Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jonksy]

First, a short disclaimer:

This post is not meant to be an attack on this institute, nor its administrative or pedagogical staff. There are positive and negative things that can be said for the school - its organisational behaviour etc, the administrative staff, and the teachers themselves (both Korean and foreign).

Rather, this post should be viewed as an attempt at an objective description of the current situation at this institute, so as to inform potential job applicants of the implications of pursuing a career with the institute.



Firstly, the school presents its positions as favourable job opportunities to its potential staff.

From the advertisements you will read (and quite correctly) that the school offers higher than average salaries. However you will also read that the institute is exempt from the "arbitrary hassles of private institutions". This is a blatant prevarication. You will find with this government institution - just as with other private institutions in Korea, that it is fraught with arbitrary "hassles" - many decisions are made seemingly without any foresight whatsoever and these often make the teacher's job unnecessarily difficult.

The teacher, who decides to accept a position with this institute will find him/herself greeted by friendly staff. Your housing will not be immaculate, however it will be tolerable, and due to the location (Kong-ju) you can expect to have a two room abode, as the housing is relatively inexpensive as compared with Seoul or Pusan.

As with other schools in Korea (within both the public and private domain) you should not be too trusting of your colleagues. Many of the staff members are overly ambitious and will stab you in the back if it will somehow further their personal agendas. This often happens from the people you would least expect and they can come in the form of both Korean or foreign staff members (for a good run-down on this issue, I recommend listening to Lauryn Hill's "Forgive Them Father").

It should be mentioned that there are two types of positions at this institute. The "3rd Floor" teachers and the "2nd Floor" teachers. The difference between the two is that the "3rd Floor" teachers teach exclusively teacher training programmes to Middle School teachers (from here on referred to as 'trainees').

I'm going to focus my discussion on the "2nd Floor" teachers as this is where I had experience. I would add however, that the "3rd Floor" teachers seemed just as frustrated as the "2nd Floor" teachers with their workload and the unrealistic expectations that are placed upon them by the 'supervisors'.

The "2nd Floor" teachers teach a blend of Elementary school students and Middle school students who attend the school for either "One-day Camps" or "Four-day Camps". These students are basically selected from their respective schools to attend the institute for a short 'total-emersion' in English. This is viewed by the instructors as little more than a marketing-strategy for the institute as there is absolutely no gauge whatsoever of how much is 'taught' or more relevantly, how much is 'learnt'. Also, the 'supervisors' seem to place little importance on these 'camps' as they are not detrimental to the institutes funding. The "2nd Floor" teachers are also responsible for "TEC" which means 'Traveling English Camp'. This is the same as a "One-day Camp" except it requires the teachers to leave the institute on a bus and travel to rural locations and perform their "edu-taining" at Elementary schools. In addition the "2nd Floor" teachers have a new programme - the TEL (Traveling English Library) which is similar to the 'TEC' but at this stage it's a new programme so I can give little description of it. "2nd Floor" teachers are also responsible for teacher evaluation's known as "You Call We Go" which are little more than observations of a typical Elementary School teacher's class, and subsequent unsubstantiated criticism or rather 'advice' for the aforementioned teacher.

In addition to these trivial programmes, the "2nd Floor" teachers have bi-annual monthly camps for visiting Elementary School teachers (trainees) who come to the institute to 'learn' how to teach EFL. However, due to the fact that the "2nd Floor" teachers are generally new to the field of TESOL themselves, the quality of these programmes is questionable at best.

Furthermore, "2nd Floor" teachers are expected to produce a textbook of roughly 250 pages for every biannual Elementary school trainee camp. Due to the fact that no time is allotted for this immense workload, and the fact that they lack expertise themselves, this is little more than a joke. Inevitably, teachers are expected to plagiarise materials from online resources in order to fulfill the expectations of the 'supervisors'; thus placing teachers in a morally questionable position.

As if all of this is not bad enough, as a potential teacher, you will be expected to attend about ten meetings per week, which seemingly have no purpose whatsoever, except to inform you that you are paid higher than the 'average teacher' in Korea. It must be said however that these meetings also serve the supervisors needs in that supervisors are informed of each other's intentions (they don't have very good communication skills) so the foreign teachers serve as 'informants' regarding what they (the supervisors) are all respectively planning.

I'm going to edit this post in future - It's Friday night and I'm off to have a drink - but I would like to end on this note.

The institute is pedantic about issues that don't matter. They need to sort that out if they want to fulfill their desires of becoming an 'oracle' of pedagogy (as this seems to be the general plan).

There are much better and much worse places to work in Korea. I've primarily focused on the negative aspects because they are what you - as a potential employee need to know. And precisely the issues that you won't be informed on by the school.



Good Luck.