Last days at YBM and a brief review of the school

After a year and a half of teaching at YBM, I've finally left. I'm leaving, not so much because I'm sick of working there, but because I just won't be around enough in Korea for the next 6 months to justify them trying to hold my position. I'm back in the states now, working on finishing my MATESOL, I'll be gradutating in August, then I'll be heading back to Korea for my wedding, then honeymoon in China, then traveling more around China, then coming back to Korea and starting the job hunt for the next job, then going home again for Christmas.  It's going to be a very busy next 6 months...

 The last days at YBM were rather uneventful, but we did have the ultimate game of Monopoly (4 hours long) with the students pictured above, and one of my favorite halaboji students took me and another teacher out for this octopus stew. They added the octopus in whole and live, then cut him up as the soup boiled. I guess I've been living in Korea long enough that this just doesn't phase me much, but this was the first time I'd tried this particular dish, so I took a few photos to memorialize the event.

I thought I'd sum up the pros and cons of working at YBM Jongno, for anyone who is intersted in working there in the future. 

Pros:

• Right downtown, basically across the street from Insadong
• The 'Wow' factor you get when you tell Koreans where you work. It's often regarded as the best hagwon in Korea for adult learners. 
• Foreign bosses.
• Not necessarily on block shifts. Most adult hagwons keep their teachers on a permanent block shift. YBM Jongno is big enough that sometimes you may get to finish at 1pm or start at 2pm. Sometimes. 
• A schedule which changes every month. If you don't like your schedule this month, just wait, it will change next month. Including classes and start and finish times. 
•  A lot of overtime, which means that your paycheck can be quite high some months. 
• A 50% discount on any YBM class (Korean, Chinese, Japanese). The Korean classes can be difficult to take with the English class schedule, but some people have made it work. 
• Teaching. Adults. Yea, you can have a conversation that doesn't necessarily involve colors, food or numbers.
• Lessons plans are pre-made so there's little prep work.

Cons:

• Low base pay. Especially for those without adult teaching experience. I started at the lowest rung despite my experience. 2.0 million. 
• Low housing money. 200,000/ month. Kind of insulting considering rent anywhere you look in the area will be at least 550,000 but probably higher, nevermind management fees and utilities. But, better than nothing I suppose. They do not supply pre-furnished apartments for teachers.
•  Foreign bosses. Yep, I put this in both categories. You will never have a supervisor pat you on the back after your lesson and say good job. Your boss is a native English speaker and actually expects you to do something more than just be a talking head. 
• A schedule which changes every month. Yep, I put this in both categories. It's probably the biggest reason why I wouldn't go back to YBM. I am a pretty active person and I always have things going on. Working here made it impossible to plan my schedule more than 3 weeks in advance. It's the main reason why I quit taking Korean classes. 
• Early morning starts and late night finishes. The first class starts at 7 am, which means you'll probably want to get there at least at 6:30am. The last class finishes at 10pm. If you're not on split shifts starting at 7am and finishing at 10pm, you're probably at least starting or ending at one of these times. Your first several months youWILL be starting at 7 am and finishing at 10pm. 
• Not mandatory Saturday teaching. While technically in the contract you only need to teach 2 months of Saturday classes, in reality most people have to work most Saturdays. You do make 25,000won/ hour. Some people love the chance to pick up the extra cash. I personally have a life outside of work, so it wasn't great for me. That's one of the reasons why posting has been much lighter on the blog since I started working there.

Overall, though, I did really like working there, dispute the cons I listed here. The staff is a bit quirky, but so am I, so I think I fit in fairly well. I really loved working with the students, as I mentioned before, and the location was fantastic for me. I would recommend working at YBM if you get the chance, and they're often hiring, so check worknplay.co.kr often for their want ads.

An end in sight, announcements, life changes etc.

Well, as you may have noticed, blog posts have decreased significantly in the past year, and maybe some of you have realized that's mostly due to graduate school. While working full time here in Korea I'm also taking classes part time online through St. Michael's College in Vermont. I have just 5 more weeks of online classes and then I will go back to the states to complete my final semester in person, on campus (like last summer). Then I will officially have an MA TESOL.

My job here at YBM SiSa will be ending at the end of this month which is rather bittersweet for me. In some ways I really love this job, especially for the students. It's the most satisfaction I've gotten out of any job in Korea.. sometimes I hardly feel like I'm working, just chatting with friends (and pointing out some grammar mistakes while we do it). That's the great thing about teaching adults here in Korea, I guess. Perhaps once I finish my contract I'll write up a proper review for the school as I have with my past jobs.

That's not all.

Those of my readers who are also friends with me on facebook will already know, but I am engaged and getting married this coming September. We're having the wedding here in Korea and we'll have a traditional Korean wedding. We've already gone hanbok shopping (posts to come later) and we're still debating what to do about photography. Several people from home will be coming into town, including my mom and my best friend from college. I just hope I can have a ceremony at home in the States sooner rather than later so I can celebrate with the rest of the people I care about from home.

While we haven't booked any tickets yet, we've pretty much decided to take our honeymoon in Western China, in Yunnan province. When I tell Koreans this, they shake their heads because they can't understand, but Chinese people's eyes light up and tell me it's an excellent decision, so I think I'll trust the Chinese on this one. More motivation for me to go to China is the fact that I've now been studying Chinese since October. My Chinese still sucks from lack of practice combined with terrible grammar-translation teaching methods used at both hagwons I tried attending. I'm hoping if I still have money in my bank account after a summer at home and hanging out with guests from home in Seoul for the wedding, that I will be able to stay in China for a little longer after my future husband has to go back to work... considering that I won't have any job to go back to. If anyone knows of a good language school in China (any city) where the majority of students are not English speakers, let me know. Making Chinese and Japanese friends is how I learned Korean... perhaps making Japanese friends and Korean friends can help me learn Chinese.

Finally, I'm hoping to find a university job in Seoul starting next March. If anyone hears of any job openings or has any tips for finding decent uni jobs, please let me know!

Lunch at Gyongbokgung Restaurant in Insadong

 

   At the end of every month in our academy, we are allowed to go out with our students to celebrate the end of the session. Last night was Chicken and Beer (치맥) with one class, and this morning was Holly's Coffee for breakfast with another class. But, I think lunch today was the be all end all of end of session outings. One gentleman in my level 5 class has a tradition of bringing the whole class out to eat at Gyeongbokgung Restaurant in Insadong to celebrate the last class of every month. Don't let the name of the restaurant fool you, it's not in Gyeongbokgung Palace, but it is a high-class restaurant not far from the palace. It's a great place if you're in the mood for something a little special! We ordered just the basic option, a 24,000 won per person galbi lunch set, but for the quality of the beef and the amount of side dishes it was more than worth the price. Reservations are recommended here as every party is seated in their own private room. Actually, the price of our meal was incredibly low considering the ambiance of the restaurant. Most meals offered are a bit higher, but considering all that came with our basic set, I can't imagine what would come with one of the 40-70,000 won sets!

The meal started with some basic dishes. 물김치 (water kimchi) and a seaweed porridge. Both good, but not quite what I was craving...

After a little while later the good stuff started coming out. Sashimi, and the good banchan (side dishes). 

Doengjang soaked cabbage, garlic and mushrooms and thinly sliced radish folded with sesame leaves, plus lots of salad type things not pictured here.

Though it wasn't on the set menu, we were brought out a special 빈대떡 bindaeddok because we had to wait a little longer than we expected for our food. We were so busy enjoying the ambiance and the starters, we hardly noticed that our food was taking too long!

Then of course was the main meal. 양념갈비, marinated beef galbi was put on the grill. The wait staff attentively grilled our galbi to perfection and we enjoyed the most succulent galbi I've ever had the fortune to taste.

Just because we finished the galbi didn't mean the meal was finished. Then they served up doengjang jjigae with rice and the meal was finally finished off with a cup of refreshingly sweet bokbunja juice.

I feel like I've been really spoiled this month with all my great students and fun end of semester parties. I wonder if next months will ever live up to this one?

 Gyongbokgung Website

Jongno-gu Gwanhun dong 198-42

Gwanhun Building B1

02-722-7713

Making the Transition to Adult Hagwon Teaching

Perhaps you've noticed a lot fewer posts going up here in the past month, despite the fact that I'm back in Korea. That's mostly because I've taken a position at YBM ELS (Si-Sa) one of the largest adult hagwons in Korea. There were lots of reasons why I was never tempted to take one of these positions before... I mean, teaching kids has quite a cushy schedule (usually 1-9), decent pay (starting at 2.1-2.2 for folks with no experience) and low job expectations other than to just speak English and not have too many complaints from parents. Really, the main reason why I've taken this adult teaching job is that I've completely had it with children. Kids can be great, and most of them are, but when you get one or two bad classes on top of your six other good classes in a day, you can wind up leaving work feeling stressed out and in a bad mood. I decided that I'm sick of the disciplinary part of teaching, and let's face it... I've never been a kid person anyway.

All teachers at YBM go through a one week intensive training class, which our trainer told us is basically an entire CELTA course jammed into one week. Compared to my training at SLP, it was seriously intense. SLP's "training" meant observing various classes for about a week before actually starting to teach. Observing is great for about one day, but then you start to feel like you've gotten the point, but there's still 4 more days of straight observations to go. At YBM we only observed 3 classes, then got to teach 2 of those classes we observed two days later. We were trained on the YBM teaching methodology and we were basically untaught everything that we had ever known about teaching.

As conversation teachers, we're not really expected to teach, per se, it's more like leading discussions. Which on the surface seems quite easy, but I'm finding that it is actually quite difficult. YBM has a very rigid framework which every class needs to follow. 5 minutes of review of the last class at the beginning of class, then a 10 minute warm up of brainstorming, then 25 minutes of discussions, 5 minutes of "feedback" where we make corrections of common mistakes together and practice together, then 5 minutes of review of what we discussed and a preview of the next class. And we're observed often to make sure we're following this model in every class.

One of the biggest shocks for me is the fact that my boss is not Korean. In fact, my boss is a British woman with a long career in the ESL business. Past bosses that have observed my classes have always been happy with my classes. Probably because I'm white and comprehensible when speaking English. My new boss actually has high expectations for us teachers. It's a bit of a shock to my system that hasn't had a native English speaking boss in about 4 years.

The schedule at YBM changes every month, some months are split shifts, early morning and evening with a long break in the middle, others have block shifts meaning one long shift instead of two shorter ones. This month I have a split shift, and a pretty good one compared to most other teacher's schedules. My first class starts at 7am, so I need to arrive at work around 6:30 am to prepare for the day. I have 4 hours of classes before noon, then I'm off the entire afternoon until 6:30 pm when I start my evening shift. I finish my day at 10 pm. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I use my break to call home to America and to sleep, but on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I go to Korean class and use the rest of the time to study. Saturdays are also working days, I am lucky that I only have to work 3 hours, because most people do 6 hours on Saturdays. I was told working Saturdays was optional, but it's really only optional in the sense that, yea, you could say no... but the boss will make your life hell for the rest of the month in every other way. Once you get some seniority, then it really is optional most months. The block schedule isn't so bad in the beginning of the week after getting a good rest on the weekend, but by Thursday and Friday I start to feel like a zombie. I can't think quite straight and I forget to do things because I'm so exhausted.

I keep telling myself that it will get better. This month is February, and university students generally have the months of January and February off from school. Many use their free time to join classes at hagwons to get a little boost on their English skills. Therefore, everyone in our office is doing at least 40 hours of overtime for the month. Some people have even more hours because they do some new student interviews, curriculum development or substitute teaching when teachers are sick. But, I must say, while this job has the lowest base salary I've ever seen, with all the overtime, my paycheck this month will be the biggest I've ever seen.

As for the teaching part of the job, though, I must say that I love it. It sure beats entertaining kids all day. A lot of the topics in the book actually spark some interesting conversations and you can learn so much about the culture and the way people think from teaching these classes. For example, I have one class on Saturday with three older men in the class. I was dreading our conversation topic for the day: "matchmaking", but they had lots of things to say about how they met their wives and the women they had met before they met their wives. All of them had found their wives through some kind of 소개팅 (Korean style blind date) or were introduced by a family member to their future bride. It was interesting to hear their feelings on matchmaking having been married many years to wives met through some form of matchmaking.

We'll see how the next few months go at my new office. I hope I start to have more time for the blog, though, because I'm really missing it a lot. I've still got lots of things to write about and hopefully I can find some time on the weekends to write more!