Korean Job Discussion Forums

[blizzard_jdf]

I recently did a midnight run from my school which was in Incheon. Yeah it was a typical hagwon that really only cared about money. Though for the first two months I was happy overall. I had my ups and downs but it was alright.

Then we had the new semester and everything just went crazy. There were too many students and not enough teachers. I ended up doing a runner 3 weeks into the new semester. I just couldn't stick it out till we got new teachers.

For the first two months I was the smiley guy. I would joke with the kids, act really extraverte in classes and just smile a lot. When the new semester started it was just too much. I started to go crazy. It got to the point where I was really nervous going into Kindergarten classes. One of my co workers said I was like a black cloud and everyone was waiting for something bad to happen with me.

Case for me (the teacher):

The director couldn't speak english. I had to communicat through the head teacher. All he said

Quote:

he was trying his hardest to keep everyone happy

There was nothing he could do.

The boss just put me on a crazy amount of overtime. About 34 hours of overtime per month. I had been an ESL teacher for a total of 6 weeks. I was not allowed to reduce my schedule at all. In fact one of the fellow foreign teachers took one of my classes off me and the boss gave me an extra class anyway.

My schedule was insane. I came in at 10am. Mt first class was at 10:20am. I had a one hour break from 2pm till 3pm to prepare for classes. My last class was at 7:40pm. Once you throw in paper work and doing adequote prep (remember I was a newbie) I would of had to of done 9am till 9pm. A 12 hour day.

I got sick because I had an allergy and I couldn't get any time off. I still had to work 12 hour days.I lost my voice as well.

Every Friday we had to do unpaid activities such as cooking days and field trips. We also had to serve the kids lunch everyday without pay.

I would of had to have done the crazy overtime for at least 6 weeks till they found a new teacher.

The boss could watch all of the classes on closed circuit TV. One day I had 7 hours of classes. Sadly I had a bad 10 minutes and that is all the boss saw.

When I got to the school the head Kindergarten teacher was leaving. She didn't explain anything to me. Not even how I was supposed to teach the books.

Case for the school:

I didn't raise the issues with them directly. I told my recruiters. Though this was just because the head teacher said he couldn't do anything. I also spoke to one of the Korean teacher's husband, who was American. The boss found out.

I yelled at one kid beacause the stress was getting to me so badly.

I started to get paranoid about the cameras.

[I'd never lived away from home before. I couldn't cook properly. I'm only 21.

I ran away after 3 weeks of everything being hell.

I should have realized that this is what Korea is like.

I just stopped caring after a while and the quality of my classes dropped drastically.

What do you think? One day I might go back and teach english. Though not this year and not in Korea. Though sometimes I think that I am just not cut out for the job. What do you think?

[IwalkAlone]

I think you had a valid case to stop the status quo of things. I do disagree with the method used. A midnight run should be used when all else fails, and the school repeatedly disrespects you as a person. You were being exploited, but a simple refusal to teach the classes would have been a better decision. The school can't force you to do overtime, nor can they deduct pay for overtime classes missed. (Just try deducting overtime pay off of overtime hours.....)