Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Skarp]

Obviously, the weak link in the hogwon system is management....

They sit around doing nothing apart from making things worse for the teachers and students and take a big slice of $$$$ for doing so...


Does anybody think it would be feasible to get together a few teachers and pool resources and skills to open a co-operative type operation??

PM me if you have long term plans to live in Korea and think you would be the kind of person who could help make this pipe dream a reality.

I am not ready to do this yet, but there will be a lot of research to do and I'd like to start 'networking' to find the team early.


Skarp

[ulsanchris]

Good luck

1st YOu would be starting out with 3 or more teachers, and have few students to start with. You all would have to prepare going a few months with little to no salary. All of you other costs would have to come before you start paying yourselves.

2nd You would need some one to be your spokes person and basically be in charge.

3rd any division on how to run the hogwan could cause a huge rift between the teachers. Causing one to leave. If this happens at the beginning it would ruin the hogwan.

4th you would need at least one of you to be near fluent in Korean. You would also need a trustworthy korean to deal with the parents and students.

there are other difficulties that would arise. YOu might have thought of these already.
Like i said good luck to you. If you cna manage it. Good on you.

[some waygug-in]

[quote="Skarp"]Obviously, the weak link in the hogwon system is management....

They sit around doing nothing apart from making things worse for the teachers and students and take a big slice of $$$$ for doing so...


Although that may be what a lot of us think our director is doing, there is a lot more to running a hagwan than most of us realize. The biggest single factor would be understanding the Korean mindset, what parents want and expect, which is usually in direct opposition to what students want and expect. I tend to think that parents have a lot of unrealistic expectations with regards to what and English teacher can actually do with a classroom full of un-willing, unruly, un-cooperative, students.

Then there are the teachers, who are thrust into the middle of all this, not really sure what is expected of them, and usually getting mixed or confused signals from the boss.


The boss is trying to keep everyone happy, except for the foreign teacher, who is nothing more than a scapegoat, convienient for receiving blame for any and every problem that arises.

Korean parents are as fickle as any kind of customer in any kind of public business. Most of them see teachers as 'language waiters'. They expect you to jump and bow for every little whim that crosses their mind.
(no matter how it will effect your classes or your other students)

If you think it will be easy trying to deal with parents, you have much to learn.

I am not in the habit of sticking up for hagwan bosses, by the way. A lot of them know even less about running their businesses than the fresh BA holding uni grad knows about teaching. Just as most of us are learning how to teach, they are learning how to run their "school".

The odds of your plan ever becoming a reality are not in your favor. Not that I wouldn't like to see it happen, but if it were possible I think many would have done it by now. The Korea gov't just doesn't make things very easy for foreigners to come in and set up businesses.

Anyway, I wish you luck, you will need it.
Cheers

[Mr. Pink]

I honestly think you would have better luck going 50/50 with a good Korean friend who has experience in the busines.

That's the only way I would consider it. If I knew I was working for myself, I would handle the foreign teacher side, and the Korean guy could handle the other sides of the business.

Problems are setting up apartments for foreign teachers and setting up your hawgwon.

I know a guy who took a job as director at a new hawgwon and he says his owner invested about 2mil dollars US.

That is some serious startup capital that is needed for a primer hawgwon.

[schwa]

Well, where do you start? You need a building. Ready-made, or do you need a bunch of subcontractors to turn a space into classrooms? Inspectors. Licences. Computers, phones, photocopiers etc. Desks, whiteboards, assorted other furniture, classroom supplies. Text suppliers & resource materials. Cleaning personel.

Teachers need housing requiring serious downpayment cash, basic furnishings including all major appliances, ongoing maintenance. You'll need a small fleet of minibuses & drivers -- pickup & dropoff is an expected part of tuition.

Advertising. A distinct presence in the community with connections & referrals. It will take time to earn a positive reputation = some deep upfront investment with small return.

I'm sure this is just part of it. Wanjangnim spend a lot of time on the phone keeping all this stuff juggled. The most successful directors are making buckets of money but work 18 hours a day 7 days a week. Ready for that?

[Scott in HK]

My own school is my long term plan in Korea. I have been taking courses in emergent literacy for young learners and reading up on best practices for kindergarten classes. Hope to open an immersion kindergarten with half day classes...morning and afternoon.

Agree with the idea of getting Korean business partner...not just for some extra start up capital but also to 'work the system' when necessary. Also would like to have another ex-pat as a partner allowing for holidays for all as I need to take the kids back to Canada once in awhile. Having partners should cut down on workload (and profits but if my partner and I stay in the classroom for awhile then we should be able to get by with just hiring two or three other teachers)....

I am working of the curriculum now as part of my masters program and hope to hire teachers with early childhood experience...even toying with the idea of hiring some bilingual teachers as a lot of evidence points to bilingual classrooms being more condusive to language learning than immersion..also it would enable us to keep up some of their korean studies....writing and some literacy skills. I plan to run a full kindie program...3 hours over various subject areas...

Expect the best thing to do is to transform someone else kindie program first to show/find out that my program would be successful and appealing to parents...and then open a school at a later date...

I would gladly exchange long hours (at first...should reduce as the program moves along or cease altogether if it is a failure) for the chance to do some real teaching and to have control over what goes on in a classroom.

In the end would like to sell the concept and the pre-made curriculum to other schools...can you say franchise....

We can dream can't we....

[anae]

ScottinHK wrote:[/b

Quote:

] Quote: I have been taking courses in emergent literacy for young learners and reading up on best practices for kindergarten classes. Quote: In the end would like to sell the concept and the pre-made curriculum to other schools...can you say franchise....

Have you found in your readings that the two ideas fit together? From my experience in reading about developmentally appropriate practices (DAP), best practices are associated with professional decisions being made by professional teachers and not by pre-packaged curriculums. Every teacher must know his/her students and help them to enter into the curriculum (generally a set of guidlines about what children should know and be able to do, as well as the traits that they should be acquiring) in a way that takes into account their needs, interests, and learning styles. While there are sets of practices that are more and less congruent with DAP, I don't think it is possible to say A+B gets you an English-speaking kid that can read and learn through a second language. If it were true, I sure would have saved money on tuition for a B.Ed program. The government would just hand me my lesson plans.


If you were referring to curriculum in the sense that you would provide general guidlines and suggestions to reach goals, please ignore the above post. It was my experience in Korea that when teachers asked about curriculum, they kind of expected to be handed a textbook and a teacher's manual if not a lesson plan for each day.

[Scott in HK]

Of course, you I could/would never set up a rigid curriculum demanding that teachers use certain lesson plans on certain days culminating in the prefectly bilingual kids.

Rather, what I aim to do is to provide any new school with the framework on which to build a program. The foundations of the new program would closely mirror the ones in the original. I believe that there are some core elements that have to be included in a kindie program to produce good 'learners' and there are some practices that will help SLL's to gain a level of bilingualism. The foundations would include such things as the set up of the rooms as my idea is to have four separate rooms each teach a different kindie subject area; the use of labelling; the idea of risk taking and problem solving; the idea that learning should be scaffolded (if that is a word); the core ways to support emergent literacy; the teaching philosophy (learner-centred as oppose to student or teacher centred); the resources that the school needs including a leveled library and a collection of realia; and finally trained teachers either in helping choose the new teachers for the school or allowing teachers to come to the original school to view how the program can be run.

Of course a collection of lesson plans that have worked or nearly worked would be included. Any new school would be free to adopt or reject the lesson plans based on the needs of their students. But I have found that good lesson plans can usually be adapted to suit the needs of new classes.

Anyway...it is all just thought and conjecture right now...but I am continuing to put thought into it and revising ideas as I learn more.

[Skarp]

This is getting more response than I expected....


So a bit more detail of how I see it working......


Teachers/partners are all 'lifers.' Mostly married to Koreans or with better visas than the E-2. They don't need housing - they can sort that out themselves. They have Dip Tesol/DELTA or better qualifications. They are all good teachers, with a genuine committment to EFL and Korea.

It's a school for adults only - there are no parents in teh equation.

Spouses of teachers are involved and can work in the school in any capacity they are qualified for. They can be bilingual teachers, Korean teachers, admin, accounts, even cleaners. They get paid market rates + a small % and an appropriate return on their investment.


Big problems in search of solutions are

Money - it's gonna be very, very expensive...

People - it'll involve 10+ people and they are not always gonna agree.


Return on the investment - People investing would have better cash return elsewhere. It's about enjoying what you do and making a difference - not about making wads of won. Everyone involved would have to appreciate that. In jobs/business where you make heaps of money there is heaps of BS to deal with - we would be a zero BS environment. It would be hard work but all the work would have a purpose.



I realise how much of a pipe dream this is and it may take several years to assemble a group of people with like minds. But there's nothing wrong with researching the possibilities.

If anybody doubts the space in the market for a language school like this ask yourself this question - where would you go to study English if you were a Korean? Or to study Korean?


Skarp