JETI is hiring.

In spite of Korean schools trending away from older, qualified and expensive native speaker English teachers, the stagnant salaries at public and private schools, and an increasingly-rough Korean EFL job market, there are some well-paying jobs available for qualified, credentialed instructors. A Dave's ESL Cafe poster recently asked "Is it really that hard to get 3.0 million a month?" and while salaries generally haven't increased all that much, if at all, in the past decade, the Jeollanam-do Educational Training Institute (전라남도교육연수원) in Damyang county offers a little more than the average public school or hagwon position. Via Dave's ESL Cafe:

Highly Paid Government Positions in Jeollanamdo

Posted By: Jeollanamdo Educational Training Institute
Date: Friday, 15 October 2010, at 10:38 a.m.

The Jeollanamdo Educational Training Institute (JETI) is an in-service training institute for Korean teachers supported by the Jeollanamdo Educational Office in Korea. Teach small groups of motivated Korean English teachers in our new, state of the art training center in a beautiful setting 25 minutes from Gwangju. Suitable candidates are those with previous teaching experience in Korea, particularly at the middle and high school level. Salary is above average and depends on qualifications and experience.

Job specifications
1. Starting Date: December, 2010
2. Employment Period: One year with an opportunity for contract renewal
3. Starting Salary: 2,700,000 ~ 3,000,000 K/Won (Depending on qualifications)

Requirements
- Native English speaker
- BA/BS (3-4 year program) degree, (TESOL certificate, MA TESOL English Education degree preferred)
- Teaching experience in Korea necessary (Please do not apply unless you have extensive ESL experience teaching within Korea or abroad)
- Enthusiasm for teaching and working with adults
- Experience developing ESL curriculum

Working Conditions
- Five-day work week (Monday through Friday) 09:00 am ~ 17:00 pm, no work on Korean National Holidays
- 20 class hours per week (class hour 50min)
- Overtime is available at 30,000 won per hour
- 1-3 evening classes per week (considered overtime)
- Development and implementation of curriculum and evaluations
- Trainee age ranges from 25-55 years old
- Working in a team of 9 experienced native English instructors

Benefits
- E-2 visa
- Airfare: a one-way ticket and a return home one-way ticket are provided at the end of contract.
- Medical insurance (Under Korean law)
- Severance Pay (equivalent to one month¡¯s salary) upon completion of a-year contract
- 7 weeks paid vacation (dependent on the training schedule)
- Fully-furnished (unshared) one-room apartment in Gwangju with TV, air-conditioner, refrigerator, washing machine, bed, table, chair, couch etc
- Dorm room at institute also available for instructors during training periods. (It is not necessary to stay at the institute but the option is available.)

If you are interested in one of those positions above, please send your resume and recent photo, and copies of your degree and passport to hyungnamlee@yahoo.com

If you have any questions regarding the position, feel free to contact the coordinating native instructor Phil Griffith by e-mail: philgriffith123@gmail.com

I've written about JETI a few times: it's where Korean English teachers in Jeollanam-do public schools go for training sessions throughout the school year for a few weeks or a month at a time. In a post about teacher-training sessions in Korea and abroad I wrote:

[O]bservational and anecdotal evidence, together with what Korean English teachers have told me, indicates that these programs for secondary school teachers are probably not the best investment. In spite of these TEE certificates and the experience abroad---which, remember, supplements a lifetime of exposure to the language, decades of study, and four years of training in university---they are still placed back into schools that teach English entirely for standardized grammar tests which make spoken English a sideshow at best and a hindrance to comprehending the subject at worst. Teachers who have attended month-long intensive English programs at the Jeollanam-do Educational Training Institute (전라남도교육연수원) in Damyang county told me they generally had fun and learned a lot, but can't apply any of these skills because:

1) Their students aren't interested in speaking English.
2) Their students' English levels aren't good enough to understand spoken English.
3) The activities they learned in Damyang can't be applied to large class sizes like those in public schools.
4) Teachers must follow and complete the textbooks and teach toward standardized tests, and don't have time to waste on speaking English.

In spite of that review, however, I do think that teacher-training programs are one area where native English speakers will be able to find long-term employment as teachers in South Korea, as younger Korean English teachers eventually take an interest in a communicative approach to teaching, and as NSETs are generally phased out of the public schools as being too expensive, too impractical, or simply too much trouble.