Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Len8]

Anyone out there who has just completed a 3 week or 4 week intensive English camp. There were a few of them as I remember from watching the postings on "Daves Korean Jobs" section.

My camp was in the Kyungsan namdo region (the southern part of Korea. and it ran for 4 weeks), and it was OK. Teaching part was straight forward, but I found I had to use a lot of supplementry material( which I had brought with me), because the kids started to turn off from the text material after a while. We performed a lot of skits or minidramas with our classes too. We teachers in fact had our classes perform a different skit each week. Was a real challenge, but one I enjoyed.
We each had to give a special activity in the afternoon to a different class each day for two weeks, and then have another activity for the same classes over the last two weeks of the camp. Some had chess, others had ballons for making animals, and another person devised treasure hunts with hidden clues. There were many other activities as well devised by the other teachers.
We had an all day trip to Muju ski resort where the kids had free sking lessons in the morning. After lunch us teachers were given a free pass to use the lifts for skiing for the rest of the day.
On the last day all the parents showed up for the final skit performance, and it was a little teary afterwards when the students said their goodbyes.

[ajuma]

Awww...so sweet!!!!

They came...they left....I survived.

[ajuma]

Sorry... Feeling a little snobbish right now!

[Medic]

I did a winter camp, and the paye was pretty good, but it was hard going and the hours were long. We started at 9AM and finished at 9PM. We did skits too, but only once. There were too many of us to do a skit every week. I am envious of the fact that you went to Muju for a ski trip.

Find it hard to believe that you had to come up with a skit every week. I'm sure there were some flops. They were strict on the speaking English bit as well. Penalty points were given to those caught using Korean

We had our teary fare well too from a lot of students.

[yakey]

I just finished a winter camp, hours were like 9-5 Monday-Saturday, so you only had Sunday to recover. The one thing that was in poor taste was when they demanded our used books back, and if anyone didn't have them they came at you with an itemized list of what was missing and some inflated new book charges. What a bunch of cheapskates. I also felt bad for the Korean teachers because they signed for about 70 percent of what some foreign teachers were making and didn't get paid until a week after the camp ended. The classes ran fairly smoothly, although some of the pre-arranged special projects were lame - "how to make a ham sandwich in English" - for middle school kids, what a joke.

[yakey]

I just finished a winter camp, hours were like 9-5 Monday-Saturday, so you only had Sunday to recover. The one thing that was in poor taste was when they demanded our used books back, and if anyone didn't have them they came at you with an itemized list of what was missing and some inflated new book charges. What a bunch of cheapskates. I also felt bad for the Korean teachers because they signed for about 70 percent of what some foreign teachers were making and didn't get paid until a week after the camp ended. The classes ran fairly smoothly, although some of the pre-arranged special projects were lame - "how to make a ham sandwich in English" - for middle school kids, what a joke.

[Len8]

Might add that our camp ran from 9am to 6pm, and we also had a half a day on Saturday.

Previous poster said "How to make Ham Sandwhiches" was taught too middle schoolers. What a joke, and an insult to their intelligence as well

Was wondering aboout the use of Chess, when one of my co-workers said "At home they don't have anyone to play with. At the camp they have friends they can play against and compete with".

I asked some of the kids what their parents said every night when they went home. Most said that the parents only asked their kids if they were having fun. Mothers were the ones doing all the checking, but it seems that very few of them could speak English.

[peppermint]

[eamo]

The middle-school kids in my hagwon were given a homemade vocab book for the winter session.

Guess how many words were to be memorized and tested on during the 4 weeks?

1342!!!


Apparently, it went down very well with the parents. Furthermore, the kids really got into it and didn't seem to mind this crazy task they were set. 4 years in Korea and I still don't understand the Korean mind. Much.

[miniD]

My camp experience was the first in Korea, and it was awesome. Great kids, great director and cool coworkers. And considering what I've seen on this thread, pretty good hours too. Three weeks, half-days on Saturdays (recreational though -- skiing and sledding and whatnot), others went from 9am to 6pm-ish. Great first gig. Think it's ruining me for my job search now though -- getting picky.