SLP

Nam Pundang

I also taught over 3 years in Korea, and I wish you the best possible luck
in your greylist. I found the other lists too dated and unorganized to be
useful. The world needs a site like the one you're hoping to create.

I want to add this post on SLP Nam Bundang (Pundang). Right this month, I
don't have permission from 2 teachers currently there, but they are leaving
soon and will back up what I have to write after that. I also have email
contacts with 3 other teachers who will support me and what we know about
this SLP for the last 3 years until now.

I could also add a general warning about a small school in Wonju, but my
last contact with the school comes from 1998 and could be dated.

Anyway, good luck and below is what I want to post about SLP Nam Pundang or
Nam
Bundang.

SLP Nambundang

THE SHORT VERSION:

Don't work there.

The school is a pressure cooker.
Even if you don't get cheated out of money, you'll regret setting foot in
the school.

I'm finally posting a warning about it for two reasons:
1) I'm in the US and safe.
2) Now, several other teachers are also safe and willing to back up my
opinion with their own personal stories.

You can read them by emailing me at sbautry@hotmail.com and I'll pass along
their email addresses.

In my year at SLP, the Korean teachers came and went like we had a revolving
door. Only one full time and one part time
Korean teacher remained during my time from June 1998-June 1999. Both of
them quit a few months later.

I know of 5 teachers who either ran away while I was there or since I left.
Plus, 1 teacher was fired in his 11th month.
Plus, 2 teachers had run away shortly before I came there.

That makes a turn-over rate of 8 foreign teachers in less than 3 years.

And that doesn't include me and another teacher who finished our contracts
but regretted having signed it.

Every teacher who has worked at SLP hasn't been cheated out of money.
Even some of the teachers who have run away weren't cheated.
But the school is so bad, few can make it through a contract, and almost all
wish they had never signed.

Please take our collective wisdom and avoid this school.

THE LONG VERSION:
My Story:

I'd heard some warning bells about SLP before I signed with them:
Two teachers had run away a few months before, but the foreign teacher that
I was put in contact with said it was because they
were "bitches." [I learned from this that you should always talk to more
than one foreign teacher before signing.]

I also talked to one of the Korean teachers who spoke English very well.
She admitted that she didn't want to say anything to
make me not sign with the school, but she did say "things have gotten much
better lately." [A warning bell]

I did go to SLP, because I had little choice. The school my recruiter had
put me in two months before had just gone bankrupt
leaving me with no money and in an apartment with no power, no hot water and
no cooking gas. [I learned that you can't trust
recruiters much either.]

The first few months after I signed seemed fine. The 3 remaining foreign
teachers and the other Korean teachers all said the
same thing: "Things are much better now." They thought the director had
been shocked when the 2 Americans had run away
and cleaned up his act.

I was even telling the two new teachers who came soon after me that the
school was better than most in Korea. I had worked
in Korea for 1 1/2 years before this, and I guess the thrill of taking hot
bathes after my last school experience had warped my
mind. (My first school had not been a bed of roses either, but I finished
my contract there with little trouble.)

The good days at SLP didn't last long though. About 4 months into my
contract, Mr. Choi (the owner) hired a director named
Joy, and the school reverted back to the way it had been. Before Joy, Mr.
Choi had been accessible and would bend some to
the pressure of the teachers. Joy became his buffer, and he ran the school
as he had before:

Mr. Choi is a micro-manager. He has TV cameras in every classroom. He says
it is for the parents, but he is the most frequent
viewer.

He also hires a private detective to follow teachers. Yes. This is true.
I didn't believe it at first, but I learned. He used the
detective to make sure we weren't teaching privates, or planning to run
away, and to make sure we weren't hanging out with the
Korean teachers.

There were a few instances of his knowing about a teacher's activities that
he couldn't have known without having them
followed.

We also learned for sure that he was hiring one when a teacher did run
away. Mr. Choi had called the detective to yell at him
while one of our bus drivers was with him. The bus driver told us about it.

In the school itself, Mr. Choi has also created an environment where parents
know they can control how you teach your class.

One result of this is a constant stream of contradictory rules:

One week Joy will tell you not to do "A" in class. You can ask why and
she'll give you a dozen reasons that make no sense.

The next week, Joy will hold a meeting and ask why nobody is doing "A."
"A" is a good thing and she has a dozen reasons
why it works so well.

Two week later, she'll hold another meeting to complain about all the
teachers doing "A" when she remembers clearly having
told you a month ago not to do "A."

After talking with my Korean co-teachers, it became obvious that the
school's flip-flopping on how to teach in class was a
result of parent's wishes: One parent calls one day and says her son hates
"A" and we're told to stop doing it. Another parent
calls and says her daughter loves "A" and we're told to do it. It will
drive a teacher crazy.

Students are also moved from class to class based on what they or their
parents want, not what is best for them. It happens so
much, it is difficult for a teacher to establish a routine or get to know
the dynamics of the class.

Teachers are also moved from class to class. Sometimes this depends on
students or parent's desires, part of the time it is a
result of teacher vs teacher tension:

Mr. Choi and Joy play teachers against teachers and Koreans against
foreigners. Koreans are told not to talk to foreigners
unless it directly relates to classes. They're told we are only there to
make money and that we couldn't find real jobs in our
home countries.

The Korean teachers don't really believe this and are mostly friendly to us
because Mr. Choi treats them like crap as well. But,
his pressure on them does make it nearly impossible for them to deal with us
in an open manner.

New teachers are also told not to listen to the older teachers....they are
"trouble makers" "whiners" or "emotionally unstable."
6 months into the contract, and half way toward getting their severance pay,
these new teachers will understand why the other
teachers are emotionally unstable.

The further into your contract, the worse it gets. Part of the reason is
the "slow grind" process....the mismanagement of the
school wears you down. Part of the reason is that Mr. Choi and Joy turn up
the pressure the closer you get to finishing.

One older teacher I worked with left after 10 months.

An example of how this works is the time I got in trouble for studying
Korean at school:

We were supposed to come two hours early to prepare for class. This was
unpaid time.
If you had experience teaching, or after you gained a little, it took very
little time to prepare. So, most of these two hours were
dead time.

Also, since we were teaching a huge load of classes 6 days a week, and
since we were being treated with no respect, even
gung-ho teachers soon cut back on how much they were willing to do Choi a
favor and work when we weren't being paid, (like
frequent student interviews).

Many teachers used the two hours checking email, reading the newspaper, or
talking to each other. One teacher often slept on
the couch. I decided to kill the time by studying Korean....Until Mr. Choi
came and told me not to do it, becasue it "looked
bad" in front of the Korean teachers. After the second time he told me to
stop, I asked him how could my learning Korean
look worse than reading a newspaper or sleeping. He just side stepped the
issue and made no sense. I asked the Korean teachers about it and they
couldn't believe he had said it. They felt it was just part of his trying
to play Korean against Westerner.
Basically, it was my week to be picked on. Maybe he had seen something in
my class he didn't like. Who knows? The point
is that he would often pull something like this on a teacher from time to
time when he was unhappy with them. The frequency of
these confrontations increased the closer you get to finishing your
contract.

I made it through, but when I told them 2 months early that I was not going
to resign with them (which the contract says you
have to do) I became an outcast. The day to day pressure only increased,
and on my last day, about 500,000 won was
withheld from my last pay because of too many sick days:

The contract says that a teacher gets 5 sick days. I only missed two or
three full days in my whole year. A couple of times I
missed one class because I went to the doctor and then returned to school to
teach. Mr. Choi counted each one class as a full
day and deducted money for that day. What made this worse was that Joy had
sent me to the doctor twice because I had
said I didn't feel well. She had done it for other teachers too, even to
the point of ordering one teacher to go who didn't like
doctors. I had always thought it was her way of trying to show she "cared"
about us. Oh well.

Confronting Mr. Choi about the unfairness of taking my money was just like
any dealings with him: He and Joy would use any
excuse no matter how weak or illogical or wrong to justify their actions.
Even if you blocked one, they'd only come up with
three more.

A good example is how he dealt with my housing:

When I arrived, one male teacher had his own basement apartment. I lived
with another male teacher. Before I got married to
a Korean, Mr. Choi had agreed to let us move into the other man's apartment
if that teacher agreed, which he did. The catch
was that I had to pay 150,000 won rent. (He told me to tell the other
teachers that I was paying 200,000 for some reason). I
asked why I had to pay when the other teacher had lived there for 6 months
for free. He said it was because he had expected
to move all three male teachers into the same apartment and get rid of the
one room place, but since I was getting married, he'd
do us a favor and let us use the apartment after we got married.

We moved in and lived there for about 6 months. But, after I finished my
contract, he moved another teacher into my place
rent free, and he even rented a second one room apartment so another teacher
would sign to come there.

Mr. Choi had also promised me airfare money which he didn't give because I
went to another school in Korea. I pointed out
that I could go home for a vacation with the ticket money he promised and
fly back on the ticket money that a new school
would offer. That didn't work either.

I think the only reason that he gave me severance pay is because he knew I
was still in contact with two teachers there.

Please trust me and avoid this school. If you think I'm only being a
whiner, email me and I'll put you in touch with several other
teachers. Two of them are people I worked with, and the others are people
who came after me. They will also describe for
you why SLP is a bad place to work in.

If you think we're all whiners, then feel free to go to SLP and prove us all
wrong.

Scott Autry 7/00