Pagoda Academy Inc.

I have been teaching at Pagoda for four years this month. After graduating with an undergrad in English, I spent a punishing year teaching children outside of Seoul. It was a good experience, and I learned a lot about teaching, but coming to Pagoda was a nice, nice step up. For one thing, we only work 20 days a month, so we are usually rewarded with a nice three- or four-day weekend. Second, we are given a one-month break once a year. Many teachers (including myself) use this to travel home or to warmer climates in Southeast Asia. The pay is also nice; my normal monthly paycheck is over twice what I made teaching children. Pagoda also subsidizes our housing and takes care of small things like our pension, taxes, and health insurance in a much more professional way than my previous employer. Above all, though, I really enjoy teaching adults. The students are motivated and engaged - given proper instruction. If I'm strict and give orders to complete a tedious assignment or to prepare a speech in an exact way, a class of 12 will follow my directions without fail. I've taught everyone from college students and business people to civil servants and foreign diplomats, and I continually find the work very rewarding. My coworkers who have tried to move back to teaching children or on to university jobs here in Korea often find their way back to one Pagoda branch or another. They find children undisciplined and other hakwons' curriculum frustratingly boring, and the teachers who move on to university jobs find that the students aren't nearly as motivated as our students are. I've been at Pagoda for a total of four years, but I have taken some seven months of vacation. I was planning on moving back to the States in 2008 but, for a number of reasons, decided to come back to Korea and Pagoda.

Working at Pagoda for a year was very rewarding. I had been working in Korea for two years before coming to Pagoda. It was refreshing to have good management and established books--a far cry from my previous jobs in Korea. I worked at the main branch in Gangnam. In many schools, the Korean and native English teachers don't spend a lot of time together. However, when at Pagoda, we all socialized as one big unit. We went to each other's weddings, we visited each other's homes or went out to a restaurant to try different types of food after a hard day at work. The students are goal-oriented, which makes teaching a lot easier and more rewarding. Most of the students are professionals: businessmen, engineers, fashion designers, diplomats and so on. They expect the best at Pagoda because Pagoda truly is the number one best language academy in South Korea! The students know this; the teachers who are chosen to work there know this, too. In Korea, word-of-mouth is everything. A good reputation goes a long way. The financial benefits are very lucrative, as well. I was able to save much more money than I thought I could. Payment was always on time and all of the bonuses one receives after finishing their contracts arrived without a hitch. I made enough money to live very comfortably and enjoy the same lifestyle I was used to while living in the States. Overall, this is the best choice you could make when choosing a school in South Korea.

Teaching at Pagoda was the first and only experience I had working in Korea. Having experience as a teacher in the U.S., I was seeking a well-established company that provided stability, numerous teaching resources, and a group of colleagues that I could work with to improve my teaching. Overall, I was very happy with my experience at Pagoda. From assisting with finding housing, helping to prepare and file materials for my work visa, and establishing standards and procedures for the various courses that are being taught, the Pagoda management helped smooth my transition into a new country. Classes run for 20 days, which allows for flexibility in scheduling, as your schedule varies from month to month. I found the variety to be nice; I was able to teach Writing, Reading, and Speaking classes of all levels, but found a niche in my schedule and courses that I taught by my 5th month, in which my class times and levels became more regular. The turnover each month also allowed me to refine and adjust my classes to make them more fulfilling, effective, and efficient. I found the teachers that I worked with, as well as the management, to be helpful. I was given guidelines and materials for classes, but always felt that I had flexibility in teaching the class in a style that was comfortable for me. Pagoda offers training sessions for its teachers that can allow teachers to brainstorm and share ideas for more effective teaching. Finally, the students at Pagoda were excellent. All the students are adults, most at my branch were university students. This allowed the classes to have higher level discussions on topics of society, politics, and culture. I learned much more from my students than I could have ever taught them, and I appreciate the friendships that I made with my students. The experience of living and teaching in Korea was wonderful, and teaching at Pagoda eased many of the hardships associated with entering a new culture by assisting me in all aspects of my experience. I am thankful for the experience that I had through Pagoda, and would recommend the company to any energetic prospective teachers.