As North America continues to bleed jobs, more English teachers are arriving in Korea and choosing to extend their stay in the country despite its weaker currency and perceived threats from its communist neighbor, market and official figures show.
. . .
Indeed, for teachers looking to return home, especially those hoping to stay in education, there are few prospects.
School districts in the U.S. from Seattle to New York City have either made staff cuts or placed hiring freezes on out-of-district applicants, shutting doors on new grads and experienced educators alike. While few if any public school teachers are likely to lose their jobs in Canada, new hiring will probably remain slow until government revenues improve, according to Penny Milton, CEO of the Canadian Education Association.
For the time being this could mean an increase of, if not "qualified" teachers---whatever that means---at least of teachers who are actually interested in teaching and in gaining teaching experience. There was talk last year of allowing licensed non-native-speaking English teachers to get an E-2 visa in Korea to fill the perceived lack of "qualified" instructors, though it bears repeating that even a licensed, experienced teacher back home may not be prepared for all the challenges they'll face teaching EFL in Korea.
Anyway, a teacher from Jinju summed up her decision to stay in Korea a little while longer:
“I’m getting further away from pursuing my higher education goals,” she says, “but at the same time, [I am] getting more work experience and living rent-free in a beautiful country.”
10 comments:
This may very well be true (and if it is, then I'm bucking the trend by leaving after two years); but what I'd really like to know is EPIK's retention rate. I'd been told (a year ago) that their normal retention is around 50%; and it would be interesting to know if that has changed. Does anyone have a contact at EPIK? (My one contact there, alas, seems to have herself moved on.)
No idea about EPIK, but remember SMOE famously announced that half leave after one year. This was written by Kang Shin-woo, so you have no guarantee it's accurate, but here's what we heard from the gov't:
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According to Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, Tuesday, 144 of 273 foreign English teachers who were eligible for a renewal of their contract have signed to stay on another year.
Lee Young-chan, an education Ministry official in charge of native teachers said it was not necessary to renew every contract. ``They are neither regular teachers nor lecturers who can conduct classes independently. They are `assistant teachers,' hence their teaching experience doesn't matter much,'' he said. ``Rather, it's better for students to have more new teachers so that they can meet various kinds of foreigners,'' he added.
***
I believe the retention rate for EPIK teachers in Ulsan is about 47% (according to my co-teacher, whose husband works for the education office).
I guess if you add the 12% who didn't get renewed because they were either too fat, too naked or wouldn't teach after school classes, you've got roughly 41% who chose not to renew.
I have a personal network of about 35 Ulsan teachers. Of them, 3 have signed on for another year. Granted that's only 35 out of around 180, but maybe other areas fair better...although I don't imagine it.
A licensed, experienced teacher from overseas can adapt quickly to a Korean classroom. VIFs (Visiting International Faculty) generally do fine in US schools, which are much more demanding in terms of teacher expectations and student needs.
re Brian @ 8:48am: I remember that guy's comments, but had forgotten the 144 of 273 number, which again is just under 50%. The weird thing upon seeing his comments again is that the Koreans seem to see a <50%retention as a kind of failure or rebuff of Korea. I would think 50% would be great. These are one-year programs, after all.
If the Koreans do see our leaving as a failure, there are a lot of things they could be doing to increase the success rate. In my case, no one from EPIK or my local MOE (or my school, for that matter) has EVER contacted me to ask how I'm doing. "Recruitment" for me has consisted of someone out of the blue asking if I'm going to stay another year (and expecting an answer the same day.) The first year I said yes. This year I said no.
I should add that I have nothing but praise for EPIK and my local MOE and my school, all of whom have treated me very well. I'm leaving because it was my plan to stay two years and then move on, and that's what I'm doing.
I am renewing my contract for the very fact that I really like working at my school. It's as simple as that.
I haven't worked in my home country since 2000, so, if the US were having a worker shortage I wouldn't still go back.
Hopefully that will help somewhat with the lower application rate these days due to the bad press Korea has been getting of late.
Kelsey, bad press about Korea vis-à-vis English teaching or peninsular military issues go back to the 1990s.
Don't the US and Canadian embassies still have warnings not to come and teach English?
That's interesting, sonagi, I'll have to read up more on VIF. I wonder if Korea would have any luck trying to appeal to university education departments or on teacher forums---no idea how to do that---to try and get teachers from back home to spend a year or two in Korea. They'd really have to get on the ball and get organized, with a definite idea of how to use NSETs in the school and classroom, but I think if it were set up as a professional operation---not a backpacker stop like today---there might be some success and opportunities for professional development on both sides.
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