Anonymous Again
- 2007-08-12
Jeju is great. Park's is awful. Everyone who works there or who has worked there hates the school and the man who runs it. All kinds of wonderful, patient and otherwise positive people have been driven to anger and bitterness by this place!!!
If you go, you will be miserable. That's all there is to it.
Also, I should add that I left in June, it's now August, and I still haven't been paid for my last three weeks of work. My new employers, as well as my recruiting agency, both of whom are staffed with Koreans, have since spoken to the man on several occasions-- so when considering employment with this man, keep in mind that in an extremely homogenous culture, where Koreans almost always side with Koreans and foreigners usually side with foreigners, I have Koreans telling me plain and simple that he is, by their standards, completely fucked up!!
Usually I would just let something like this go because it's usually not worth going on about, but
my experience was so miserable that it's virtually impossible to exhaust the anger and frustration it has caused me, and will probably cause you too if you go, and I really feel a need to spare as many people the experience as is possible!!!
AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID.
anonymous
- 2007-07-10
I've been in contact with Park English to go over teaching for the first time. Is it only a prob on Jeju island or with the agency itself? I would appreciate any advice. schwager13@hotmail.com
Anonymous
- 2007-07-09
Sorry to keep bringing this up, but it looks like Mr. Baak is hiring yet again... and I'm really worried that some nice person will end up working for him.
Keep this in mind, please:
I DID NOT GET PAID FOR MY LAST THREE WEEKS, and he also DID NOT REIMBURSE ME FOR MY AIRFARE. He will tell you all kinds of lies to get you there (like the school isn't totally desperate because it's losing money, and you won't get blamed if things go wrong and wind up unemployed and stuck in Korea without decent references, no reimbursed airfare, and basically no one who will trust you because you got fired so soon-- so you will have to lie and say you were on vacation, which is what I did!)
Mr. Baak will lie to you while you are there, and then lie to you after you've finished your contract. He will blame you for things that go wrong, and there will be all kinds of arguments between him and the teachers.
DO NOT APPLY FOR THIS JOB!
Anonymous
- 2007-06-25
Some new developments:
I went in there today to ask for the three weeks of pay that he had not given me, and he actually had the gall to suggest that he didn't think it was fair that he should have to pay me anything, because of what he deemed 'poor service', even though every lesson I taught was prepared with the kids learning English in mind. This means that they included discussions, Q and A, debates, writing assignments, English-oriented games (some of which I myself developed and were completely original, and when I told the other teachers about them they were amazed at just how intensely the kids got into them), sentence composition exercises, radio plays for advanced students (which I downloaded and personally edited at home for the benefit of making them more suitable for children, as well as allowing for breaks in between excerpts so that discussion could take place), spelling practice (these kids did not know how to spell anything and by the time I was finished working there all I had to do was write an 'x' on the board and they knew exactly what the word was), incentives, drills for grammar and tenses, pronunciation exercises, as well as drawing and coloring activities for the younger kids. I did all of these because it is absolutely necessary to do so when you're faced with a shoddy curriculum for which most of the original flashcards are missing and have not been replaced, and when all of the teachers before you have been really lax about actually teaching them English as it would mean the kids would call them 'boring', and Mr. Park would probably fire them for it. I have since come to the conclusion that getting fired, being stuck here without a visa and little money to get by with, and reclaiming what little dignity I have left after having worked there is actually preferable to spending another day teaching in that place!
He then demanded an apology, stating that he had lost students and was still losing students because of me... I suppose because I chose not to come back into work immediately after he had fired me and publicly humiliated me (by telling the students that I was fired before he told me-- yes, I keep bringing that up, because it's really quite difficult for me to get my head around that one). Before all of this, he was a bit nicer about everything, acting as though letting me stay in the apartment was some wonderful act of kindness after firing me, delaying my visa run past the point of tourist visa expiry, and not to mention TELLING THE KIDS I WAS FIRED BEFORE HE TOLD ME. So I suppose my not coming in changed his tune.
Also, I would like to add that I was mistaken about the 'deported' comment... it's probably not deportation I'm facing, just a fine and some kind of horrible humiliating explanation to immigration about why I'm here a month past the expiry of my original tourist visa.
In addition, he tends to make one of the teachers his favorite, so that teacher may spy on the others and 'report' them to Mr. Park. This means that the atmosphere around the office is tense, silent, and generally miserable. If you want to get an idea about what it is like, picture a lot of people unable to speak freely, ignoring each other, and then acting completely different when they're out socializing with their non-snitching co-workers, who are wonderful.
One good thing about this guy is he's letting me stay in the apartment while I look for another job, however I suspect that he's going to be deducting the rent from my paycheck. Even though he hasn't mentioned that he's going to, it's definitely not something he wouldn't do. For example, for the last people who quit, he managed to take their original airfare (one-way ticket over) out of their final paycheck SEVEN MONTHS after they had been there, and then offered to let them stay in their apartment but only if they agreed to let him charge them almost a month's rent for a stay of under a week.
Oh wait, I did think of one good thing about working there: there is a wonderful view of Mt. Halla from the window, and on clear days it can be quite inspiring... as in, it will inspire you to look for a better job! But be careful if you do, I am told that he has a habit of blacklisting people for no good reason.
Jeju Island is a wonderful place to work and live, however I must warn potential teachers that Park's English School could very well ruin your experience.
First of all, your co-workers will be disgruntled. They are all wonderful people, but they know that this school has a reputation for being one of the worst, if not the very worst on the island. Also, Mr. Park has a reputation among all the foreigners for being incredibly difficult to work for... I wasn't there long enough to know ALL of the reasons (apparently, there were many), but sufficed to say, the school has seen A LOT of teachers leave before finishing their contracts, either because they were fired or because they couldn't stand being there and quit.
The kids at this school are used to doing nothing but playing games (I mean games involving little to no English, like BINGO and 7-UP, which they repeatedly requested I play), and their English is probably the lowest I've had to deal with... I've taught in Korea and Japan and Taiwan, and out of all of the schools I've taught at, the English spoken here is the worst.
The owner, Mr. Park, will tell you that he wants to help them improve their English, but the truth is he's losing students and losing money and can't afford to keep you if you do not do what the children want you to do. I inherited classes from another disgruntled teacher who, in order not to get fired, let the kids go wild and play games and did very little studying, simply because she wanted to keep her job. This has made the children demanding and rude (my Korean co-worker, also new, was actually quite shocked at how rude the kids were). And you will have no choice but to put up with it, because he will not support any attempt to stop it, in the fear that standing up to these kids will cause them to leave and go to another hagwon.
Most importantly, I went in with the intention of doing a visa run... which he delayed week by week, citing various excuses such as timing, which were all lies.
After two months of waiting, I heard FROM A STUDENT that I was losing my job. Mr. Park had told a student that I was going to be fired before he actually told me. At this point, I asked him AGAIN about my visa run, and that's when he finally told me that this student was telling the truth. Then, because my replacement hadn't arrived yet and he might lose even more money, he expected me to keep working there, even though every kid at the school knew that I was being fired before I did.
So I was stuck in Korea with no visa sixty days into my stay, simply because I wouldn't let the kids play non-educational games all the time, and the kids thought that that was boring. This after having taught at a school where the kids spoke very good English, or AT LEAST showed a little respect, and would actually argue over who would get to carry my things into the classroom for me!!
He didn't send me on the visa run simply because he didn't want to be legally obligated to pay my return airfare. On top of that, he DIDN'T PAY MY AIRFARE OVER, while every other teacher in Korea, including the other teachers at that school, got reimbursed. The man is obviously getting desperate to save money, and isn't above screwing over teachers to do it.
I know that this site suggests you come up with good things to say, but at the moment I can't think of any. Here is a man who actually thinks it's fair to literally let the students tell you that you're fired, and expects you to have sympathy for his situation after almost getting you DEPORTED.