Korean Job Discussion Forums

[iggyb]

I have an interview with the school later this month.

Looking back over the job announcement here at Dave's: http://www.eslcafe.com/jobs/korea/index.cgi?read=38186

I started to wonder why they are looking for so many teachers at once - 15 according to the ad???

I wonder if they are starting a new program or what?

15 sounds like a lot of people to need at one time...

[LarrytheGiraffee]

I heard that the school is under new ownership and one of the changes that is being made is reducing class sized. Right now they teach classes of over 50 students.

[iggyb]

Thanks.
50 students!! That would take some adjustment for ESL lesson plans...

[soyoungmikey]

I have an interview with them as well. Thanks for the information.

By the way does anyone else who has worked there be able to provide any more information about the school, working conditions, support, student's etc. ? Any and all information would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[iggyb]

All I know is that the school has good reputation in Korea -- at least it had.

My wife is Korean but we haven't been in country since 2002 or 2000.

[bourquetheman]

Anyone else have trouble sending your emailing them? The ad posts the email as: [email protected] but I've tried twice and I keep getting a delivery failure notice. Really weird........

[iggyb]

I checked and that is the same email I've been using.

I've sent something the last couple of days and it hasn't been kicked back a failure yet.

But, I also haven't heard from them.

And, once the sent an email to set up an interview, they were very prompt in answering the next 2 or 3 emails I sent saying I was not in Korea and then trying to set up a phone interview time...

[bourquetheman]

Think I figured it out. Even though gmail was able to let me attach all the scanned documents they wanted, I believe the reason it came back was it was just too big. So I broke it down into two emails and it went through.

[halfmanhalfbiscuit]

Email seems Ok........

Phone interviews are fine then as opposed to being their for a trial day?

God, I remember the last Uni interview I had. HUFS-they asked 1 question about the Kim Dae Jung's pressure on the Korean media, I answered that Korea has a militaristic history or something...everything quiet....quiet.....still quiet.....not even looking at me....right, thanks. Bye.

[iggyb]

I sent another short email asking about setting up the phone interview time and no response in 24 hours....which is different from when they emailed me first asking about an interview.

...Maybe the fact I'm not in Korea has pushed me to the back of the bus...

I don't know about a "trial day."

The original email about setting up an interview said if I were in country, the interview would take -- I think it was -- 15 minutes...

Who knows...???...

I figured with them seeking 15 instructors and requiring a MA as a minimum, my chance would be good...

But after no reply in about 3 or 4 days to the initial email telling them my schedule here in the US and when would be good for an interview - which was basically anytime --- I'm not so sure...

[halfmanhalfbiscuit]

Yep.

I let them know I can easily get there and I can organise an F2 visa in a week overseas.

Similarly I figure at least I'll be contacted with the MA as the minimum requirement. OTOH, when I was living in Korea I wasn't contacted for a whole raft of Uni jobs with MA, Celta et al. though I've added on to that since then.

Aye, who would know?? At any rate, I'm guessing from the English website that the job is in Anseong.

[Mr. Pink]

Seems there is a ton of people with MAs in this country.

I had a debate with my friend yesterday. He has an MA, I have a B.Ed. The debate was which one makes you a better teacher. IMO the B.Ed does. The MA makes you a better researcher and gives you a deeper understanding of the subject material. We both laughed at how undervalued the B.Ed is in Korea, and how much emphasis is placed on the MA.

Anyways, good luck to those who are trying to score a job at this school. It is a pretty nice campus for a small school. My in-laws are about 10mins from that school by bus.

[iggyb]

I'm finishing the MA-Teaching now. Last item was today, in fact. There are going to be a whole lot more of us in the near future.

There are many of these 1 year, two summers MA-T programs opening up - supposedly to meet the gap in teachers in the US, but there are no jobs this year, and last year saw no shortages in English - at least in my state.

I didn't get a degree in Education as a BA but went straight English. At least for the high school/secondary level, I thought the Ed. people left with less knowledge about the subject matter than we did because we had to take more lit. courses as they took Ed. ones which they admitted often seemed like common sense - having spent 12+ years as students themselves...

Now, I've got a MA, and my opinion is still the same: Experience is what counts most.

The student-teaching in the program is experience, but at least to me, being in the classroom and dealing with students is the best thing for improving quality - much more so than sitting in a classroom learning about teaching.

The MA program is good for showing you some of the quality material on teaching advice written by other teachers. I can picture that some people who go into teaching straight out of college with a BA might not end up reading much of that source material once they have a job, but if you are the kind of person who is into career development and making yourself better at what you do, you could locate those sources on your own without having to pay tuition fees and sitting through 3 hour classes...

Anyway --- still no word about 48 hours after sending the last email about setting up the phone interview and probably 4-5 days since last hearing from them...

I guess my priorities will shift back into looking for other places...

[iggyb]

Also, I don't know about these TESOL certification programs that you see advertised here at Dave's and that schools say they prefer --

-- but I did go through the course work to be a public school-certified ESOL teacher in my state in the US - if I had also been an Ed. major.

It was three courses over a summer to get that certification add-on.

And I can safely say - it did nothing to advance my ability as an ESL teacher. It was nothing more than jumping through a hoop to get certification.

The best part of the class was listening to people who had already been teaching ESL, often in Korea, Japan, China or elsewhere overseas, or already doing it in public schools in the state. They had experience and more knowledge about the work than anything that the classes provided, but they still had to spend a couple thousand dollars and most of their summer break sitting through classes all day long that gave them nothing but the right to a piece of paper...

[halfmanhalfbiscuit]

re: MA and B.Ed/ Teaching Diploma.

I think they have their benefits having done both.

MA wise of course you ought to have better research approaches and 95% of the time a higher standard of what's an acceptable level of background knowledge. A lot of the BA people had their "Senior High School History Guide" and their own memories from school and that seemed all they ran on. Which, for 80% of students is fine.

Teaching Cert wise was great in tems of having a mindset of this is what we're learning, this is how we're going to do it, and this is what we'll have to show for it. But school isn't just teaching-it's classroom management, ever-changing assessment, spending your Saturday afternoon taking a sports team etc. I'm qualified to teach High School ESOL in NZ...sometimes it was like herding cats, at others so cruisy it felt surreal.Schools tend to have little expectation of ESOL students , but the full fee paying students are a nice little money spinner for them. Where the money goes, who knows.