Memoirs of an ESL Career

Monday, September 25, 2006

Global Language Institute

Global Language Institute was located right near Kangnam subway station (a one-minute walk), just off the main strip of Kangnam Daero. It was a five-story glass building sitting along a tiny side-road. The front desk was to the left of the main doors, and the foreign teachers' desks were located to the right. Yep, that's right -- we each had our own desk to work at. This impressed me greatly.

Similar to ULI, the students at Global were mainly adults. I think the youngest students I saw there were high school kids, but mostly we had university students and business people. Kangnam, being the financial center of southern Seoul, had many business people looking to improve their English. Of course, there were about a dozen hagwons like Global in the vicinity of Kangnam Station.

The schedule was typical: first class began at 6:40 AM, the second class was usually at 8:30, and if we had a third class in the morning, it would run from 10:20 - 12:00. Then we'd be off until the evening. Normally, I would have one evening class, from 7:30 until 9:10. Fulltime work at Global consisted of three classes, and if we did a fourth class, we got paid overtime worth about 600 000 won. It was pretty sweet.

For the beginner levels at Global, we used the Side by Side series of books. I think we had about three or four levels of Side by Side, and then the students moved on to a series of books created by the school, although I can't remember what they were called. I didn't like those books very much, as they involved a lot of reading that tended to bore the students. As would be the case everywhere I've taught, I heavily supplemented the curriculum with my own chosen materials.

The classrooms at Global were fairly small. You could fit about ten people comfortably, although we had maybe fifteen students on occasion. Sometimes, we had as few as four or five students in a class. There was a whiteboard, and we could use a TV once in a while, but other resources were minimal. This was just the start of the Internet age in Korea, and Global didn't have any computers. Luckily, we had Web Village next door to surf and to look for materials to use in the classroom.

The manager when I started was Mr. Lee. He seemed like a good guy, from what I remember, but he left during my year there amid some personal problems. The new manager was Mr. Shin, who was cool enough to come out drinking with us on occasion. Global also had the requisite cute front desk girls. They didn't speak English much, and since I never bothered to learn Korean with any real enthusiasm, we mainly smiled at each other and left it at that.

One other point of interest is that we had a beer pub in the basement of our building, Cass Town. This made it very easy to enjoy a cold one after work. It was one of the things I liked about working as a teacher of adults -- going for drinks afterward.

So that's what Global was like. If you go to Kangnam (now Gangnam) today, the Global building has changed completely. The hagwon isn't even there anymore. Over the last few years, it has been a Chinese restaurant/bar, a PC room, and probably many other things. I don't even know what it is right now, but it isn't glass, and it sure ain't shiny.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Looking for work in Kangnam

It was late March, 1997. Although I was staying at Heather's place in Bundang, I decided I wanted to find work in Seoul. So I went to Kangnam, which was not only the location of Seoul's first Internet cafe (Web Village), but was also the place in southern Seoul you went to for decent nightlife.

The first place I visited was Pagoda, a well-known language academy for adults. Armed with my resume as well as wearing my shirt and tie, I walked into the Pagoda building to apply. Strangely, they told me that Pagoda only hired directly from America. What??? Here I am, already in Korea, so you don't need to buy my plane ticket, and I can do a sample lesson for you, and I have prior experience in Korea. But you won't hire me precisely for those reasons? Okay, screw Pagoda.

Next, I went to ELS, which was known as a reputable school. I actually had an interview of sorts, and the person seemed interested. In the end, this person didn't commit to offering me a position, so I thanked him and left.

So, I went down the street to a shiny glass building that said Global Language Institute on the front. Hey, what can I say? I like shiny glass buildings. When I walked inside, I recognized one of the foreign teachers as a regular at Web Village. He was dressed in a suit. Wow! This seemed like a real school, probably with important students. The teacher's name, by the way, was Dan, who would become one of my best friends in Korea (and the kind-of best man at my wedding).

I was initially given one morning class since the school was short a teacher. I took the school up on this offer because I thought it would give me a leg up on a contract position later. For that one class of one hour and 40 minutes, five days a week for one month, I was paid something like 750 000 won.

This was April 1997. I was enjoying the school and the other teachers. I really wanted to work here fulltime. I remember that I eventually received a phone call from a guy named Michael, who was the Academic Director (or something) -- again, sounded very formal. He called me to the downtown office of Global so that I could give a sample lesson. I did this the next day, and the lesson went well. Michael was also dressed in a suit, but he was a fun-loving kind of guy, I sensed. Actually, very fun-loving, I was to find out later. But he took his job seriously, and I heard that when he taught, he was careful to review every mistake his students made. I didn't necessarily agree with his approach (hey, five minutes of student speaking, then 30 minutes of teacher correcting!), but he was respected for it.

I signed a contract that day, and even managed to convince Michael to increase my monthly salary to 1.4 million won per month (standard at that time was 1.2). This felt like a coup, since I rarely convince people to do anything. Ironically, later that same day, the guy from ELS called and offered me a job. I told him I had already signed a contract with Global, which I would be honouring. He told me I could break it if I wanted to work at ELS, but I wondered why a guy would even want to hire someone who would so easily and quickly break a contract. I politely declined, and it was a decision I did not regret.

Thus, at the beginning of May, 1997, I began my official second job as an ESL teacher in Korea.