A Few Good Words for Alphabet Street

When I first got offered a job at Alphabet Street, I wanted to make sure I would make the right decision. I went online and tried to find out as much information as I could about the school. There was not much that I could find, though I did find that some people were not quite happy with the school. (I won't put the links, but if you really care you can search for them). There were enough positive responses to the negative comments I read, that I decided in favour of accepting the job offer.

I have been working at the school for just over five weeks now and I have been pleasantly surprised. If you are thinking about accepting a job offer here, this is what I can tell you:

One of the best things about the school is the effort that the administration puts into the running of the school. So much goes on at the school, but the staff works well together to get everything done and to keep everyone informed as best as they can. Another bonus is that there is no shortage of people who speak English and Korean. For the few staff members who do not speak English, there is always a Korean teacher around who can help translate. Though this can make learning Korean more difficult (more on learning Korean in a future post).

On the topic of the staff, the staff is super-friendly and super-supportive. Whenever I had a question, I could easily find someone who could give me an answer or who would help me find an answer. This goes for both the Korean and foreign (they call us Native teachers - I think because we're native speakers of English, even though we would never really consider ourselves Natives in the North American sense).

All of our housing and living arrangements have been carefully taken care of by someone. When we needed to go get a medical checkup for our Alien Registration Cards (again, that will be the topic of a future post), we were accompanied to the hospital by an staff member (Mr. Park - who has been so helpful, he probably deserves a post of his own). When another staff member needed to visit the American Embassy to figure out an issue with a visa extension, Mr. Park drove her.

Despite long days (I usually get in around 8 or 8:30am and leave around 7pm), there are many breaks and we are only on contract to work 110 hours every 20 days, which works out to a nice 5 and a half hours a day. Mind you, that's just hours in the classroom, but the work is much less than a teacher back home (as there is very little planning) and any work over 110 hours results in an increase is salary.

Having more than ten English teachers at the school is also helpful as there is always someone who is willing to show you the ropes in Seoul, or just to hang out with. The second week we were here, the Principal took a group of us to Costco in the school van to buy food. No doubt, the group at Alphabet Street - all of the staff included - has made my life much easier than it would have been.

Now to be honest, there are things about Alphabet Street that are not perfect, but the administration is listening to constructive criticism and from what I have heard from other staff members, changes have been made recently based upon that constructive feedback.

So, while there are many dissenting opinions, it is in my experience that Alphabet Street is a good place to work and you will more than likely enjoy your time at the job.

Getting a Job

Now that you have a recruiter working for you, your job search becomes much easier. In my case, my recruiter gave us several options to pick from and gave us time to look at them. Like anything you do in this process, the most important part is to do your research.

Where can you do this research you may ask? Finding out about a place that doesn't even use the same language as we do is not an easy task. Wikipedia can provide some insight to some cities in Korea, so that might be your first task (some recruiters may even allow you to pick from any region of the country). Lonely Planet and other travel books can be helpful - though I did find the libraries in Victoria only had older versions of the Lonely Planet book and not the various other series of Travel books. Simple search engines can also provide some results, but most of them won't search through Korean sites unless you make your searches super specific. Looking for a particular school online can be fairly easy, though often if a school has a website a recruiter will give it to you for you to check out (even though they are mostly in Korean - or whatever your browser determines the characters are, usually "???" - I found that pictures of students and other teachers can be very telling). There are also several sites out there that "blacklist" certain schools. Don't believe everything you read, but don't ignore it either. If you have concerns, make sure you ask. If you're curious make sure you ask. Just ask a lot of questions, ok?

You will likely also have to make a decision between public and private schools. I will assume that if you've gotten this far you've likely run into one of the many resources on the internet that talks about the differences. Your recruiter will probably give you information on that as well, so I figure there is no point in repeating it here.

If you like a school then your recruiter will contact them with your info and the process is pretty simple from there: set up an interview if they like you, do the interview, the school decides and then you have to decide if you want to work at the school.

As everyone should tell you at this point, don't immediately answer. Take your time to consider the terms of the contract. Read it over. Get your friends and parents to read it over (maybe someone who has a law degree too). Do more research just to make sure. The most important thing though, is to get an email address of someone who has worked at the school or someone who is working there. Ask them questions, but if the school can provide someone who says good things about the school then that is definitely a good sign. If you can make multiple contacts with this person (not just through the email - often teachers in Korea have facebook) then that just assures you that the person actually exists (though I doubt a school would go through all of that trouble just to get someone to Korea to give them a raw deal).

Once you have made your decision, then you should make sure the school finds out (probably through your recruiter). There is still more work to be done, however, before you step in front of your class the first time.

If you have any questions about the process up to this point, please don't hesitate to ask.

Big news is coming soon to this site, so stay tuned!