Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mrsquirrel]

i've been working with a recruiter that was recommended to me by a fellow poster. So far she has been excellent in working with me and my timetable.

She has offered me work starting March 2nd for the public school sector which is ideally what i want. I haven't been able until today to actually confirm that I could make it for the 2nd.

Sadly my school being the bunch of bumbling Thais that they are has only just finalized the timetable for exams and my last week of exams finishes on the 2nd. I am already planning on leaving my contract here a month early which isn't a problem so i can't really grumble.

The recruiter has said that I will be able to find work after the 2nd for schools that haven't found their foreign teacher to fill their positions.

Do I want to work at a school that hasn't filled it's places? Is there going to be adverse reasons for this?

In your experience will a school accept me as their teacher and allow me to start a week late if they know they are getting an experienced teacher or is this not going to happen?

I've been trying to sort things out as quickly as possible.

I presume that I'm going to have to have a school and a contract to get a visa which might mean having to wait until March to get one which sounds a bit tight for me since I really have to organise a replacement for me here in Thailand as well. I can't really keep my old school hanging for another 6 weeks.

Any advice or input on amicable ways to sort this out?

[sock]

A LOT of elementary schools won't begin English classes until the week after March 2. My advice, controversial as it may be, is to just sign with a Korean school, tell them there won't be any problems, and then sometime around Feb. 28, tell them that "something suddenly just came up" and that you won't be able to start teaching classes until the 8th or the 10th or whatever.

The school won't go anywhere, and it won't be nearly the Big Deal that everyone is acting like it is going to be now.

Seriously. Last semester, and the semester before that I "had" to be at work a few days before school even started. Why? So I could sit around and count ceiling tiles until the kids came to school. When they came to school, I thought, great, let's start teaching. No. They didn't tell me until MONDAY morning that I wouldn't begin teaching until the next week. Another week of wasting my time and other people's money.

I am not exaggerating when I say that everything will be fine. Just do what you need to do, and apologize later. If someone is really offended, bring back a big bottle of duty-free liquor to share and all will be well again.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I don't think you need to be sneaky about it. Just be upfront about when you can show up. Most won't care that you come a week late. You will only be seeing your students once a week anyway, so the most any student will miss will be one class.

[mrsquirrel]

That has been my thinking so far.

I will start to be a bit more forceful on my suggestions. I'm still trying to keep the softly nicely smiley smiley going on.

[spyro25]

if they like you they will wait.

[mrsquirrel]

What's not to like?

I drink black coffee, eat raw onion and tuna fish sandwiches and burn jasmine incense in my house all day.

A perfect teacher.

[passport220]

I would generally agree with what the other posters have said. Just tell them when you can start. You will not be judged �less than� by the other teachers for it. As a late arrival there may be some adjustment required to assign you classes that were to otherwise be taught by Korean English teachers. I would think this would only make you more appreciated when Korean teachers find their work load has just been surprisingly reduced by a foreign teacher.

It seems there are a lot of schools that have vacancies. Just because a school still has a position open does not mean it is a �bad� school. It seems teachers are assigned from a central district office not by teachers who arrive first cherry picking the best schools.