Korean Job Discussion Forums

[BackRow]

I'm in the process of looking for a hagwon TEFL job, and of the few offers I'm getting for interviews most of said schools operate a kindergarten. Why does everybody seem to say to avoid kindy at all costs here? I have no prior experience with korean kindy myself obviously, but I'm making the following assumptions:

PROS:
- co-teacher on-hand to help
- kids have just really begun to fully learn korean, so english lessons would be extremely simple
- from what I hear, kindy makes a school a good deal of money and losing students isn't as big a problem, so it adds stability


CONS:
- kids being kids (running around, fighting, trying to crawl all over you, etc.)
- teaching kindy seeing as being beneath someone?

Am I simply misinformed, or is kindy really not all that bad?

[northway]

As a first timer I don't think it's a bad idea. I'm just finishing my first year teaching the standard kindergarten/elementary deal.

Another big pro to consider, from my perspective, is that as a first timer you're usually choosing between kindy/elementary working something like 10:00-6:30 or you're going to get an afternoon kindy situation working like 2-9. In the case of my kindy/elementary versus my friends' schools who work at afternoon hagwons, my students are much, much higher level, as most of the elementary schoolers we have attended kindergarten at our hagwon, so their English is excellent. My friends who teach at afternoon elementary schools have generally told me that their older kids have less proficiency than the second graders at my school. Basically, the elementary you end up teaching with kindy can end up being significantly more interesting than if you teach afternoon elementary.

I really enjoy teaching kindy and if you're inexperienced, like kids, and have a high energy level I don't think it would be a bad move at all. But I'll probably also be flamed for saying this by a bunch of dudes who've been here since the '90s.

[edwardcatflap]

[sojusucks]

OP, if you happen to end up at a bad kindy school or have a bad kindy class, it is the most draining experience of your life. If you have no experience dealing with kindy and you think it's the same as other ESL teaching, then you'll be in for a world of hurt. It can be a nightmare.

[mm]

I don't think its the actual teaching of Kindy that is the problem but the hours that a lot of Kindy hagwons offer.

I have a couple of friends who teach Kindergarten (and just kindergarten) so it is a normal 9 to 3 or 4 type job and they seem to enjoy it.

I taught Kindergarten in China a couple of years ago and I loved it, but it was much more draining than teaching any other age group.

[Howler Monkey]

What are the schedules for these 9 to 6 kindy jobs? I don't mind teaching kindergarten and I'm not even overwhelmed with massive amounts of energy. What works for me is knowing what to teach, when to teach it, and how to present it.

That and lots of quick simple little games.

Still, even then.. 2 to 3 hours of kindy feels like eight hours of elementary teaching.

Nice thing about kindies though, you can recycle the same games over and over again. Little rotters won't even notice as their attention span and memory is about five minutes.

They even like to color and sometimes they even get the coloring inside the lines. That's massive prize day when that goes down.

Biggest trick for me is not towering over them. Stoop down to their level for the first few weeks. I tend to sit in a chair with them as I stand six foot one inch and I'm a fairly stout fellow with a full goatee. Generally, within a few minutes the kids are running their fingers through my beard trying to figure out if it is facial hair or some small animal that died on my face.

[northway]

Personally, I find kindergarten to be a lot less exhausting than elementary. Even with an elementary program full of relatively strong students, I find that they often won't understand whatever obtuse grammatical point I'm trying to get across, whereas I'm usually teaching stuff to kindies that they can and do grasp quite easily. In terms of just showing up to class and going through the motions, yeah, kindergarten is more tiring than elementary, but I'm far more exhausted by an elementary class completely missing a lesson than I am by teaching kindergarten for four hours in a day. And hey, with my kindies I can let joking and play be a huge part of my teaching style. With elementary that option is less open to me.

[Summer Wine]

I currently teach english to Kindergarten kids in my P/S.

There is an official kindergarten teacher and two teacher aides for 13 students.

This versus me in a class all by myself when I did it in a Hagwon.

I teach with a teachers aide in the class room at all times now, vs struggling to communicate with a child who is 2 years old by myself.

There is a huge difference between what Koreans expect in a public school and what the bosses tell us they expect in a private Hagwon.

Trust me, I am sure most parents are told by the owners there is no difference when in fact there are tons of differences.

[hari seldon]

[northway]

[Shapur]

What everyone else has said.
Plus, in a high proportion of hagwons you get a dysfunctional working environment and you get absolutely no support from management or even coworkers.
Basically you should assume you will be completely on your own because you can't guarantee if you will get any support until you start on day one and can see for yourself.
That won't matter for most levels because you can muddle through and teach most age groups by yourself, support or not.
But you absolutely can't do it with kindergarteners. If your management and coworkers don't work with you as a team you can't do your job. You're screwed. End of story.

[Louis VI]

Kindy sucks the lifeforce out of your bone marrow unless you're a babysitter at heart.

[meaghan]

Teaching really little kids - you're either going to like it or you're not, that's something you have to decide for yourself. Personally I like it. Class is tiring but fun, and I love how much they love me - kids that little will worship the ground you walk on if you give them the slightest positive attention. Also if you're trying to learn Korean they can be a big help because the Korean you'll overhear them speaking is so simple. However there are downsides: it takes a lot of energy, getting them to focus can be impossible sometimes, and if one kid gets in a bad mood it can spoil the whole class. Also, DO NOT assume you'll have a coteacher in the room with you all or even most of the time, especially at a hagwon. I won't lie: there have been awful days where I'm holding and trying to comfort one child who is upset and/or scared of white people and/or bleeding and/or vomiting, while trying to keep the other ten under control, with no one to turn to for help. Conflict resolution can also be difficult with kids that simply don't understand that you don't speak Korean very well (if at all). But overall I do love the little guys and most days we make some crafts, trace some letters, sing some phonics songs, and play some blocks - good times.

unfortunately my hagwon, like many others, does all kinds of shitty/illegal things like paying us late, giving us substandard housing, etc etc. That kind of stuff is all more common with kindie schools (because they are the most common, most profitable, and from what I can tell least regulated), so that's another reason you'll hear people telling you to stay away.

If you've got the energy and patience, I'd say go for it, just do your research to decrease your chances of ending up at a crooked school.

[seonsengnimble]

Time is the biggest factor in why I avoid kindy.

Teaching the same kids every day for several hours has its benefits, don't get me wrong. My first year, I taught kindy. I liked being able to really get to know the kids and form a good bond with all of them.

The downside is that I had no free time. In addition to doing regular prep, I had to spend my lunch with the kids, do phone teaching, prep for open classes, speech contests and various other extra things. Then there's field trips. These are fine if you're teaching a full load of kindergarten classes, but if you're scheduled from something like 1-9 or 12 to 8, this means that you get to come in at 9 and still teach the regular elementary classes the rest of the day.

If you're only teaching elementary or middle school students, the students go to their public schools during the day and other hagwons, so the parents don't require you to do all of the extra things for their students because their schedules are already full. If you teach kindergarten students, though, your hagwon is usually the only school they're attending, so the classes you teach in the morning end up being a full time job followed by elementary/middle school classes later in the day.

[northway]

One big thing that hasn't been brought up yet is age differential within Korean kindergarten. My school starts at Korean age 5 and goes until Korean age 7 (as many others do). I've taught both 5 and 6 year olds within the last year, and the 6 year olds are pretty easy while the 5 year olds were pretty much impossible, as they're pretty much babies. In regards to the crying business, of the 12 kids in my class of 6 year olds, I've been teaching them since March and the number of times I've had crying kids is still in single digits, and that includes injuries. If you teach 5 year olds, classroom management is much, much more difficult. The older kids are generally much easier. If you're applying to teach kindy, you're probably going to want to make sure you're not teaching 5 year olds unless you have a lot of experience with very small children or a background in childhood education (and you'll probably still go a bit nuts).