Korean Job Discussion Forums

[PrinceofDenmark]

Thoughts on YBM? Specifically: Shinchon?

Is it better to be with a bigger Hagwon like them? I was offered a very small one in Ulsan recently and the money was better (spoke to a UK teacher and he said it wasn't bad either)

[Pa Jan Jo A Hamnida]

[DaHu]

You get paid what they owe you, I don't think they cheat people.

You work hard.

[Mr Lee's Monkey]

YBM pays what they owe and follows the rules and laws. The pollution in Ulsan is wicked. I'm surprised that many more people haven't mentioned it posting on Dave's.

[impsmith]

I just started at YBM this month. Good things include:

--teaching adults
--very little planning
--so far they seem like a very professional organisation

bad things include:
--split shifts

I definitely prefer teaching adults. I'm not a kid person at all, and I find adults who've paid to come to classes to be motivated to speak English in class and practise it at home. If a student doesn't feel like it, they generally just won't come to that class, instead of being forced to go by their mother and being disruptive as a result. They also really appreciate conversational classes with a native speaker because they recognise that it's an opportunity to practise the type of speech they'll actually use when interacting with people in the business world or when they're outside Korea, and because it's a welcome variation from the TOEIC tests that many people seem to be studying for. There is no issue with classroom control because the students wish to improve their English for their own personal reasons. This means that they do expect you to be professionally dressed and to be prepared for the class. You can't get away with half an hour of hangman or xyz other games like perhaps you could with kids.

However, you won't be in a position where you'll need to fill half an hour, because you'll have detailed lesson plans, textbooks, and supplements that will normally last the whole 50-minute class easily. The lesson plans follow a similar format, so you actually can glance at your plan on the bus/subway on the way to work and teach a decent class. This is great, because you don't need to plan very much and you don't need to create your own materials, so you can spend most of your time out of class doing whatever you want instead of worrying about tomorrow's lessons. It makes the job very easy. When you're doing the YBM training in Seoul (includes 400,000 won in cash upon arrival at your school after completion of the training course) they'll tell you that you're here to teach their syllabus, and of course you are, but in practice if you do want to do non-syllabus stuff you're free to, as long as you don't run into your academic director's office and show him all the syllabus lessons you've missed out. I know a couple of people do a lot of their own stuff, a few (including me) don't do much, and some are in the middle.

None of the other teachers have had any complaints about pay. We're paid on the 7th and if that's a non-banking day they'll pay you beforehand, so you always get your money on or before the 7th. Good for bills. If you are worried about money, you can do overtime above your 30 classes per week. The rates of pay vary according to the time/class but I know one guy said he banked 3m after tax last month, presumably on a 2.low basic salary. My gf will be getting 2.6m this month, for a 34hr week. Not too bad.

The one bad thing is obviously the split shifts. I'm not going to lie, they're pretty draining. The directors purposefully give you a difficult schedule to begin with, but the other teachers say it gets better in your second, third, etc, months as you're no longer the newbie. I hope so, though I don't really mind having a tough schedule my first month as I've got no money to do anything with anyway (and working Saturday mornings is a nice overtime bonus). Apparently during summer and winter university vacations you can often get block shifts due to students taking extra English classes, so hopefully that'll be the case. Also the vacation sucks too, but vacation doesn't seem great anywhere outside uni jobs.

So far, I like it. They've been helpful with housing (which you get to choose yourself!) and other new-person-in-Korea stuff. For me teaching adults and not planning much is worth a big hit in split shifts, but you've got to decide if it's worth it for you.

[Otherside]

Splits are tough.

[ForeverWanderlust]

What are the hours?

How is it hard work if you dont do much planning and the syllabus and materials are already supplied for you?

Not to mention working with paying adults seems like 1000X better than un-interested disrespectful kids.

[Zyzyfer]

[scotttteacher]

Hey Impsmith

Cheers for all of the information. I've got an interview with YBM this week and I was searching the boards for some info on them, which you've provided well.

I just have a question about the accommodation, and key money. Do you have to deal with the landlord directly? Do you have to hand over a sizeable depoit yourself, or do the company pay all of the key money and you just pay the rent?

Also, how are you enjoying it thus far?

Cheers

Scott

[Otherside]

[Zyzyfer]

Another point about the key money, if you find your own housing the landlord cannot have a mortgage. YBM won't supply key money to them.

[FDNY]

I used to work:

6:30AM-7:30
11:00AM-12:00
5:30PM-10:30

I was ALWAYS tired. I swore I would never do it again.

[Justbull]

[Otherside]

Hey.

There are different YBM's for teaching adults.

The ones I know of are Premier, ELS and one-to-one.

Each brand has different contracts, with their positive and negative points. Some branches may also have slightly different contracts, I know Gangnam used to run things pretty differently from the rest, however, they were in the process of bringing them back in line when I left.

When I worked there (and that was over a year ago), Premier offered 400k, and One-to-one offered 200k for housing. I don't know what ELS offered.

EDIT: Yes, they're pretty inflexible. You'll get what's offered in the contract, but they don't change things. I can imagine that they're even more inflexible now due to the oversupply of teachers in the market. However, for renewing teachers (i.e. after you've put in a year), they've been known to negotiate a bit more.

[Necompto]

I worked at a YBM elementary school in the Gangnam area for a year and I found the experience to be good compared to my friends' experiences at other schools. You are always guaranteed to get the money they owe you when they owe you, so it's nice to have that stability. Also, it seems that little prep is involved since all of the material and lesson plans are done for you, at least at the elementary level. There are a lot of little annoyances regarding the materials, since many of them were not prepared by native English speakers, but that's easy to work around.

I will offer you caution regarding the non-negotiable "intensive" schedule that isn't thoroughly explained in the contract. My contract had a clause that was like, "employee will be compensated for additional hours as needed" or something. That translates into the following: During the winter and summer breaks from Korean elementary school (one month and two and a half months, respectively) the YBM elementary schools will open during for morning classes so the parents can have a cheap babysitter while they work, basically. So while the hours are usually 12:00-7:30, the hours become 9:00-7:30.

At YBM, you get paid overtime when you have taught more than 160 40-minute blocks in a pay period, so during intensives they will do everything they can to cut and combine classes during the afternoon, or give the classes to the Korean assistant teachers who get paid the same salary regardless of classes taught. Effectively, you can be there three extra hours every day for months and not get paid any overtime. For example, I arrived at 9:00, taught from 9:30-10:55, had a break until 1:30, taught 1:30-3:40, and had another break until 5:15, then taught 5:15-7:25. And no, the breaks are not actual breaks. They load you up with a ton of extra duties such as building student lesson plans (usually a Korean assistant's job), grading more journals, writing extra report card comments, etc., none of which you get paid for. After I left, I even heard that the director made one teacher attend a seminar, come back and re-teach the material to the other teachers, then required the teachers to respond with an actual essay to turn into the director.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with YBM but the intensives were pretty awful.