My first vacation in quite a while

Between the time I finished at Reading Town and I started at my new school, I had about a month. It was December, so I decided to take this time off to enjoy a nice tropical country. I had already been to Thailand, so I decided to try the Philippines. The trip had two purposes. One was for some r and r, the other was to get my new visa. I booked a trip to Cebu and Bohol after confirming with my worthless recruiter that I could get a visa at the consulate in Cebu. A few days before I flew out, my recruiter contacted me to let me know that I had to go to Manila. I was a little pissed, but after I adjusted my trip and got a ticket from Cebu to Manila for about $20, I shrugged it off. My recruiter and new boss would continue to piss me off throughout the rest of my vacation with visa issuance number delays, but that's another story.

So, I flew out to Cebu. The next day I flew out to Manila. I'm kind of glad that I had to go to Manila, because I really enjoyed the city, but more on my trip to the Philippines later.

The search begins again

So, I put in my notice and began searching for another job. I chose a pretty crappy time to search for a new job, though. The won was at a ridiculous rate, and most employers were offering a maximum of 2.3M. I had several interviews at various Avalon branches, and most of these offered 2.5, which I would have been happy with, but most of the locations were brand new, and they had set curriculums with class flow charts. I was not looking for a job where I essentially follow a script, and I wasn't going to gamble with a location that was just starting up.

A friend of mine mentioned his school which sounded pretty great. The classes were entirely up to the discretion of the teachers, and they taught using novels. I went in for an interview, but there were a couple of things which worried me. The pay was pretty high, but there were no benefits. The visa situation was also a little odd. I ended up declining the position.

Finally, I talked to a school in Anyang. The pay was 2.3, but the hours were very low, teachers were allowed freedom in the classes, and there were lots of opportunities for extra pay. I talked to the teacher I was replacing, and he gave a glowing review of the school. So, I decided to work there.

This was one of the worst decisions I have made since coming to Korea.

My thoughts on teaching and the end of my 1st/4th job

Although my new supervisor was a complete moron, I had started to get into the swing of things at my job. My hours had decreased, and my boss was very supportive of me. During the summer, my mother came to visit, and my boss took us both out a couple of times and was quite generous.

Although the working conditions were getting better, some other issues started arising. The lesson content was alright, but I felt it could be improved in many ways. I was teaching two basic classes, speaking/reading and writing. The speaking/reading classes were a breeze, and the lessons went pretty well. The only issue I had with them was that many of the students would listen for key words, find the the key words in the book and then just read the sentence with the key word out loud with out thinking about or understanding the question. Personally, I wanted the students to read their stories, understand them and be able to discuss them. So, I started having students close their books after reading them when we discussed them in order to break them of the habit of just reading random sentences aloud.

In the writing classes there was a whole series of issues I had to tackle. I had many students with incredible vocabularies, great speaking skills and no understanding of basic grammar. While I'm fond of the communicative method, I also think that fundamentals of grammar are necessary when studying a second language, especially a second language with an entirely different grammatical structure from the native language. For example, I had students who knew words like onomatopoeia but couldn't conjugate to be.

So, in my writing classes, I produced some supplementary materials where the students had to practice writing basic verbs in sentences with different subjects. I thought that there wasn't much of a point in teaching students how to "show instead of tell" if they couldn't convey basic information like "He goes to the store."

The admin liked my ideas, but a few parents complained, and then they started scrutinizing all of my teaching techniques. Everything was suddenly too hard. I needed to just follow the lesson plans made by the experts at Reading Town. All of my classes were going swimmingly. My students were all very responsive. They retained most of the information I covered in class. Their test scores were all pretty decent, but the parents hated me. Or, rather one or two parents hated me and the administration was all over my ass because some parent who couldn't speak English thought she was an expert on teaching English. After a month or so of this, I decided that I was done with this bullshit and wanted to find a job where I had control over the content of my class. I gave my notice and agreed to remain until the six month mark.

Laziness and apathy strike

I'm putting the blog on hold for a while. More updates will come, but it may be a while.

The biggest douche in the universe

My new supervisor had started working, but I didn't see him much as he was spending most of his time going over the system with the director. The weekend before the new session started, we had a meeting to go over the new syllabus, meet the new supervisor and discuss random other things. The meeting started, and the new supervisor was introduced. Then we got down to "important business." The new supervisor pretty much ran the meeting. The first important piece of business was stickers. Parents were complaining that we were too stingy with the stickers and didn't make it clear why stickers were awarded. So, we received sticker guidelines. One would think that this part of the meeting would take about 30 seconds, but some of my coworkers insisted on defending their own sticker policies and arguing with the new supervisor for about 20 minutes. Personally, I didn't give a flying fuck because they were stickers. If little Rora needed four instead of three, it has no effect on my classes.

The next order of business pissed me off. We didn't look busy enough when we were in the teacher's room. When we're not teaching, we should be doing work. If a parent saw one of us checking email, reading or eating, they would be very upset. We needed to appear to be working even if we weren't. This is when I excused myself, picked up my contract and printed out a copy of the current Korean labor laws. We ended up arguing for a bit, but it was settled that it was okay to relax while we were on break, but that we could only use school computers for actual work.

Some more random bullshit was discussed. None of it was in the least bit important, and then the director finally cut off the new supervisor so that we could go over the new syllabus. They explained the new format and that we would be using folders for each of the classes which we shared with our co-teachers so that we could see how the kids were doing in the other classes.

The following Monday, the new session started. We had no syllabi. Our books were also unsorted. So all of the teachers had to pick random books and guess how many pages to cover that day. I wasn't too worried. I just counted the books and compared their difficulty. I generally figured out which books to use and covered about as many pages as I had in previous classes.

When it was time to go upstairs to teach the middle school program, I still didn't have any syallabi, so I talked to the secretary up there. I wanted to be a bit more organized for those classes because they involved daily quizzes and specific computer assignments which would both be a lot more work to make up and adjust. So, I told the secretary that I had no idea what I was teaching that day and asked her if she knew which book I was teaching and what homework to give. She looked it up and told me.

The next day, I received all of my syllabi. While I was doing some prep, the douche approached me and told me he was very disappointed with how I acted yesterday. I should have known what I was teaching. I was a little taken aback. I asked him how I was supposed to know what to teach when no one had given me a syllabus. He then told me that he said the new syllabi were in the class folders at the meeting. I told him to wait a second. I then walked downstairs and pulled out all of my class folders. I brought them upstairs and showed them to him. None of them had a syllabus.

"Oh, so are you much proud? Is you happy to show me wrong? I understand. Yesterday was little bit crazy, so I forgive you. But don't forget what you is teaching again."

"Okay, buddy. Sure thing."

A new supervisor

So, the old supervisor left, but we were on much friendlier terms. My hours became a little lower once I got into the swing of things and was able to manage my time and more efficiently grade the huge stacks of papers I had to correct. I still had to wait a little while for the new syllabus to kick in, but it became manageable. I got my time at the hagwon down to 10 hours maximum, and I was no longer doing field trips.

Then, the new supervisor came. This man was, in fact the biggest douche in the universe. He "lived in England for 15 years" but spoke English about as well as my second year students. He had a perm. He insisted on being referred to as Reverend. He also knew absolutely nothing about teaching English.

Once the new syllabus kicked in, my class and workload dropped, and I had considerably more free time. Other things started to drive me crazy though.

More to come later, but I've got some teaching to do.

Things cool off

After my fight/argument/heated discussion with my supervisor, I went home and thought about my work situation. I had some extra money saved. I was being worked to death and had to deal with tons of bullshit, so as I mentioned before, I decided to quit.

The next day, I went in and spoke with the director. I explained that while I appreciated everything that was given to me, I needed things like sleep and a single day at work that wasn't filled with stress. I agreed to stay for another month and a half so that I could leave after the summer session and he could find a replacement.

My supervisor with whom I battled the night before pulled me aside. She told me that she checked my timecard and saw the hours I was putting in and that she was sorry. She also mentioned that she had given her notice as well and that she was son angry the day before because she was fighting with the director. She told me about an opening at a hagwon in Sillim which had pretty good conditions. A coworker from my first year was working there, so I contacted them for an interview. The school seemed alright, but the hours were similar and the place seemed a little off. I interviewed with Jung Chul at their head office the next week.

The Jung Chul position sounded pretty sweet. They offered 2.6 plus all of the standard benefits, an afternoon evening shift, and a great apartment. I spoke with a few of the at that time current employees and the position sounded good.

I was ready to go back and sign, but then my director pulled me into his office. He told me how much he liked me as a teacher and that he really wanted me to stay. He wrote up a contract addendum which stated that I didn't need to attend any field trips or any other kindergarten related events. He showed me the new syllabus which had speaking two times a week and writing once instead of the reverse, and he offered me a better apartment. He also told me that the new supervisor spent a lot of time in England and was a lot more laid back.

After a bit of thought, I decided to stay. I liked the director and knew I could trust him.

The new supervisor is another story...