So it's official, now – the letters went out to parents today, so they can't really go changing their minds, at this point. My current place of employment, Karma Academy, is merging with Woongjin Plus, which just happens to be the company that took over and eventually renamed my former employer, LBridge, affectionately known as "hellbridge" to some of its workers. Overall, there were a lot of things I liked about LBridge, so I don't see this as necessarily apocalyptic – and one of the things I liked least about LBridge was the management, which will have changed twice over by the time I'm back there again next month. My current boss, Curt, will be in charge. I wonder though, at how this will work out. There are a lot of "I wonders" now.
I'm going to keep an open mind. Given the current market conditions, mergers are one of the few ways a hagwon can grow. So I understand the business rationale. But why this specific marriage? – two hagwon could hardly be more mis-matched, from a business culture standpoint. That's actually the point, as a conversation with my boss last night underscored. Perhaps both can grow and improve through cross-fertilization.
The title to this blog post is rather alarmist. But I'm not really expecting a return to the dark days of 2008. And as I said, there were a lot of things I really liked about LBridge – especially the rigid curriculum. Karma could use some structure, in that area. I had a moment of schadenfreude during a "training presentation" yesterday, when a powerpoint slide on a means of evaluating student writing was flashed on the screen that bore clear markings of being the descendant of the speech and writing scoring schema I developed while at LBrdige and had happily turned over to the curriculum designer (who's long-gone, now, but the earmarks of her work are everywhere). That weird feeling that you've left actual traces of your work at an organization that you've long left behind, but now, returning, there it is. "I made that," I wanted to say. I refrained.
[Daily log: walking, 4 km]