Fun times at Reading Town

Before I begin this post, I would like to mention that I still like my boss at wonderland/reading town. The workload was ridiculous, but he was generally honest, paid on time in full, was very helpful in getting the teachers situated, and was open to some compromises. I would recommend the school for a first year teacher who is wary of hagwons. Nevertheless, I wouldn't return there myself.

I began working in the middle of the week. I came in on a Wednesday, I believe. My first week, I was just observing classes and going over the new program. The first surprise came when I was handed my schedule. I was in fact teaching kindergarten. I started in the afternoon, but I had to teach kindergarten PE and attend field trips and Saturday events. I would be fine with this except for the fact that on field trip days, I was working from 9:30am to 10:15pm. That's a bit much.

After my training, I started teaching. Teaching was fine for the most part, but the kindergarten classes were horrible. It's one thing when you teach 10 students everyday and you can build up a relationship with the students. It's another when you teach different groups of 20 students each day and you only teach them once a week in a room filled with toys.

The elementary students were fine. The paperwork involved with the elementary students was insane, however. Each student wrote two journals, one essay and three book reports every week. I had about 80-90 elementary students, so that comes out to around 510 pages of marking every week. Then there were tests, quizzes and report cards. I was also teaching a program for a few hours a week with middle school students. This program wasn't so bad, but there was a lot of information I had to print out and enter into the computer using an incredibly buggy and horribly illogical system.

Most days, I was there for about 12 hours. I was barely able to complete all of my paperwork in that time. Sometimes, I'd make a mistake or two like forgetting to write a daily report or not correcting a set of papers for one class on time. This happened on days when I was there for more than 12 hours. The first two weeks, my supervisor was on my ass the entire time.

I am usually a laid back person. I'll be very stern with kids, but I'm usually very calm and diplomatic when I speak to adults. If I am really pissed, I usually maintain my composure. When my boss in Bucheon lied to me every day about my severance pay, I never raised my voice. After two weeks at Reading Town, however, I snapped.

It was Friday. I had come in at 9:30 to go on a field trip. The night before, I stayed until around 11:30 to get some paperwork done because I wouldn't be able to the next morning because I had a field trip. After the field trip, the elementary classes and the middle school classes, it was 10:15, and I was doing some more paperwork. My supervisor came in and started yelling at me about one of the middle school classes. I made a mistake the previous night while assigning their online homework. I had assigned them homework for level 4-AC instead of level 4-AB or something else along those lines.

I said, "Sorry, which class are you talking about? I'll fix it." She said "the Mario class." I said "Which class is that? Is that WM4C or WT4C?" She started yelling again. "You are a terrible teacher. You should know all of your students names. Why don't you know Mario?" I was still calm and explained that I have only been here for two weeks, I only teach the middle school students twice a week and I have about 200 students in total(As it turned out, Mario had been absent for the first two weeks I was teaching, so there is no way I could have known who he was). She yelled for a little while longer and dragged me into her office to watch me enter the homework into the computer. I logged in and began looking for the class after going through six steps to pull up the online homework assignment page. I was slowly scrolling through a list of around 60 classes to find the WM4C class. After I took to long, she pushed me out of the way, found the class and assigned them.

"Why didn't you memorize the instructions I gave you?"
"I need to sleep and eat. I don't have time."
"You are so lazy. I thought you were smart. Mike Teacher memorized the instructions in one day. You don't know how to use the computer after two weeks."

This is when I decided to vent my fury which had been building up over the past two weeks. I yelled at her first about how I would be able to use the computer system just fine if things were listed alphabetically, by level or any other logical system rather than completely random. There is no way to remember a list of names consisting of three letters and one number. I then ranted about how I wouldn't be making so many mistakes if anyone had bothered to debug the horrible software we were using, if I wasn't here for 12 hours a day, and I was able to eat something other than kimchi and rice during my 12 hours at the school.

After I finished yelling at her, she gave me a written warning and I gave my written notice.

Back to the old stomping grounds

Sorry for the delay between updates. I tend to only catch the writing bug when I've consumed some of the Toad Juice, and it's been a while.

So, after I was dicked around for awhile by Lingua, I decided to say goodbye to my free time and hello to a guaranteed paycheck and benefits. I went back to wonderland.

I talked to my former boss and negotiated my new salary which wasn't too bad. I was also taking the afternoon/evening shift which meant not only no phone teaching but no bullshit weekend work or any other nonsense, or so I thought.

Wonderland had changed. They bought a different franchise which I thought I would like, Reading Town.

Towards the end of my first year, my boss had taken an interest in the Reading Town Franchise. He purchased some of their materials and had the teachers try them out. I enjoyed them. I liked the idea of using children's books and basing classes around the stories, grammar and vocabulary in real books rather than half-assed konglish stories about nothing. I thought that the layout was good, and that a lot of important things were emphasized in the workbooks. Granted, I would still say that Reading Town has a decent educational philosophy and system, but I would never work there again.

My boss picked me up and moved me to my new apartment in my old neighborhood. This was an ok apartment in a really great spot. The apartment was really tiny, but it had a veranda and was fully furnished. The kitchen was in the veranda, but that wasn't too important because I don't cook that often, and the immediate neighborhood was great.

This was back in the neighborhood of Siheung-dong. No, not Siheung-Si. Siheung-dong in the southwest corner of Seoul. About thirty steps away from the front of my apartment was a market street where I could buy almost anything I needed for a ridiculously low price. I also found my favorite food a stone's throw away from my new apartment.

In my new, immediate neighborhood, there were/are tons of Chinese immigrants. One Chinese(sort of) food I had not tried before was yang gochi. This is a very simple but delicious food. It's lmab meat on skewers. Not shishkebabs. This is just lamb meat. You grill it for a while and then move the skewer away from the grill/charcoal. You then roll it in whatever you call the red pepper salt/powder. GochuSogeum??? I don't know. Nevertheless, it's one of my all time favorite foods.

Anyhoo, my apartment wasn't so great, but my neighborhood was amazing. I was also much closer to my school than I was my first year.

I knew I would have to adjust to a higher workload than I had become accustomed to the previous year, but I was willing to sacrifice a little bit of free time for a stable and honest employer.

My new found appreciation for the wonders of reading town soon faded....

The end of the new job

After a couple of weeks in Sanbon/gunpo, my employer secured a sweet apartment in Uiwang. It's pronounced eu wi wong, but I always liked calling it wee wang because I'm mature like that. The new place was the best apartment I've had in Korea. It was a relatively new officetel with a loft, a gs25 on the first floor and a great view.

Work was going ok. Some of the paper work was getting annoying, though. It's a bit frustrating to correct multiple choice quizzes with no possible correct answers.

One tuesday morning, I went to the nearest hospital to get an insulin refill. They gave me a bill for 400,000 won. They told me that I didn't have insurance. I called my boss and asked him what the deal was and he told me my old location never transferred over my visa and he can't provide health insurance until that was taken care of. I called my old institute to ask why I didn't have health insurance when I have a pay statement which said that 50,000 was deducted for it. They pretended they didn't know who I was.

After a while, my visa was finally transferred and I had health insurance. I was able to get a refund from the hospital.

After I left the hospital, I went to work and was called into the office. My new boss was "very upset" I didn't tell him I was diabetic. He gave me two weeks notice because he "didn't feel comfortable employing someone with health problems."

Two weeks later, my replacement arrived from the US. This was his first time teaching in Korea, and this was right after the new immigration policies went into effect.

So, somehow, this person was found, hired and had all of his paperwork and consulate interviews taken care of in under two weeks. I later talked to him, because I was a bit suspicious and found out that he was hired a month before he came over.

So, I was in fact hired just so that I could cover for a month while they waited for a teacher who could work for significantly less pay arrived.

On my last day, I was paid for my month at the hagwon. It was 600k less than I was expecting. I was told that the entire vacation was unpaid. As I mentioned earlier, the new vacation plan was 4 weeks vacation, 2 unpaid, 2 paid. So, If we had two weeks off in May, our paychecks would be 75%, not 50%. My vacation was the last week in April and the first week in May, so because my April pay was 75%, I expected my May pay to be 100%.

I talked to the old school and they said, "Oh, no. The whole vacation is unpaid." I asked them why it said 10 days paid vacation, and they told me it was for sick days despite the fact that there were sick days on a different page. I talked to a couple of teachers at my old gig, and they were pissed too. One of them threatened to quit if she didn't receive her contractual vacation pay, and she was successful. I decided to let it go because I was quite tired of dealing with all of the lying and bs.

I also made another poor choice. I was so sick of dealing with people who constantly lied, cheated and were unable to pay me. So, I decided to go back to my first job. I figured it was a stressful job, but I could always count on getting paid on time and in full. I called up my old boss who was thrilled to hear from me. Apparently, they had a relatively new employee they hated and wanted to fire. I would be taking his schedule which was an afternoon/evening elementary/middle school schedule. I was pretty happy, because while I love the kindergarten kids, most of the stress and bullshit from my first year came from doing all of the extra work for the kindergarten program. He offered me a new contract with a generous salary, so I agreed.

A forgotten anecdote and the new gig

Before I begin my short tale of the adventures in Southeast Gyeonggi-Do, I must relay an amusing event which occurred while I was working in Ilsan.

I began teaching a class, and some kid forgot his book. I gave the kid my copy, sent him outside and told him to go to the front desk and get a copy. I marked the pages we were covering and expected him back shortly.

It took a while, but he returned. He didn't have any copies of the pages I marked, but he had a lukewarm cup of instant coffee. A secretary/desk teacher followed him in with another cup of coffee. She asked if I was ok.

I told her I was fine.

She then told me it's not alright to send students out of the class to bring me drinks.

Anyhoo, back in Bucheon I prepared for my move to the Gwacheon area. The new boss would be picking me up in his car, but there wouldn't be room for a few of the things in my apartment like my recently purchased bike or my clothing hanger. I was a little sad to see my new bike go, but it only cost about 60,000 won and the hanger I could do without.

He assured me that all of the paperwork would be taken care of, my visa would be transferred over and my contract would remain the same.

He took me to my new apartment, which was in Sanbon in Gunpo. The place was okay, but it was pretty bare and not as nice as my old place. He asked if I wanted to stay there or move to an apartment in Uiwang that was a loft style officetel. I opted for the officetel. I truly longed for an apartment where I could have guests over in a room that wasn't my bedroom. I had to stay in the Sanbon/Gunpo apartment for a couple of weeks though while he found my new apartment.

The Sanbon apartment was okay. The neighborhood was pretty happening, and the apartment wasn't tiny, but it was a pretty standard one room villa style apartment. There was also a decent hof upstairs where I had a few meals.

The school was okay as well, but not great. At my previous school, I had only taught one speaking class under the new Lingua system. In the new school, half of my classes were under the Lingua system, and I was teaching writing and multi-media. The speaking class books were good, but the new books were shit. They were written in Korea, which means instead of hiring someone who speaks English to write an English textbook, they hired a bunch of Koreans with a basic understanding to write the books. Most of the class time in the writing class was taken up by me correcting the books for the students and giving them other tasks.

The multi-media classes consisted of me pressing play, letting the students watch CNN videos and then giving them tests on the video after playing it twice. I don't know why they needed someone with a college degree from an English speaking country to do this job, but I accepted it.

Updates coming soon

I will continue my tale and let you all know about the exciting world of gwacheon, uiwang and gunpo shortly. For the time being, however, I will be in Fukuoka on a visa run that has cost me almost 4M won. The reasons for this will be told later on in the story, though.

Things start to get unpleasant part 5

So, I worked through the rest of the week. On Friday, there was a staff dinner at the Ilsan school, but I turned down the invitation. I had to take the subway home because the Ilsan boss was attending the staff dinner. He walked me out and showed me where the subway was and asked me to work for another week. I declined, but then he offered me a permanent position. He explained that he'd handle all of the visa stuff and that he really wanted me to work there.

I turned him down because things were still generally good in Bucheon and I enjoyed my life there. I took the subway home. On Sunday, the head teacher in Ilsan called and begged me to work for the next week. After a ton of begging and the cancer stricken teacher calling me, I finally agreed.

I finished up the week easily enough, but on pay day, I noticed my boss had neglected to pay me my severance. Upon returning to Bucheon, I immediately called my boss to ask what was up. He apologized and explained that the money would be in by Tuesday night at the latest. He had to spend a lot of money on renovations and purchasing the new name. I was pretty skeptical and pissed, so I went into work and made my boss sign a document promising that the money would be paid by Tuesday. Had I not done him a huge favor by working at another school for the last two weeks, I wouldn't have been so pissed, but begging for a favor and then turning around and not paying someone severance after a huge favor is done is a pretty shitty thing to do to someone.

I waited. After work on Tuesday, I went to the bank and checked my balance. My money still wasn't there. I went back to work and went into my boss's office. He said "I'm busy, hold on a minute." He was playing solitaire. I told him that he needed to pay me now and pulled out the signed agreement. He said he forgot. He picked up a bank book and went out to pay me. He said sorry and that he was heading straight to the bank to put my pay in.

The next day, I went to the bank. The money wasn't there. So, my boss actually pretended to go to the bank to delay my anger for half a day. I immediately called my boss. There was no answer. I tried several more times. I then sent him several angry text messages. I started off with simple ones like "Where's my money?" and "내금전 어디에??" which I'm pretty sure isn't quite correct. After a couple of hours, I put in my notice and started sending out my resume. I went in and talked to the head teacher and told him I would not be working there after one month. I decided to do the decent thing and give them a full month notice.

A couple hours later, I get a call from my boss. He was in the hospital. He said that he couldn't pay me the day before because the bank was closed. I was a little skeptical, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He promised he'd pay the next day. It took another five days, but he finally payed me my severance. When he came back he said something in horrible Konglish about how he could put me on an immigration blacklist if he wanted. This was of course in front of one of my students.

After that, things went fairly well. Then, the head teacher brought up the new vacation policy. They were offering now instead of 10 days paid vacation on days of the teachers choice, 20 days half paid vacation during exam periods. So, we would get 2 weeks off at a time and receive 75% pay for the month. I agreed because I wanted to go on a long vacation.

During the first long vacation at the end of April, I was contacted by the VP who wanted to know if I could work at a different branch in Gwacheon. The pay and contract would be the same, but it would be in a different location. I went and checked out the other branch and the area around it. I agreed. I didn't want to deal with any more bullshit from Tony.

Things start to get unpleasant part 4

So, the Ilsan guy picks me up, and he's pretty nice. Apparently, the teacher I was subbing for had cancer and was recovering from treatment. So, this guy was fairly decent. Most hagwon bosses would fire someone with cancer and leave them to deal with insurance and treatment. The school was decent, and the students were alright. The school used pretty good books that the kids all liked, and everyone who worked there seemed decent.

The conditions weren't so great though. They weren't horrible, but they weren't as good as the conditions at my school. Instead of teaching about five classes a day with ten minute breaks between each class, I taught seven classes with no breaks. Most of the kids were good, but there was one kid who asked me "Teacher do you like Puck You?"

I dragged this kid out into the hall. I didn't want to invest a lot of time dealing with the kid since I would only be teaching him for one more day, so I brought him to the head teacher and told him to repeat what he said to me to her. That night I got a very apologetic call from her saying she was so sorry that the kid said something so offensive and that it wouldn't happen again. I was a little surprised, because this is pretty standard fare. Usually, Korean staff don't care and either lightly scold students or ignore it. I told her not to worry because I had experienced far worse.

The next day after I finished teaching, the Ilsan boss took me out to dinner and my Bucheon boss met us at the restaurant. We were at some "famous" restuarant and the Ilsan boss ordered bibimbop for us. It was pretty good, but I just wanted to go home. When my Bucheon boss arrived, he said "Oh no. He is America person. He needs meat!!" He then ordered some galbi. I had a few pieces, but I was already pretty full. My Bucheon boss, Tony(I forgot that I decided to include his name)spent the next twenty minutes stuffing his face and speaking with his mouth full and spitting half of his meal on my plate in true Korean fashion.

After a little while, Tony turned to me and said I need to work there for the rest of the week, but after that I would be teaching in Bucheon. The Ilsan boss would also be taking me out to dinner every night to show his appreciation. I protested, but after enough guilt was pushed in my direction for being taken out to such a nice restaurant, I finally agreed. Mostly, I just wanted to go home and get out of the uncomfortable situation of eating with two ajeoshis in a "famous" Korean restaurant.

So, I worked at the Ilsan school for the next three days.

Hmm, this looks like it will turn into a six or seven part series.

*****Stay tuned for part 5*****