Monday, April 4, 2011

Contract Week part 1 (Student Cap)

Hello,
Wintermute here, I hope you all are as excited as I am to begin our discussion on certain red flags you should watch out for when signing a teacher contract at a school with “student caps”.

Most contracts in Korea will read something like; “the teacher will be given a class of students when he/she starts, depending on how good the teacher is he/she will be given more or less students”. This is very common; typically they will have a student cap. I read a contract that did not, meaning I could be stuck with 40 students while the other teachers only had 10. I asked the school to place a student cap in the contract. The school declined my request.

True story, at my first school a cap was clearly placed in the contract. However one day the school decided they wanted to exceed that number and give me more. I already had the most students than any other teacher, they claimed I was doing a wonderful job and thought I could handle more. Okay yes I could easily handle more, but if I accept this one student, what’s to stop them from giving me 2, 3, etc etc? Had my contract not listed a cap, I never would have been able to contest denying the student.

Sadly the school did not listen to me and gave me the extra student anyway and I walked out and waited until they got rid of the new student. Understand that had I taught that child it would have been all profit for the school, I would be teaching the kid for free as my contract said I was making X amount of money for teaching X amount of students. I asked to be given more money in compensation for the student. The school declined my request.

What really got me though was I was working near 2 more hours a day then some other teachers and had roughly 36 something students, while one teacher had around 10, and I got paid less than any other teacher. If you think I was being spoiled and unreasonable I can assure you that was not the case. I never complained to the school as I agreed in the contract to make oh so much money for oh so many students and agreed to work oh so many hours.  And I am not complaining about it now, but what I still don’t understand was if I reached my limit and could accept no more students while there were teachers with 2 hours extra to sit around on YouTube and Facebook, then why couldn’t they have been given the extra student? Thank you all very much for reading this and I will see you tomorrow!

Your friend,
Wintermute

24 comments:

  1. Wow, that sounds hard man. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be a teacher.

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  2. Teachers do not have easy jobs!Be strong!

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  3. Seems like an though job but atleast you have one :)

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  4. Apperantly the other teachers got friends mate...

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  5. Wow, that's retarded. You should have fought back.

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  6. You got paid less than any other teacher? That sounds just...wrong. :(

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  7. I am waiting for your revenge!

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  8. How is that even remotely fair? Fight for equality !

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  9. Were the other teachers hired on the same contract type as you? Or maybe yours was temporary and theirs permanent? That would explain it all.

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  10. I have definitely been looking forward to hearing about this. Sorry to hear about all the troubles you had :( Hopefully others can avoid them thanks to you though.

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  11. Teachers should get alot more money they work so hard :(

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  12. teaching is like being foreman in my trade. You aren't the boss and you aren't a student. The middle man takes all the heat. Very difficult position. I am happy to hear you stood your ground. I wish you well

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  13. Yo Wintermute, your post are getting better and better, can´t wait for the next one. Cheers mate.

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  14. What you said makes sense. Maybe they wanted you to have the extra student because they think that you're the best teacher?

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  15. That's messed up. You were absolutely right to refuse the extra student without being paid for it.

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  16. Yeah, teachers take the full frontal force, since they are what we see. But people don't see the full picture!

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  17. too right dude people take advantage- if you were a builder and they were like build an extra house it wouldnt happen but an exra pupil? oh youve got some already so its not a problem- bullshit!

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  18. to me I like to think of it like walking into subway, ordering two sandwiches and only paying for one.

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