Korean Job Discussion Forums

[alwynjo]

Hi,
Ive done a year in Korea, and im currently back home, but thinking of coming back in Jan for a winter camp.
I'll assume that most institutions that ran summer camps will also be the ones running the winter camps, so im after a bit of a review...
I know its early, but as summer camps are finishing up now, I want your most reccent thoughts on it.

What camp did you work at? What was the pay like? What were the hours?
How well was it run? Did you get everything you were entitled to?

Any info would be great!
thanks

[Cerriowen]

Place I was at was PURE CHAOS.

No one knew what to do. There were too many kids, and no direction. I was handed new books all the time, randomly. Sometimes they'd walk in to my class room and give me a new book that I was supposed to teach THAT LESSON.

There were no resources for the books.

Part of the books had coloring sections... but there were no crayons/markers.

A big portion of it was "listening" oriented... there were no tapes.

I was supposed to teach them songs I'd never heard, without music.

We were there from 8am to 6pm... if we were lucky... Monday through Saturday. Usually they'd end up needing a "last minute" meeting around 5:45 that would go until 6:30 or later. Since we were there on salary, not per hour, they didn't pay for it.

We were supposed to come up with our own projects and materials and activities for 2 hours every day... under very wierd guises of things they'd told the parents we were going to do, without telling us. We found out our "topic" the day of.

The kids would start freaking out in the afternoon, after being trapped there for 7 hours... and start seriously misbehaving. I was torn between being supposed to maintain some semblance of order, and feeling bad for these poor kids.

Not that the director would do anything about it. I had one, huge kid, start beating smaller kids... and she wouldn't do anything about it. Just shrug it off and pretend I don't see it.

They put me in housing that was over an hour away from my work (by subway).

[snehulak]

Good Lord, you just gave me flashbacks of my hellish summer camp. It was a 10-day grind at a local religious school, full of kids who didn't want to be there, and administrators with their heads up their arses. I taught 9 lessons a day, 5 of them before lunch. After regular lessons, I had to teach special activities for three hours. By that time, the kids were so drained and bored that it was next to impossible to control them. Never again!

This is in sharp contrast to the winter camp I did this year. It was at my own school with students that wanted to be there. I had complete control of the program and it was by far the best experience of the year. The kids were sad when it ended and begged me to let them come back the following week.

I guess the moral of the story is that it's a crap shoot. Good luck.

[rvintage]

I am finishing up my summer camp this week and it's been a pretty good one. It's my first one and I think I got pretty lucky.

Yes, there is the typical Korean disorganization, but if you have worked here before you should know that you have to be flexible and not worry about being organized yourself.

I teach at two public schools in Seoul. Three hours in the morning, three in the early afternoon and finished! Peice of cake! I am not locked up at thier choice of housing, but they don't pay for housing(I'm doing a home stay while I'm here in Seoul, which has worked out well and FREE!). And I'm a 15 min walk from work.

I get paid really well for what I do. Two forty min. classes teaching from a book, two forty min. classes of activity, or PLAY TIME, each shift.. so I'm teaching literally 4 hours a day. I leave as soon as the clock strikes finish time and arrive only minutes before. Everyone is helpful and nice and we hve a Korean helper teacher in the classroom with us.

I would recomend trying to find something like this. I've been quite happy with everything.

Good Luck

[Sody]

Hot potato, card games, dodgeball, hangman, tag, musical chairs, etc, etc. It was boring and fun as well, I enjoyed the fun I had with the kids but it was pretty much just fun and games. If I renew I'm going to ask them for the summers and winters off.

Sody

[Len8]

Most camps you usually have to bring extra material to supplement the text book they give you. You cover the lesson with or without the tape in about an hour and then you are left with two to three hours to kill time.

Camp I was at was held in the gymnasium classrooms of a university. They were airconditioned and quite clean. White board and swivel chairs etc. Opposite was the weight room, so I used to herd the kids into it for an hour and make them work out. Had a trampoline upstairs next to the basketaball court so they fooled around on that as well. We were able to use all of their equipment ( basketballs, ping pong stuff and the rest of it)