Job Security...

Well, good times at the hagwon!

I’ve mentioned that there has been a bit of disruption at the school.
It’s getting worse.

All of my classes have fewer students. Three months ago I taught 12 classes. I had about 6-9 students in each class. I now teach 9 classes. Each of my classes has about 4-6 students. In one of my classes I have one student. In another I have only three. This decrease in students didn’t seem like a big deal. The hagwon has had waves of students as they come and go. But, recently the students are going and I don’t see them coming back. But, even worse, the staff are leaving also. Our principal was fired about three months ago. The two top Korean teachers quit. We had two or three directors come and work for the hagwon, only to quit within a few weeks or days. One of the foreign teacher’s contract expired so he went back to his home country. And about a week ago the director of the school, the top administrator, stopped coming to work. No one knew where she went, but today it was official… She quit. Things aren’t looking so good here at the hagwon. A new director arrived today, but there is no guarantee that he will stay. In fact, he has never run a hagwon before so I am a bit skeptical. In short, the school has seen brighter days.

But, I should note… I am not worried. If the hagwon shut down tomorrow, I would be more than fine. Job security is not an issue when you are an English teacher in Korea.

On a brighter note, some of my students are adorable. One of them, Mike, is five years old and today he held my hand and pulled me close to the ground so that he could talk to me. He had to get right next to my ear so that I could hear him, he said just barely loud enough for me to hear, "I like Jacki Teacher." Yep... That's me! Jacki Teacher Extraordinaire!