Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cbclark4]

Has anyone renewed their contract with Gyeongnam POE EPIK?

I noticed they are recruiting separate from the National EPIK Program.

I saw two different recruiter Atop and GetsCenter.

As first timers, if we renew, do we qualify as level 2+ or 2?

Is there a listing of Email addresses for the Epik coordinators?

If you renew do you have to stay at the same school?

[tob55]

If it follows suit with other POEs you are allowed to renew and sign on with a new school, but unless you go to bat for yourself, you will begin at the level they choose. If you have been here for a year then you should naturally expect to move up to level 2 or higher depending on the extra training and year of teaching experience you achieved during your last contract, but it should never be assumed that this happens automatically.

More and more, people are having to fight for their pay and level increases. The schools for some reason are tightening down on the amount of the money they are willing to increase foreign teachers. In some cases it is because of private funding situations, but most of the time it has to do with special projects that have been set up to use extra foreign teacher funding the school feels they have a right to divert to a special need area. Now, none of the Korean school officials are going to admit this, but it happens altogether more frequently than people realize.

I am fortunate to be in a school that has weeded out the people who were diverting my funding and I began receiving more of the benefits I was supposed to be getting when I first arrived in my school. I had to fight for some of the things I currently have in my contract, and became aware of what was going on only after I married my wife (Korean) and she started speaking up for my rights. Otherwise, it would have been business as usual from the perspective of Korean administrators.