I was employeed by this school for 1.5 years. This past November they fired me without notice(fired me on a Friday night and told me not to come on Monday and wanted me out of the apartment in one week) and without the required 30 days pay -- they told me that the labor laws only apply to public school teachers. Why did they fire me? They "found out" I wrote an anonomous warning about them (I never admitted it, they just assumed it was me) on the now defunct black list. They also did not repay my 600,000 won
deposit -- they did this to two other teachers too, teachers that left their school within a few months.
The warning I had written warned prospective employees about the haphazard management and negative office environment caused by the manager playing head games with the foreign teachers. I said "any serious teachers need not apply".
Why?? Because they have no curriculum, no standards, and NO teachers. The only person who was an actual teacher with knowledge regarding education was myself, and I was burned at the stake for it. I tried my best, did a good job, saw progress in my students and tried to cope, but didn't last my last six months. In the last seven months of my time there, three teachers quit, the remainder were teaching up to ten classes a day with no overtime pay, and there were three illegals teaching there -- two part time and one full time. THe full time illegal was the Manager, Miss. Hong. She was the root of most of the problems regarding the
horrible work atmosphere. She would constantly tell me that she hated foreigners, hated working with them, and hated her job. She would try to pit teachers against each other, and would verbally abuse and attack anyone?who did not basically, kiss her bootie. It was really sad. I am back in the area and pursuing lawyers to sue this school for being wrongfully fired and to get the money they owe me.
I really can't recommend it for serious teachers. If someone wants to come and have money paid on time, cool. They should only expect that, well, maybe. The contract did say that we were responsible for prep for classes. But it did not mention anything about extra work like preparing for special activities like Halloween parties or Christmas pagents. Nor did it say anything about telephone teaching, and intake/level test creation. It was deceptive and whenever anyone had a new idea about something, the responsibility fell on the teachers' shoulders to implement. I am an experinced teacher and spent much of my own time and money gathering supplies for my classes, preparing for them, and doing special activities with them. I was very motivated and willing to do a lot of extra work. But whenever we did more, we were given more. It was an escalating spiral of chores. And I speak only for myself, but know others felt the same, in that I felt like I was being taken advantage of, to the point where I didn't want to do a great job, because then there would be the burden of , well, you did it so well before, do it bigger and better this time. But not being appreciated for it. Please print some type of warning about this school. OH! They also use a Korean recruiter named Mr. Yoon who operates mostly out of Canada. His ploy
is to tell the teachers that they will be working in Seoul, living alone,and teaching adults. Then, the teachers end up at Sang A Top, this happened to three teachers, two of whom quit.
Thank you for reading this.
Susan Kelly 6/01