Korean Job Discussion Forums

[R. S. Refugee]

Ok. I'm seriously looking now at non-uni jobs. And, given that I probably won't manage to get a uni job first time out, which is the best and the worst age groups to teach?

I don't have a lot of personal experience with children, but I have been around them, I'm not afraid of them, I think I have a good sense of how to communicate with them, I like them, and I'm a flexible learner myself with the ability to re-think and learn new strategies.

But, as I said, I haven't had a lot of experience teaching children. On the other hand, I have had 14 years of experience teaching adult recreational classes through a university affiliated organization, as well as some experience teaching ESL. Virtually all of these teaching experiences were with adult learners, so that's really where my experience lies.

I know that children take a lot more energy to teach than adults. And I am middle-aged so I do wonder about that a little. Yet, I am in pretty good shape from folk dancing generally 2-3 times a week for most of my adult life. I figure that teaching children would mean that I would get in even better physical shape.

There is one job in Seoul that I may be able to get.
1. Split shift (starting at 6:45 AM; ugh)
2. every other Sat.
3. provided housing for the first 3 months and then a stipend to go find something.

I'm really at the point where I'm going to make some decisions about what type of job to go for soon. So, any comments about the age group question and this Seoul possibility would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

(Note: Even if you're someone with diametrically opposed views to mine on the Current Events Forum, I'll still respect and appreciate your opinions on these questions.)

[Grotto]

There is one job in Seoul that I may be able to get.
1. Split shift (starting at 6:45 AM; ugh)
2. every other Sat.
3. provided housing for the first 3 months and then a stipend to go find something

What are they paying?????? 3.5 mil a month?

What are the rest of the particulars?

Split shifts suck. Working Saturdays sucks. Finding your own housing in Seoul can suck.

Keep looking on the surface this sounds like a crapfest.

[R. S. Refugee]

I'm waiting for an email that will include more of the details. 2.0 mil. is the pay, I think.

Don't most hagwon jobs have split shifts?

[peppermint]

Adult hagwons pretty much always have split shifts, kids ones generally don't. If you're going to take that job, make sure to ask what time the last class of the day ends.

I've taught adults, with a crazy schedule,and now I teach kids. I found the adults far more draining- more because of the schedule than anything else though. (my last class ended at 9:45pm and I had a half hour commute)

Teaching adults can be great for someone new to the country. Mine showed me around a bit, answered my dumb questions about the culture and were general.

On the down side- Adult schools (especially the bigger chains) tend to pay a little less and the schedule can be tough.

The other thing is that you probably won't get more than five days off at a time- ever. There's some law on the books about requiring 20 hours a month for adult hagwons and anything beyond that is considered vacation time.

For example- January 2005 has 21 days that fall from Monday to Friday. so you'd probably get a long weekend sometime this month. It's great if you want to explore the country at off peak times, but awful if you want to travel internationally.

PM me if you still have more questions.

[manlyboy]

I've been working with Korean kids for about 18 months now. I taught adults for three years before that. The idea of switching to kids worried me a lot, but it turned out to be a good trade off.
Losses: Intellectually stimulating lessons, almost no behaviour management required, huge social network to tap in to.
Gains: No more split shifts, kids are fun, students aren't allowed to tell you how to do your job.

As far as age groups go, this is how I would rate the kids at my school:

Grade 2: Literally bounce off the walls. Blood, poop, and urine is par for the course.
Grade 3: Still bouncing off the walls, but have better control of their orifices.
Grade 4: Mostly angels. Troublemakers are few enough to not provoke any psychotic episodes on my part.
Grade 5: My favourite. Mature enough to have decent conversations with, but not yet rebellious enough to be giving you crap all the time.
Grade 6: Give you crap all the time. Behaviour management skills are sorely tested here.

[R. S. Refugee]

[schwa]

If youre going to teach kids, no reason at all to even consider jobs requiring splits & saturdays.

My first job was a 3 to 9pm deal. First class was younger elementary tykes & then each hour was a successively older group up to middle schoolers. Last hour was a small group of adults. A nice sampler! I dont think thats such a rare situation.

The youngest were toughest for me when I was a newb but I grew to love them most. I just work with teens & adults now & I miss the young'uns.

[trevorcollins]

[Dylan]

Though I don't have any experience teaching adults, I do find that the older the kids get the harder the behaviour control gets. This is one of the reasons why out of all my children, I love my kindergarten kids the most simply because they are usually very fun to teach, lots of energy going between you and them, and they seem genuinely interested in almost everything. I find they are just so much easier because when one of them gets out of hand, which happens sometimes, you can generally curb the behaviour with a comment or a look. Once they get older they think it's cooler to act out in front of the other kids...

Anyway, that's just my opinion and like I said, I don't have experience teaching adults so...

[marista99]

First of all, do NOT take that job. You can definitely do better, assuming you have a university degree and are breathing.

As far as age groups, my experience has been similar to that of manlyboy. However, my school's small and thus I teach all age groups from age 5 to adult at some point during the week.

Kindy's a lot harder than I expected, and grades 1 and 2 are not much easier. It can be hard to come up with enough different activities to keep their short attention spans focused for 50 minutes. But they are cute and give you hugs draw you pictures, and that's fun for me. It is unbelievably rewarding to have a five year old give you a big hug and say "I love you teacher!"

I love my 3rd and 4th graders. They understand enough English to converse somewhat, they can stay in their chairs for most of the class, and they're not yet at the middle school hormonal eye-rolling stage where nothing is cool enough.

5th-6th grades are a mixed bag...from day to day even, probably because they're starting puberty and stuff. They chat a lot in class sometimes, and by this point they're too big for me to pick them up and drag them to the time out chair (much as I would like to).

Middle school classes are almost always hell for me. They are so burned out from being sent to 10 different hogwans and their parents make them study the rest of the time. All they ever want to do is sleep and play with their cell phones, and I can almost never get them into anything.

And adults; no discipline probelms here of course. The classes can be really interesting, but sometimes I get stuck trying to explain a fine point of grammar that I never really thought about. Some of the adults know a LOT more about English grammar than I do, even if they can't speak it to save their lives.

Hope that helps, and best of luck!

[lookingtoteach]

I loved teaching kindy. I had the babies of the school, the 4 year olds and after a few days of not being able to communicate anything to them (mainly because they hadn't gotten used to their new 'English' names), it was by far the most rewarding class, even if it was the class that I needed to prepare the most for. I also liked my more advanced upper elementary/lower middle school kids. These two classes mostly held kids who had either lived abroad for a couple of years or who were planning on living abroad. They were the classes that actually understood subtle humor which was fun. I also taught a high school class which was okay except it was five high school girls, one high school boy and a girl who was in 4th grade but had the skills of a high schooler. I couldn't get them to talk about class stuff if my life depended on it, so I just stopped using the textbook and basically had a conversational class with them. That worked out better. I told them that if they talked about the stuff we were for the entire class, I would give them 15 minutes at the end of class to do their other homework. They seemed to like that.

[jajdude]

I like grades 2-5 best I think. Mostly I find beginners hard at most ages, but the ones in elementary are better than older beginners. Not all, not always, but generally in my experience. Some of them got lousy attitudes though. If their level is higher the job is often easier.

[some waygug-in]

If you are going to teach kids in a hagwan, do yourself a huge favor and get a copy of David Paul's - Teaching English to Children in Asia. It helped transform me from being an absolutely HORRIBLE OGRE of a kids' teacher into a teacher that kids respect and enjoy taking classes with.

Not that there is anything really earth-shattering in the book, but there are a lot of really useful, practical hints for improving your kids' classes, including 100 game ideas.

Some of it is just common sense, but a lot of it comes from his years of experience teaching kids in Korea and Japan.

********************************************

If you are dead set on teaching adults, you probably can't avoid a split shift, although there are better ones than 6:45 am - 9:45 pm.
There are places that have more reasonable hours. (but they are quite hard to find)

You may want to consider a mixed adult and kids' hagwan, but then your schedule will likely be spread out over the whole day. Some people prefer this to starting at 6:45.

Be careful though, make sure the place you choose has enough students to be stable. I've read that a minimum of 150 students is a safe number.

I wish I had followed this last piece of advice myself, as I am having trouble getting paid.

Best of luck

[HamuHamu]

I vote for Kindie through to grade 2.

I FEARED the kindies when I first started but I came to realize after a short while that kids at that age really are beginning their "learning" phase of brain development and all intellectual development. When you're teaching them a lesson on say, a seed growing, you're not just teaching them the vocabulary of soil, roots, leaves, stem, flower -- you're actually introducing them to the whole idea of planing a seed, watering it, watching it grow, etc etc. You come into class each day and hear their "Whoaaa! Teacher, look!! Green is there is very little flower is grow!" So although you may be employed to teach them ENGLISH, you're actually teaching them LIFE. And I love that part.

I also find that kids are at the age where they want to please, they want to be liked, they want to be accepted. They dont' exactly understand WHY they have to stay in their seat, raise their hand to answer a question, etc etc, but the fact that they receive more positive reinforcement for doing those things means that they WANT to do it. Once they are a bit older I find they tend to get snotty and give you dirty looks because your rules are different than the rules at elementary school, other hagwans and home.

My absolute favourite to teach are the 7 year old kindergarten students who have been in English hagwan for at least one year already, even better if they started at 5 years old. They've actually got really good English at that point in time, and you can have fun with them, they know the basic rules of the school, and they are starting to buckle down becuase they know they have to go to elementary school next year.

BUT, I do find that the worst Kindergarten students to teach are the 7 year olds who have NOT been to kindergarten yet, or only to Korean kindergarten. These kids, on the other hand, have NO sense of rules, have been allowed to run amuck for the past 2 years, and in my experiences are little terrible devils.

The same goes for kids who may come to the school's elementary (afternoon) program, who didn't attend an English kindergarten - 8 year olds who are just starting English are NOT amused by the beginner books, which at my school are the SAME books used for the 5 and 6 year old beginners. It means that the level of English is about the same, but the material is too immature for them, and they detest it (and I don't blame them...!)

[Son Deureo!]

To the OP, two things you may want to consider that haven't been mentioned yet.

First, it sounds like you are planning on going for a uni job in your second year. Experience teaching adults in Korea will probably be taken more seriously than experience teaching children.

Second, while the starting pay for teaching adults is often lower, in spite of worse hours, adult hogwons seem to be more likely to actually give raises for teachers who re-sign. You might make less than a kiddie hogwon teacher your first year, but you'd probably make more after that if you stay.

I'm doing it now, and the splits can be really rough, but overall I am still glad to be teaching adults instead of children.

Best of luck, whatever you decide.