TN English Gwangju: The Brutal Truth

Enough beating around the bush.  I’m over writing passive aggressive status updates.  If I get in some kind of trouble for writing this good, it means that I have a decent reading base and I’m capable of satisfactory social media.

The facts need to be known.  I spent the last week scouring the internet for any possible information on this school and I only found a few bad reviews on well known ESL websites and a blog from three years ago, so at least this school has been consistent.

The facts?

As of this week:

• Tn English has not paid their English teachers for half of the month of January, all of the month of February and come April 15th they will owe us for the entire month of March.  Teachers are paid monthly.  I’m ready to start charging some interest or something!
• The school currently has six English teachers and one was recently hired last week, the school currently owes five of these teachers thousands of dollars each.
• The Korean staff also hasn’t been paid.
• The school lost around eight students this week for various reasons.
• The school recently fired the cleaning lady and now the teachers are responsible for vacuuming, sweeping, dusting, trash, and any other cleaning within their own classrooms.  No, we are not paid for this extra work.  And no, this work was not in my contract.
• We really don’t get vacation days even though the contract states we get several days of vacation in addition to Korean holidays.
• The school has not paid rent on some of the teachers’ living quarters.
• Sick days?  You better be on your death bed and have a doctors note from the hospital.
• Management has conducted individual meetings with all English teachers and told us to keep quiet and not tell the others what they told us in our meetings, like they were offering each of us some sort of secret special deal.

They can tell me to keep quiet all they want, but I will make my blog as publicly accessible as possible and tag as much of their lies and wrong doings for all the world to see.

***It’s worth noting not all hagwons are this bad.  I have many friends within the Gwangju area who are completely happy with their company and are treated wonderfully.  Also, my recruiter has done an amazing job getting me in contact with relevant resources and keeping record of all the wrong-doings from the school.  I truly don’t know what I’d do without the guidance from my huge support system at Teach ESL Korea.

I think my story goes without saying, PLEASE research your schools before accepting a contract.