Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Beatnik009]

Dear Korean students in Vancouver, (and other readers)

As an ESL tutor offering private classes in Vancouver, I want to share some thoughts and feelings with you.

These are in no particular order, so forgive repetition or jumbled thinking, it is just pouring out of me.

1. After being an ESL instructor for about 10 years - three years in Korea, four in Taiwan, one in Vietnam and say a half year in Vancouver, Canada since I returned from east Asia in 2009, it has been instructive for me to make acquaintance with Koreans once more.

It is also interesting for me to witness Koreans outside of Korea, not on your home ground.

2. I have been tutoring Koreans privately for the past four to five months in Vancouver, a popular destination for young Koreans coming abroad on what now amounts to something of a rite of passage for many of you.

Although it is my wish to tutor ESL students from any country, all of my students are in fact Koreans. You make up not only the biggest single group of ESL students in Vancouver, I would go so far as to say that you account for more than half of all ESL students in this city.

3. What this means is that you frequently account for a large block of the students in any class, fairly often more than half, and on some occasions nearly all of the students. I met two Korean women yesterday who are in a class of 14 - all but three of the students are Koreans.

4. I estimate I have met about 60 students in the past five months or so, and half of them have taken classes with me. It is very much a part-time job for me, an interim measure prior to my full-time return to study in September. Also, as I need to earn very little money to cover my cost of living, my fee is as low as I have seen anywhere - just $10 an hour.

5. Why so low? After all, 10 years ago in Korea I earned W30,000 to W40,000 an hour doing "privates." Well, for many Koreans in their mid-20s, as almost all of you are, this is the first time you have left home and finding yourself in a city where the cost of living is high, I notice that many of you go into a kind of money-psychosis - every single dollar is watched carefully and parted with painfully. This is very very different from my experience in Korea, where even middle-class and families with modest incomes were, as I recall, surprisingly free and easy about money.

6. Many of you, wisely, come to Vancouver with work permits, and appear to find jobs pretty easily, albeit mostly minimum wage jobs at Vancouver's scandalously low minimum wage of $8 an hour.

7. Further, it grieves me to see how you are often exploited by agents and local homestay families. What I have learned in meeting so many Koreans here is that at least 80 percent of homestay families are Filipino. Even given the high cost of housing here, the standard fee of $750 per month for a tiny room and three modest meals per day seems high. Most of you wisely opt out of homestay after a month or two, when you learn the ropes, and go into shared rental housing.

The fee of $750 per month is intended to compensate the host family for, in addition to board and lodging, spending time with you, speaking English, but very little of this happens, by your testimony. This is very disappointing.

8. Now, to the matter of private tutoring with Koreans. As I said earlier, my fee of $10 is very low, intentionally so, so as not to cause stress for students and to allow you to take more than one class a week. Indeed, you are free to have two students for the same fee, so just $5 each, per hour. A number of you have opted to do that and it has gone well - no complaints. The more regular ESL fee of $20 or even $30 an hour amounts to $80 to $120 monthly for just one class per week, a major barrier for most students. Those working can cope with it, but even with Koreans� famous work ethic and commitment to learning English, having two classes per week would amount to $160 to $240 per month � half of your rent. Ouch.

9. I advertise my services on a popular website for Koreans. I make it very clear in that advertisement that students are asked to pay for four classes upfront, so $40. It is also made clear that as the fee is so low, and in order to discourage students from repeat repeat cancellations, there is no refund for cancelled classes. And students cannot just change the time of the class � they attend the class or they pay. Just like paying for and attending classes at the institute � you can hardly ask to attend other classes in place of those you missed yeah?

I sincerely and genuinely believe this to be fair. The fee is very low, and as we all know, the cancellation of classes is something of a national habit among Koreans. Yes, all people from all countries cancel all sorts of things every day, but the cancellation of private ESL tutoring classes by Korean ESL students - both in Korea and elsewhere evidently, must surely be a contender for the Cancellation World Championship Gold medal.

10. Do I cancel classes sometimes? You bet. What happens then? I give students TWO FREE CLASSES. I was so embarrassed and apologetic to two students for cancelling two classes back to back that I offered them FIVE free classes, one a day, for an entire week.

11. I can make ends meet without the income from the ESL classes. I can also do other things, but I choose to do this as it reconnects me with an important part of my life, and I like Koreans generally and am intrigued by Korean culture. Through this involvement I have resurrected an "activity club" which I arranged in all three countries, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Since October I have arranged between 20 and 30 separate events - hikes, music nights, parties, movie nights, even attendance at certain political events, a wide range of activities which have seen about 60 ESL students from, in addition to Korea - Colombia, Germany, France, Saudi, Brazil, Russia, Japan, China and Taiwan come out to meet and mingle, speak English, and widen their experience of Vancouver and BC and "western culture."

Many of my western friends have joined on occasion and thoroughly enjoyed exposure to such a varied international group.

Now, I state all of this to demonstrate that my interest in Koreans and other ESL students goes beyond making money from you. When I told someone about the activity club recently the first thing he said was "You could charge for that." Yes I could, but I do not. I get a great deal out of it and so do many others. Koreans, as you know, are very poor at getting out and about themselves, for the most part. Many of you in Vancouver are utterly isolated here, isolated and wretched, lonely and bewildered. I had a 21-year-old student recently who was too frightened to take the SkyTrain, the local metro.

12. So, back to the cancellations. One - the policy on cancel-but-pay-anyway is made clear FIRST in the internet advertisement, SECOND in the initial TEXT and EMAIL communication, and then for a THIRD time VERBALLY BY ME when I meet the student or students for the first time. Crystal?

13. Those of you with more than three months exposure to the Land of Morning Calm will find the following revelation as expected as encountering kimchi in a Korean restaurant: one week or two might pass before ... ping, here comes a text message or an email: "teacher, cannot come to class today." I reply: "Okay - but remember that you must pay anyway."

14. Limbo as we wait for the cosmos to align Jupiter with Mars ..... and then, Bingo: Another text arrives: "But I am sick teacher, I don't want to pay for this class." My reply: �You know the rules Hyunji, you need to pay. You remember you agreed to that. Will I see you for the next class Tuesday?�

15. �Yes, see you next week.� Student arrives a week later looking doleful. Class over. Student emails or texts the next day informing me they will not take any more classes. This scenario, with minor variations, plays out over and over, over and over ... It is exhausting.

16. Are there any complaints about the class? No. So I ask some students I know well to explain it to me. They agree that the rule is made very clear at the outset, that students have agreed to it, and that it is fair. So then what is the problem I ask, I cannot reconcile this. Furrowed brow on student: �They still want to cancel anyway.� I ask: �Even if it is just raining and they don�t want to come out in the cold?� I meet them at the central library, within easy walking distance of most ESL schools and the downtown apartments that most Koreans favour heavily as an address of choice, with little regard to cost and the size of their sleeping quarters � miniscule. Tiny. Often in the living room or even a shared living room.

�Yes,� my friend answers, �Korean students demand the freedom to cancel with impunity, with just minutes� notice if necessary, as often as they like, again and again if necessary.� So if the tutor actually means their no-cancellation policy literally, rather than just a show-and-pretend gesture, then the tutor will lose the student. Even if the class is just $1. Even if the tutor is the single most important facilitator for that student in Vancouver � has introduced him to other ESL students, taken him to lots of great places he or she would almost certainly never know of otherwise, no matter how much benefit the student had derived from the tutor, or whether the tutor is just a tutor to the student and no more at all, the Korean law of �the customer is always right and if service provider wants to keep said customer must abide by customer�s whims� is still firmly in place.

Well, there it is then. That just about wraps her up, as the man says. What would you do? What do you do? I am going to nudge up the fee and allow them to cancel with impunity, send a text an hour or two ahead and ask if they are coming to class � every time.

Short of not tutoring Koreans, I see no way around it. Unless you have them pay, and then as soon as they cancel, keep the money anyway and give no class � no more classes at all, out of the set of four. Of course you will never see them again but there are so many of them getting off the plane every day the supply is virtually unlimited, especially if you let them know that cancelling is no problem. This is dishonest, even criminal - but tempting eh, c�mon, don�t say it ain�t.

Another thing to do is let them cancel, and if there are two classes left say, just give one more, and then inform them the classes are up as they must pay for the one they cancelled. But hey, look at me, scheming here like a dirty businessman. Korea will do that to you eh � helluva nice place and sweet people in many ways, but damn man, paradox, paradox, paradox. That is why there is so much to talk about

See you later on down the trail pardners. Say friend (turning to barman), you got any more of that good sarsaparilla?