Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Flashcard_Queen]

I've been teaching after school classes at an elementary school in Suwon since 2010, on an E2 visa. The company I work for is very small. Initially, they set up after school computer classes. I was the first foreign English teacher they hired when they started to branch out.

I'm not unhappy with my current job, but I'm not as happy as I once was either. Things have changed a lot since March of this year, and I think most of the changes have been detrimental.

I'm wondering about the working conditions in other after school programs. I won't go into detail about the particulars of my job now, but I'm happy to answer any questions and divulge more informaton later if a conversation ensues.

So, here's what I'm wondering:

1) Where are you located?

2) Do you have a Korean co-worker? Do you switch classes on alternating days? If not, how does it work?

3) How many students do you have in total? How many in each class?

4) What are your working hours, and how many classes do you teach every day?

5) What books do you teach? Do you have a say at all in this regard?

I'd love to hear from people. Thanks in advance for your responses!

[Gorf]

1) I work in Seoul
2) I have a Korean coteacher who is with me all the time, every day, in the room. She basically yells at any kids who get too rowdy. It's great.
3 + 4) Total is 60+ students, with 4 classes a day at 40 minutes each. The teaching hours are short but the student number is huge, and I feel like I make less of an impact since I have classes that are 21, 16, 14 and 14 students.
5) I get to choose my books (I'll leave the names out for anonymity's sake) but I feel it's mostly because my company has very little in the way of a general teaching standard.

I've also had some good and some bad experiences. The good is that the kids are super nice, not robots or zombies like at my old hagwon. The old hagwon ones were overschooled and never had a chance to just be kids. The kids here aren't as smart, but they have more energy and life, which is more fun for me. The location is good and I never see anyone besides me coteacher, who does a decent job. Having no bosses to talk to feels great.

The bad is that my company doesn't offer any benefits at all outside of a salary. I struggled the first few months trying to pay the landlord his back-key money, since my company didn't offer any and were pretty cold about it to me. They've also consistently tried to change the contract and push the pay dates back as far as they can, squeezing blood from a stone. Other than that, it's fine, but I know next year I will find a job that has housing allowance, key money, and health care + pension with about the same working hours.

PM me if you want to talk about the basics in more detail.

[Dodge7]

[zombiedog]

I work at "one of the best" hagwons on the east coast. The job pays about a million won more than some other hagwons, but you need an MA to work here.

On the plus side: I usually (caveat of course) have the say I want in my classes. Classes are no larger than 12 students, and are very well organized by ability. Pound for pound, it's the most organized hagwon I've ever worked at.

On the down side: The admin let you know it's a business before it's a school. Goal is to simply keep students moms' happy, even at the sake of class cohesion. More and more, the admin is starting to blame the teachers for any thing that goes wrong with enrollment. There is simply no trust between the NETs and the admin because of some payroll shenanigans.

[Gorf]

I'm pretty sure he means public school after school programs, not hagwons.

[nero]

Work in Seoul.
I have a Korean co-teacher who works in the room next door to me. We have the same classes Monday, Wednesday, Friday and the same classes Tuesday, Thursday. It works out okay, the only problem I have is that she uses too much Korean, so it can be hard to implement my 'no Korean speaking' rule.
My co-teach is pretty organised and teaches the curriculum quite thoroughly.

I have 3 or 4 45 minute classes a day depending on the day.

My biggest class has 11 students, my smallest has 4.

I have to be at school by 11.30 (I get there a bit earlier) and we start teaching after lunch at either 1pm (Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays) or 1.40pm (Tuesday/Thursday). I leave between 4-5pm depending on the day.


I teach the companies curriculum, but I am allowed to deviate and supplement my classes.

[Flashcard_Queen]

You're right, Gorf. I'm only interested in after school programs at public schools.

Thanks for the information anyway, zombiedog. I have an B.A. and a B.Ed., but no M.A., so wouldn't have a shot there, but it does seem like some of the problems you face are similar to mine.

There are a couple other questions I should have added before:

6) What type of visa do you have?

And

7) What's the deal with housing (provided or not, or housing money)?

If you pass this way again, Dodge7 and nero, could you let me know about that? Also, nero, how many students do you have in total?

[Dodge7]

[nero]

I'm on an E2.
I get 700,000 housing allowance. I chose to find my own housing.

I think I have about 52 students total. Started off with 37 six months ago, but that's still not enough to keep the program afloat at my school. I don't think my company is staying at this school after this semester.

[nero]

double post

[Flashcard_Queen]

Thanks for your replies, folks. Now for my rant.

The biggest thing I'm interested in is knowing the total number of students in other programs and whether or not there's a Korean teacher.

Even though the responses have been limited, I'm happy to find that the numbers are pretty much in the 50s and 60s because all I'm hearing from my coordinator these days is that �all other schools have upwards of 70-80 to even 100 students enrolled�, which to me translates as �what are you doing wrong?� When really, the question should be, �what has my company/school done wrong?�

The first year at my school, I had a Korean co-worker. Like you, Dodge7 and nero, we worked in separate, neighboring classrooms, and switched classes from day to day.

Before I came, I was told by the program coordinator that things were looking really good at the school and that, after they held an information session with a good parent turnout, there would most likely be around 100 students enrolling.

When I arrived, however, the enrollment was between 70 and 75 students and never went higher than that. As I result, I only taught about 3-4 45 minute classes a day, instead of the maximum 5 that was in my contract.

Looking back, I'm glad I had those extra breaks during the day. It gave me lots of time to do other things, one of which was printing and laminating flashcards (either from websites, or from cutting and pasting images from Google to Word and making my own), which I use all the time for dialogue activities; hence my username here, Flashcard_Queen. My collection is truly epic.

My co-worker actually quit at the beginning of October last year because she was getting married and moving to another area. So, my coordinator stepped in for her and taught from then until March.

During that time, our numbers dropped from the 70s to the 60s. Students often complained to me that they didn't like my coordinator's classes; they were too hard, not fun, etc.

Towards the end of last year I was told that, due to the lack of students, they were planning to get rid of the Korean teacher in March. They wanted to combine the classes, so long as I was okay with working from 12:00 to 5:45 every day, instead of 12:00 to 5:15, and teaching 5-6 class a day (40 min or 50 min, depending on the class). I like my provided apartment and location, I have full benefits, and I'm pretty happy with my overall set up, so I agreed.

I wish I'd told them it would only save money in the short term. I fully believe that if I still had a Korean co-worker, our numbers would be higher now than ever before. It's always been said that the parents in my neighborhood are a tad 'needy'. My former co-worker used to get a dozen or so calls every day from parents, just asking random questions about homework, class times, their child's progress, etc.

After the changes in March, we managed to keep our student numbers in the 60s; not bad, considering I was the only teacher and they no longer had to pay for a Korean teacher as well.

I'd moved into the larger classroom, formally occupied by the Korean teacher, and the phone still rang off the hook until I asked if I could unplug it; my Korean is getting stronger all the time, but it's definitely not good enough to have long conversations with concerned parents.

My coordinator assured me she would take the calls, since the parents also have her cell number, and while she helps out at my school as much as possible, even I can't get through to her (most of the time) right away when she's not there.

Also, starting in March, they decided to do re-registration every 2 months instead of 3 (March/April, May/June, July/August, and so on). Things took a turn this past July, when a lot of parents decided to pull their children out since summer vacation was coming up. We lost about 10 students, which dropped our total enrollment into the 50s.

On the first day back to regular classes in August, they passed out registration forms for our new 'semester', which was set to start two days later. Unlike me, they were surprised when we didn't have a lot of new students sign up.

I have a feeling that a lot of teachers don't promote our program and even the ones who pass the forms out diligently have no way of knowing whether they actually make it from the students' book bags to their parents or whether they get thrown into garbage cans, which probably happens more often than not.

I've since talked with my coordinator and told her that two days isn't enough. If you want more students to sign up, you have to get those forms out at least a week in advance. But as it is, we now have a total of 52 students. Of the 6 classes I teach, my smallest has 7 and my largest has 12.

Nobody has come right out and said it, but since I'm the one who's there every day, I feel like fingers are being pointed at me for this 'failure' in our program.

There's no doubt that, when I no longer had a Korean teacher to help out with classroom management, I had to tighten things up a bit and become a little stricter (not that my students take that very seriously), but I also implemented new reward programs and did as much as could to make things work.

I'm not one to boast, but I'm good at what I do. I'm a very active teacher, and I've seen huge improvements in my students. Most of the ones I have now have been with me from the beginning, which is going on two years.

I'm being told now that things have to be more fun for the students, which is funny to me because, last year, when we were switching books every 4 months, I had more time for games (vocab. bingo, listening to pop songs and filling in the missing words on a worksheet - I like to make even fun things a little educational - and just generally taking time away from book work to do other things), but then I was told we had to switch books every 3 months and since the books I teach are rather large, that meant book work almost every day, with no time for anything else.

Again, I've discussed this with my coordinator. Switching from 4 months to 3 is actually one of the first things we ever butted heads about. Now, she sees my point of view, which she certainly didn't before.

We're hoping that, by going back to the way things were (e.g. doing more fun activities during the course of the week) and passing out registration/re-registration forms earlier this October, things will pick up again for our new November/December enrollment period.

Also, one of the reward systems I implemented is a snack/bingo party day after the class as a whole has received 15 stickers. Now, we're allowing students to bring a friend on these days to promote the program from within.

I could go on, but this rant is already long-winded enough. Needless to say, I'm hoping things start looking up when we have our next enrollment period, as I'd like to stay at the school, or at least with the company, for another year, if not longer.

I can't imagine going back to a hagwon or working for GEPIK or SMOE, having done that before. The working hours for after school programs are perfect for me, and knowing that so many companies don't want people with E2 visas these days make staying with my current company even more important to me.

[Dodge7]

Geez, you're worrying too much. Relax, much of what you are worrying about is out of your control. It could be that students are dropping out for lack of money at home (I'd say more than 50% of the reason). I think you're putting too much unnecessary pressure on yourself, really.

[Flashcard_Queen]

I know. I have anxiety issues. In fact, my first post on Dave's a few months back was about just that.

I also have a tendency to rant; I didn't realize how long my most recent reply was until after I'd posted it.

Like I said, I know I'm good at what I do, and I'm doing everything I can to ensure that we have a quality program. I know that the biggest reason we're suffering at the moment is because things are being poorly coordinated higher up.

I just wanted to know from a few other people what enrollment is like at their schools, since I'm constantly hearing how much better other schools are doing.

Thanks, though. I'll try to relax and just roll with the punches. Easier said than done for somebody with anxiety issues, but still... I'll give it a go.

[Flashcard_Queen]

Also, just needed to vent. I used to have a Korean co-worker for that. We still talk from time to time, to compare our current work situations, since she works for a different company now, but thought I'd throw a few things out here as well. Catharsis, ya know?

[Gorf]

Interesting story. I'm honestly amazed at other things in this thread: what weird company thinks that having over an hour and a half of prep time means anything? I spend 5 minutes looking at the day's lesson plan, corresponding book pages, and the just start class. Also, 700,000 for housing allowance? My god, sign me up for that. I'm on an E2 visa.

And yeah, don't even bother with talking to Korean parents or worrying about the numbers. My Korean is better than most lazy waygooks, but still nowhere near fluent enough to talk about what to do on this homework or that test. I wouldn't even waste my time answering the phone if I were you. Your job is to teach English and babysit these parents' kids until they get home from work. I am like you, the students I have taught since their starting English lessons are WAY better than the ones who had my predecesor. I teach the same kids 5 days a week, unlike you who have a MWF/TTH schedule and my number is about 60, so oh have it easy if you have less than 14 kids per class like mine are. Mine are so big sometimes that we need extra desks. That's why my program has to have a Korean coteacher in the room at all times, controlling 22 Korean children isn't possible for a whitey. That, and none of the other teachers at the school would ever volunteer to let us use another classroom.