Korean Job Discussion Forums

[John_ESL_White]

My hagwon was ambitious to hire a FT. They found themselves "creating" classes. They later found that they could not afford my salary. And, the K teachers suffered because of it.

Anyway, one of the "created" classes was an "adult class" with one student, my director, director's daughter, and various friends of the daughter that would pop in on occasion:

16 hours of classes/ per month was for this one "adult" class.

3X/ week for 1.5 hours class. Per my contract, 1 teaching hour was 50 minutes so a 90 minute class = 1.9 teaching hours X 3/ week.

The kicker was that there was only one paying student and she was paying $150,000 for one month for 3, 1.5 hour classes per week.

My director told me she was bad with math... But it wasn't until I did the math for her that she realized how much money she was losing on that one class. When I told her what I charged for a one on one, she felt stupid and dropped the class after the woman said she couldn't afford the going rate.

So, now, she's trying her damndest to fill my 30 hours with anything.... She scheduled these weird "teacher classes" and meetings 4X/ week. In my contract, any time spent at the school counts toward the 30 teaching hours. So, a meeting counts as a teaching hour. Also, a 30 minute gap counts as almost one hour teaching.... (50 minutes = one hour) and she's given me a lot of gaps...

I try to help the woman. I explained that some of the upper level students want one on ones and that she should contact their parents and negotiate one on ones so she could be making money off of my time there. But, she doesn't know how. It's weird.

So, she changes my schedule abrubtly and adds some phonics class early in the morning with a huge gap. These class corresponds with private class times I teach.

I tell her it's imposible to do (change my schedule) on short notice because I get paid up front for the morning and night classes I teach outside of her school and I can not piss off the people who pay me in advance -bad business-. I even point out that it's in my contract that I need 30 days notice for a schedule change. Though, I've been very flexible with this in the past, unless it interfered with a PL. (I'm an F-2, private contractor, etc).


So, because she's bad with math, I'll be teaching like 20 hours/ week. Going to meetings 3 hours/ week, and getting paid for "gaps" for 7 hours/ week. In the mean time, unless she doubles enrollment in my classes, she is losing money.

Is this common? Are Koreans usually this daft?

[Otherside]

[sobriquet]

[Teelo]

Bah, I came to this thread expecting a QQ from a teacher who has been told to teach maths in english, while not knowing whether to use an integral or differential to solve for the area under a curve

[slopey23]

It seems common. My last hogwan had 2 foreign teachers for 50 students. They also had 4 or 5 korean teachers at all times. Some of the korean teachers would teach an hour or two a day. Some days I would only teach 4 or 5 students a day. I am starting to realize that nothing that Koreans do makes sense to me and my western ideas about how stuff should be. Dont try and understand these things it will just give you a headache.