who are starting to show complete disregard for all schooling. seems they've been burnt out by age 10-11 and are much harder to motivate.

kinder definately isn't for everyone, just as teachig adults is something that scares the sh*t out of me. personally i hate teaching 5 year olds but 6/7 is great.

same as any job - tough if things are going bad, fine if things are good.


i'd also like to disagree with anyone who thinks parents expect kids to just learn a few sentences by the year's end. as previously said, the kids should be able to communicate effectively and be able to write sentences, full paragraphs after a year (5 y/o aside). :s

[Jotun_Symph]

[Tallgesse]

I don't want to be one of the new teachers that believes everything is going to be perfect and I won't have bad experinces like others have. Then again I want to stay optimistic but realistically do the ground work to make my experince as positive as it can be. This forum has already helped a lot in that way - I wouldn't know how to begin researching a school if not for here. Still though despite everything you can do to look into it, it still seems to be a chance gambit. But whats the adventure without a little chance right?

I think I'd like to find a topic with teachers explaining an average day at their school. Those have to be on here. I'll run the search as soon as I post this (don't expect you guys to do my work for me, but if you know of a thread off hand its appreciated. Searching doesn't always yield results. If I can't find one I'll post it as a question.)

[SeoulNate]

Wow, I am kind of surprised this has gone to the end of two pages and no one has mentioned this yet, but here goes.

IMO there is nothing wrong with teaching Kindie. It can be as fun and rewarding as any other job.

The catch in Korea is that generally Kindies have far and away the worst working hours of any Hakwon or public school position. The amount of people that I have met in my 4 years in Korea that have been working 10-12 hour days at a Kindie for 2.1-2.3 is astounding.

To this day I have no idea why people in their right minds sign 120-130 hour Kindie contracts that have them showing up at 9:30 am and leaving at 7:30. However, people are signing them and I see a crap ton of them every time I post a new job add to Daves or craigslist.

If you can find a Kindie that has working hours that are reasonable, 9:30-4pm or so, and you like kids then by all means, jump at the chance as it can be very fun. Just don't be the next person on here or the person I meet out and about who complains about their 12 hour working day at a kindie.

[Hotpants]

There's nothing 'right' or 'wrong' with kindy. It's whether it's right or wrong for you.

Working with kindy requires a lot of patience, a lot of energy, and a lot of willingness to behave ridiculously. The positives is that you can fart in class and get away with it, have a lot of fun, and have a mini fan club at your heels. The downside is that it's the most exhausting age group to teach, you need to understand early childhood development, and you'll catch lots of colds from them.

Most importantly, if you do opt for kiny, find a good school with supportive management, who have actual experience of teaching young learners, and where care for the kids overrides how many pages of exercise books they need to complete each day.

[daskalos]

I teach adults, but my first year here I taught kids at an English village - kindie to middle schoolers. If I were forced again to teach children, I would teach kindergartners for the simple reason that they are so cute and sweet that I never once wanted to beat one of them, and I cannot say that about the older kids.

[downstack]

I don't want to just repeat what many have said about how complicated teaching kindie at an English kindie hagwon can be. The curriculum problems, the conflict between the school having the kids' interest in mind vs. profit, etc. I just want to contribute my own experience.

I signed up for kindie fully expecting that I would be exhausted, ill-suited, and fairly unhappy at the job. I had no experience with kids or teaching. I was kind of just desperate for a stepping stone to Korea while I study to enter grad school here and I happened to fin a school with decent starting pay and a good reputation. It is an English immersion school, so there are foreign teachers in every class and it teaches ages 5-7.

The first few months were rough due to the complete lack of guidance or information about what was expected of me, what the kids were capable of, and the fact that I was given a class that spoke literally zero English. I was unhappy because of the school though, and not because of the job. It immediately became clear to me that I cared so much more about doing a good job for these kids than I ever realized and I poured a lot of energy into educating myself about child development, changing my attitude to be suited for their age (I had zero experience with kids before coming). The actual time spent teaching was what I enjoyed so much-- totally the opposite of what I expected. I love the kids and teaching kindie more than I can express, despite all of the exhaustion and the trials and drama with administration. The kids make up for all of those issues for me. Because of this job I found so much energy, patience and creativity inside myself that I never knew was there.

One thing I can say that makes my situation unique is that I speak Korean, so I could understand everything the kids said and then teach them how to say it in English. It's been 6 months and they can read, write, speak, tell stories, make jokes, everything in English. I had no idea how rewarding this job would end up being and am even considering postponing graduate school in order to keep doing it a little while longer.

[adzee1]

I teach half the day kindy and half day elementary. The kindy kids are ok for a bit of fun and sweet but are difficult sometime as the ones I have are not capable of understanding a simple instruction like " stick the name of the animal on the picture " without repeated demonstration. Also I have the sour faced kindy korean teachers sitting in my class complaining that the class is too hard, then they complain its too easy, no pleasing them basically.

I have seven 20 minute kindy classes in the morning and i am happy when they are over as then i have elementary when at least what i say is understood. Also after teaching the same age groups in Mexico and bearing in mind all the money spent on education here, I would say that Mexican kids are maybe a bit more difficult to manage discipline wise, but far more advanced when it come to understanding basic instructions and much more advanced in social interaction than the kids i currently have.