Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Finally Finished with Avalon Bucheon!
On Saturday, 2/28/2015 I finished packing my bags and flew back home to the US. My past few months there had been incredibly stressful, and I'm very relieved that it's over. I'm looking forward to getting some much-needed rest and seeing family and friends while I'm home. I expect to be here a few months while I get new visa documents and find another teaching job in Korea I feel comfortable accepting. If anyone reading this would like more specific information about my (rather unpleasant) experiences at Avalon Bucheon, feel free to leave me a message and I'll be happy to elaborate.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI have applied at this Avalon branch, would you be able to provide details on your unpleasant experience with this school?
Sure, send me a message at risingnova20xx@yahoo.com.
ReplyDeleteI worked there for over 3 years (almost 4) split over 2 contracts and loved it. In fact working in Korea was easily the best time of my life. I worked at a different school for a few months between my two contracts at Bucheon Avalon and it really did help to give me some perspective. Sure Avalon was far from perfect (not a fan of their crappy materials), but it was a lot better than a lot of other places I could have ended up. The housing was great (I easily had the best place out of all my friends that worked for other schools) and the area you will live in is fantastic - there's a great local foreign bar, tescos, a shopping mall opposite the school and a ton of great places to eat. The subway just outside Avalon must be finished by now too!
ReplyDeleteThere were a few downsides to the job for sure, but you will have these issues and worse in many other jobs:
It can be more of a business at times rather than a school: My husband had to convince management that giving native teachers extra training is a more valuable use of our time than listening to elementary students reading over the phone - something they'd want us to do to make up hours during exam periods when you barely teach.
The TOEFL resources given to the school by the Avalon franchise are terrible. They may have improved, but a few years back it was awful and didn't really match up to the test too well. We did a lot of altering, skipping and supplementing when we taught and this overcame many issues. The elementary stuff is great though and having books to follow really does help reduce your workload.
I work as a elementary teacher in England now and would go back and work for Bucheon Avalon again tomorrow if I could - I have no textbooks to work from :-(
I say all this, but maybe the school has changed in the past 3 years. I did get an email from another native teacher that carried on working there after I'd left and he said things weren't as good as before. There had been a steady decline in the way the school treated their staff (both Korean and Foreign) since the management changed. It would be really sad if the school has become one of those horrible schools I'd hear horror stories from other teachers about.
If you do take the job. Here is some advice that will help make your time better:
Bring in food for the staff like cake or other snacks. Sharing food is a big part of Korean culture and will go a long way towards making you popular with the other teachers.
Be considerate of the extra stuff that the Koreans have to deal with. The poor Korean teachers get a lot of shit from parents every day. I've seen some reduced to tears when a co-worker accidentally missed a class and she had to ring 18 parents to apologise. You don't ever have to talk to parents, they do this on top of everything else so try and meet them more than half way. Having a good relationship with the Korean staff is invaluable as they won't want to help you out by calling the parents of children who are giving you problems if you are making their job more difficult and don't ever do anything nice for them.
Stand up for yourself if you are asked to do something that you don't think is fair i.e. working on a national holiday. However, instead of digging your heels in and shouting/being rude, try and negotiate a better deal, be respectful and calmly refuse explaining your reasons why. If it's not in your contract then they can't make you do it, this still doesn't mean you instantly switch to being a shouting dick.
Sorry to highjack your blog Matthew. I was looking for Avalon's address to fill out an online application and came across your message and felt the need to defend the old place. I find it quite sad to hear that you ended up not enjoying working at Avalon when, for the most part, I loved it so much. I hate to think that the school has become crap.
Haha, no worries Errin :) All the good things you said are right - the Bucheon City Hall station did open and was super convenient - and I genuinely enjoyed working there for the first nine months. My coworkers who were on the way out said that it had been better before, and I felt like when I left I was saying the same thing, i.e. it was better when I first started. It's definitely not a nightmare hagwon, but at least for me it ceased to be a good place to work, and my former coworkers agree with me.
Delete