First Story

This is an entire post which can be found here: http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=50933 I divided it into more paragraphs to make it easier to read.


Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 8:28 pm Post subject:

I just finished a year contract with Youngdo. I can't speak for every branch or every teacher but my experience was pretty miserable. As far as the day to day working conditions there is nothing stand out about how aweful it is but there were a number of situations that happened at my school and others in the area that were pretty agregious.

I can give you a few examples: My boyfriend and I signed a contract with them that stated we would be placed in a 1 bedroom. When we arrived we were placed in an apartment that was a single room. There were a number of other teachers all beginning at the same time as us and there apartments were the same size, however they were single individuals. I told my manager about the situation and she absolutely refused to even make a phone call or have a conversation with me about it. My boyfriend later talked to his boss and they gave us 400.00 won a month under the condition that they were going to find us another place asap. When that didn't happen and I pressed them about it and ------ told me I was not allowed to discuss the issue with any other staff or teachers. I continued to press it and finally was given an apartment of two teachers who were leaving only because I happened to know them and specifically asked for there apartment. Since it was a relatively dumpy villa and ------ wasn't in charge anymore they gave it to us.

Another example: a couple of teacher's training at my school asked me about my apartment situation. I told them the story and they repeated it to -----. This promted his phone call mentioned above. The couple was later told that the single room they were given was in fact a one-bedroom as their contract ascribed. They argued. They lost the arguement and pulled a runner after payday.

Another example: a teacher who arrived with me arrived on a passport and visa that ran out midway through the contract. He made supervisors aware of the situation on more than one occasion. The supervisors had months to resolve the situation. They never did. When his visa ran out they told him it was his fault and his responsibility and he would pay for the visa run or loose his job. He did.

Another example: a teacher's mother was in intensive care and the doctors were saying she was not going to make it. She asked to leave and according to the contract should not have to pay back her ticket because of a family death. Well they argued that because her mother wasn't dead yet she had to pay her own way home. Her mother died less than a week later and that teacher never recieved anything from the school.

As far as the working conditions, the classes are ridiculously long and there are cameras. Neither of these things really bothered me. The legnth of the classes for some levels are really not substantiated by the ciriculum. I spent a lot of time coming up with supplementary material. However, for me 6 hours is 6 hours.

I liked the cameras in many ways because if there was ever a problem I could just say "Look at the camera and show me." This luckily never happened to me but...

What bothered me is the following: the school I worked at had serious issues with students being placed in levels far beyond their ability or being allowed to continue to move up through the levels despite the fact that they were completely failing in every aspect of the class. This is true at most hagwons from what I hear but not at all at the one I work for now. The difference being that Youngdo's expectations are extremely higher than other hagwons and at least at my old school the student's performances were far far lower than the expectations of the school. The resolution to this problem was not to build a reputation for excellence by forcing out students that don't perform but rather to keep the ciriculum the same and lower the grade scale to the following: A: 100-80 B: 79-60 C: 59-30 D: 30-0 no failure Consider that about a third of all my students were below a 50% grade.

Discipline was also a serious issue. We were told at training that for cultural reasons we were not allowed to discipline students. We were only allowed to send students out to the front desk. At the front desk the students were not disciplined even a little. In fact, after once sending a student out to be disciplined I later went out to see were he was an hour later and found him running around the hallways. When I asked if they had spoken to him they said no.

I know alot of people out there are rolling their eyes saying "that's all Hagwons," that may be true but it's not true at the one I work at now and it's not true at the ones of other teachers I have spoken to so...

Also don't expect you ten vacation days to be at all consecutive. Two here, three here, one there. You may or may not be able to travel outside of Korea depending on whether or not you want to go somewhere for four days.

Bottom line Youngdo should be a last resort for anyone thinking about signing a contract. P.S. Please don't reply to me about my spelling or grammatical errors. It's not work-related it's a website.


Note: I used ----- in place of an employee's name and I deleted info written to explain who this person is. Based on this post the employee left anyway and YY has had hundreds of employees. I don't intend to ever include anyone's name on this blog or any information which would give away their identity. It doesn't seem blogger has rules on this, but it's a matter or respect.