Francis Parker (Gimpo)

Hello, I wanted to share my honest experience at Francis Parker Gimpo.

During my time here, I never had any issues with pay, pension, or getting settled into the job. Communication has always been clear and consistent.

The foreign teachers, Korean teachers, and managers are supportive and easy to work with. Everyone is willing to help if you ask. The managers genuinely appreciate every teacher and treat everyone with respect. They also care about the students' safety, well-being, and education. In any case scenario, the Academy will NEVER blame any of the teachers, they always support the foreign teachers and always say positive things about you to the parents.

Overall, Francis Parker Gimpo has supportive management, appreciate the teachers, cares about the students, and keeps up with communication.

I have been at this school for a while and plan to continue. Some teachers have already written on here on the blacklist side but every teacher has their own experiences and my experience has been good so far. Management is kind to the teachers especially if there was a mistake on our part. I feel like management is always organized especially during events. They plan everything down to the activities. There are a lot of classes but also there are times where we are not teaching which gives enough time to complete our work so we don't have to take stay after work or take any work home (which I never had to do). We always get paid on time and when we have extra hours that they ask us to do, they pay overtime. I have worked at different hagwons before and I completely understand what a toxic workplace in Korea looks like and this is far from it. Just some teachers might have different experiences than others. :)

I would like to add Francis Parker Gimpo to the blacklist.

Pros

Get paid on time.

Most of the students are well behaved.

Clear and easy curriculum.

Cons

The management is highly unorganized and chaotic. You will be given task to complete by the end of the day with no direction, you have to figure out what they want you to do and will be yelled at if it is not completed like they expect it to be. You will be given no training and have to figure out how to complete daily task on your own.

The amount of classes you must teach are overwhelming. You can expect to teach up to nine classes a day up to three times a week sometimes eleven. On a good day you might teach eight classes. The amount of work given to kindy is overwhelming and kids are often crying by the end of the day from being tired and still having to finish assignments.

The management will often come into the classroom why you are teaching and yell at the children. It was extremely unnerving. The management often came into the room while you were in the middle of teaching class and watches the class. They interject in the middle of the lesson you are teaching and say that you are not teaching correctly. All of this happens in front of the children.

You will have little to no support in the classroom. You will have to teach all by yourself with no one to translate to children who don’t fully understand English.

Every month you will have special events added and field trips all while having to complete classes with the children.

You will often have to stay after work to complete monthly comments, marking work, and lesson plans for kindy and elementary classes. When I submitted my resignation, the process became unnecessarily difficult. There was confusion regarding my final working day and delays in providing the documentation I needed after my employment ended. This created unnecessary stress during what should have been a straightforward transition.

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I could go on and on but you are intelligent and can understand what my experience has been. If you value a work life balance please do not teach at this school. It is a soul crushing experience.