Korean Job Discussion Forums

[livinginkorea]

For those of you who don't know, GEPIK is the Gyeonggi-do English Program in Korea, which is now in its second year. I applied for a job in an elementary school and went to the training last week for four days.

The training was very boring for me but I have been here since Feburary 2004 so I was experienced. I don't know if it was beneficial for the newbies but I hope that it was. I felt that spending four days "training" was a waste of time for me and spent most of the time listening to people asking very stupid questions. One person asked if they could go roller blading! Some people asked the same question again and again! The lecturer would explain something and five minutes later somebody would ask the same question again!

The worst thing was that some of these people were experienced teachers, not newbies and I felt strangely embarrassed. Others raised their hand and saw it as a chance to rant about students and teaching. Some people asked genuine questions but most didn't. As usual a lot of people wanted to tell others about their bad experiences and not about the good ones.

I feel sorry for the Korean teachers who will have some of these complainers in their school. It was also interesting that some people said that the Korean teacher leads the class and the foreign teacher follows and others said vice versa. It just depends on your school and your Korean teacher and a bit of luck!

The only good part of the entire training was the drinking, meeting others and leaving!

Any thoughts?

[crazylemongirl]

[livinginkorea]

Yep I knew that it would happen but at least I drank a lot! I say that the teachers must have drunk everything in that town!

And the ongoing joke between a few of us....Where's Brian?

[manlyboy]

Is it true they had four people to a room with only two beds? How did you determine who got the bunks? Personally, I prefer the first-one-back-from-jokki-jokki-sleeps-on-the-floor system.

If the training was anything like it was last year, I can understand the frustration, but like the job itself, it's mostly what you make of it. When I was there last year, quite a few people went into it with a skeptical attitude, and they only saw what they wanted to see. A lot of the b*tching and whining by the teachers was just embarrassing. In no way did the shortcomings of the training fit the intensity of the complaining. I drove home with two other teachers and I thought they were going to have aneurisms they were carping so hard. Yes, I'm a dirty rotten apologist, but anyone who says GEPIK is no better than a hagwon is just lying.

[Kimchieluver]

EPIK training was 10 days.

[livinginkorea]

[manlyboy]

Yep. I signed on for a second year. Got a 300K pay raise, my own office, lots of free time so I'm not complaining.

The biggest negative for me is the arbitrary nature of the placements. Some of you guys will be put in amongst the roses, but others will end up in the thornbrush.

[livinginkorea]

[kermo]

I heard today that GEPIK orientation was at a resort this year! I couldn't believe it after the penetentiary style dwellings they had us in last year (after the hotel turfed us out )

[livinginkorea]