Day: March 4, 2013

Almost 4 years ago, I posted a list of 11 things that, in my humble opinion, would make for a better (and possibly more successful) hagwon – for those of you not in Korea, remember that “hagwon” are the ubiquitous and nearly universal after-school extracurricular academies that Koreans send their children to, as a supplement to an otherwise rather poor public education system. Most of my time in Korea, I have worked for various EFL specializing hagwon (there are many other types including math, and multiple subject hagwon for example), and these comments are intended solely to pertain to EFL hagwon.
That list from 4 years ago was written at my one-year anniversary at LBridge (which was the biggest and by far most successful hagwon I’ve worked for – though “successful” means only “at that time” as it later went bankrupt). I think all the items on it still pertain, and I wouldn’t really adjust any of my thoughts from that time. But I’ve decided, all these years later, to begin make this “list” a “feature” on This Here Blog Thingy™. So, I’ll add some new items for the list, now or later, as they arise or cross my mind. I’ll called it: IIRTH (if I ran the hagwon) – maybe make it a category on the blog if it grows enough.
So here comes item number 12.

• 12) Teachers should have fixed classrooms. In every hagwon I’ve worked at, except the first one under some circumstances, the student cohorts have fixed classrooms and the teachers pass from classroom to classroom. This is perhaps convenient in some ways, administratively, and there’s less confusion and bustle from the problematic of having the students change classes between teaching periods. However, I think it has a lot of disadvantages. One of the foremost is that the teachers don’t have any incentive to personalize their classrooms, and very little impetus or motivation to keep their classrooms clean and well-maintained, etc. The kids write grafitti, things get broken, etc. This doesn’t happen in public schools where teachers “own” their classrooms. Besides, I’d so very much love to have a space I could call my own, to decorate, to personalize. You can put posters, bulletin boards, maps… anything you need or want for teaching.

Some of the most productive time I’ve felt that I’ve spent teaching in Korea were the several months of the summer school session I had at Hongnong, when I had my own classroom to decorate and maintain as I wished – and I did!
This evening, I made a remark about this idea to one of my fellow teachers. She sighed and agreed it was a good idea, but she gave a reason I actually had never heard before for as to why hagwon don’t do it that way. “Hagwon owners and managers like to have all the staff in a single room so they can communicate better.” I laughed. “Really? I would say my gyo-gam [vice principal] was a much more effective communicator than any hagwon boss I can think of – we simply had meetings all the time.” I gazed at our boss’s office as I said this. My coworker laughed. “I mean, when was the last time he communicated with us, here in the staffroom?” We laughed some more. (These are paraphrases, not exact quotes.)
Here is a picture of my Hongnong classroom from August, 2010.