Daegu Chimsan Worwick Franklin Institute

The school sounds good on paper and their curriculum is great, that being said the issue is the current owners and staff. I was one of four teachers to leave within a year and I am hoping this post will educate others before they consider working for these people. I was hired as a first year teacher, replacing the one who left for “personal reasons”, to be a home room assistant and teach a few classes on my own. Before the end of the year I was put in charge of an entire homeroom of 9 kids and teaching 9 periods back to back 9-6, mon -fri, no Korean co-teacher and definitely no pay raise. All of the responsibilities were not the issue, it was tough but doable as long as one was extremely organized- juggling two self planned cooking classes, two self planned craft classes, and being the token english speaking MC for all events - to name a few duties.

What was the issue was the constant abuse that interfered with teaching - the 11th month firing when I said I didn’t want to sign on for another year - the breaking into my apartment to “fix” items and not asking my permission (I installed a camera once I thought they were going to take my passport) - the pulling me aside during class period to tell me how bad at my job I was - they stopped speaking to me entirely for a while and communicated with app translators, aggressive emails, and passive aggressive whiteboard messages… these are just a few of the crappy things they did. I learned to record all meetings I was involved with and didn’t try to hide it, until one meeting about my contract. My boss grabbed my phone and tried to turn off the app, she failed, later she sent me a email claiming it was illegal to record meetings and to never do it again. I can’t begin to truly explain the level of disregard these owners have for their teachers - Korean and native english speakers. I truly felt that I was a necessary component for their business but beyond that they couldn’t care less. Which would have been fine but for the fact the school was so small and the entire network depended upon a team working environment.

I have records of all meetings and emails if anyone wants more information, testimony and contact info from the former coworkers that I am happy to share. Lastly I just want to say, there are many great hogwans in Daegu, this isn’t one of them, do yourself and me a favor - avoid this one. Use the groups on facebook and other sites to check out the area you’re interested in and just chuck this place up to the blacklist gods. - I wish you all luck.