Category: The Wonders of Work

This list started as occasional jottings in my little notebook, and then several months ago, moved into my "might make a blog about it" document. It's by no means complete, and these are only some thoughts, wishes and desires about what might make for a great working and learning environment. 

It's not necessarily an effort to think about what's really possible given all the different constraints that Korean English-language hagwon operate under. Further, the list is fairly specific to the private hagwon environment as it currently operates in Korea, and is based on my experiences of the last two years with elementary-age students. Maybe I'm thinking about this a little bit as an entrepreneur… what I would be comfortable with if I really did run a hagwon, and how I would differentiate it and be successful in the cutthroat Korean private after-school academy market.

What would make a great hagwon?  Here goes…

• 1) Korean teachers should have some amount of time set aside each week to study (i.e. improve!) their English, and this should be a compensated additional duty of the English native-speaking teachers
• 2) Vice versa, non-Korean-speaking teachers (i.e. foreign teachers) should have some amount of time set aside each week to learn Korean, and this should be a compensated additional duty of the Korean-speaking teachers. This functions as a perk for the foreign teachers and a way to get the Korean and foreign teachers interacting, too.  It can also provide some awareness of cultural-differences to both sides.
• 3) Collegiality is important (part A).  Managers should feel obligated to attend certain types of social events of their employees, and should encourage other employees to attend too.  Things like weddings, children's first birthdays, etc., are very important in Korean culture, and by attending these sorts of functions, they're showing interest in their employees lives.  I suspect managers and coworkers avoid these sorts of things (when they do) because of the cost (since small financial contributions are essentially obligatory).  For this reason, there should be a discreet gift fund set up to make this possible for managers and employees who want to attend but can't afford to.
• 4) Collegiality is important (part B).  I really enjoyed eating with my bosses and coworkers, when I was working at a place the had that.  I also remember learning a lot about my coworkers and my job when I would eat lunch in the cafeteria at Moorestown (NJ), when I was teaching there.  Group meals should be a regular event, and should be an integral part of the schedule.  It's about building your staff into a community.   For large hagwon, this could operate on a once-a-week "team lunch" type concept, rotating between different teams of teachers.  It can be on-site or off-site (although I prefer on-site, and I think it's cheaper, too).  You will get strong participation if you make the "free meal" part of the perk package, and pay for it out of the hagwon's operating expenses.
• 5) The Korean hagwon market is almost entirely "month-to-month."  Parents are billed month-to-month, and make decisions about enrollment / re-enrollment / cancellation on monthly boundaries.  So why do hagwon create complicated multiple month academic calendars, only to have kids dropping out and in at the most inopportune times (vis-a-vis that complicated schedule)?  There should be monthly progress evaluations.  Grades should be closed out monthly.  There can be "continuing" curricula, but there should be logical breaking points built on calendar month boundaries so that "drop-ins" don't struggle. 
• 6) I still have vivid memories of the novel and unique "contract-based" learning that was used at the Moore Avenue school I attended (grades 1-3). I think that the concept of written contracts with children is exceptional as a means of motivating and making expectations clear, and I'd love to try to develop and apply something like that in a hagwon environment, where it seems even more appropriate (given it's both a private business and a specialty "after-school" educational institution).  It would allow for the hagwon to market itself as highly individualized while not over-taxing teachers with extensive "counselling" duties.  Contracts could be based on quantity-of-work metrics (projects completed, workbooks filled out, etc.) and on relative score increases on standardized or specialized level tests (such as the widely used TOSEL tests in Korea, and special interview tests — see below). The whole could be managed with an interactive website.
• 7) There should be regular objective and subjective teacher and course evaluations, which should not be subsequently ignored by the management.  Teachers and courses can also be evaluated on the basis of progress in student scores on standardized and placement tests, which should be administered monthly.  Korean parents love objective measures, and hagwon should work hard to generate genuinely meaningful objective measures of both student progress and teacher and course effectiveness.
• 8) There should be a Korean-speaking homeroom/"study hall" at the beginning of each day's schedule for each cohort of student.  This would be a place to check homework, attendance, pass out memos and other administrative stuff… It would help to keep it separate from classroom face-time for instructors, and provide a chance to check each student's individual progress in a way that minimizes time wasted in teaching classroom.  Also, it would not necessarily have to employ high-English-competency teachers, so teachers could be hired with other strengths (administrative skills and compassion for students would be notable requirements), probably at a cost savings to thehagwon management.
• 9) I think it would be more fun for teachers and students to have integrated curriculum (all "four skills" [reading writing listening speaking] combined) with topic-based courses rather than skill-based courses.  For example, history class, literature class, debate / discussion class, science class, etc.  As well as intensive "clinics" in particular skill areas, prep courses for standardized tests.  There could be different, varied  and interesting different offerings for each monthly cycle.   All offerings could be evaluated for their ability to draw students' interest and their ability to improve scores on test metrics.
• 10) Don't just use standard ABCD multiple choice test formats. There should be something I have been thinking of as a "graded dialogic evaluation" — roleplay-based "situation cards" that students would have to respond to with trained testers, where the situations that needed to be played could be controlled for vocabulary and concept content (e.g. "let's talk about what you did last year" would be testing things like past tense and vocabulary about activities).  They would be graded in difficulty, and in sufficient number that there was a basically random selection (although in free-form [judged] speaking tests, repeated material is not necessarily problematic, since pre -memorization / cheating is nearly impossible).  Each month students would take these tests, and scores would be based on "highest level of card" completed along with simple judge-scoring (cf. how TOEFL speaking is scored, 4 point scale).  Staff doing the testing would not be the same staff that teaches the students (computers make this kind of administrative task fairly easy).  This IS labor-intensive, but I think the value should be immediately apparent.  I basically envision dedicated testing days, say two each month, with special schedules. 
• 11) Technology can be and should be better leveraged than what I've so far seen.  Internet Cafes (as Koreans call forums) can be created for classes.  Grades and teacher and course evaluations can be interactive.  Writing assignments can be mediated using FREE! tools like Google Apps, rather than crappy ActiveX-based Korea-specific fee-based websites.  The web is swarming with fairly effective (and often nearly free) software-as-a-service that can keep in-house technology know-how requirements to a minimum.