Milestone Institute (Seocho)

Known by the mom blogs as a homework check academy. Despite making changes to the curriculum to improve this, it is still a homework check academy. Teacher workload is heavy with administrative tasks. Personalized daily comments for every student and each class. Progress reports are made twice a semester for every student based on around 8 performance criteria. Sometimes you've seen a student 3 times, but it doesn't matter, full page report.

Your workload will slowly increase the longer you spend here. Essays are produced at breakneck speak and need detailed feedback at all 3 stages of writing. Weekly vocabulary tests must be graded BEFORE end of class, so students who failed can be publicly shamed, along with a written comment & mark on the tracker about the aforementioned failure. If a teacher is perceived as having nothing to do, staff will create a task for them. If you have a bad relationship with staff, more of these nebulous tasks will be assigned to you. [redacted] Despite having no time in the schedule to eat, you will be questioned if you bring food into your classroom while students are present.

Previously there was a week off between semesters, then there were a couple days between semesters, and now there is no time between semesters. [redacted] Staff will coerce you into coming in even if you are sick, especially if another staff member called in sick first. No subs, so other teachers must pick up their slack and teach the lesson. Often, this means giving up your only break time during the day to cover for teachers.

Major events/tests are highly micromanaged but never planned in advance. The staff must always be right and always have the last word. You will be treated like a child with multiple reminder messages and extremely detailed instructions for simple tasks. You must act in exact specified ways or receive patronizing messages while being monitored via CCTV.

R&D team at the Bundang location are also overworked and underpaid, so the curriculum is riddled with mistakes, bad questions, and nonsense plans.

There's a newish rotating-day-off system to solve the problem of giving teachers enough vacation days. This is used with clear bias (imo) and the unreliable nature makes it impossible to plan trips or make appointments (many teachers are told day before or day of).

Some more rapid fire issues to know:

Bonuses are political, with a strong and obvious bias

Intensives pay info NOT shared in advance (and deductions for absent students)

Passive aggressive treatment from many non-NET staff members

Treating NETs like children who can't be responsible or trusted

Constant monitoring of CCTV

Delayed contract resigning/negotiations. Many teachers wait days or weeks to receive their new contract.

Will publicly call out teachers for small mistakes in GCs and meetings

2 bathroom stalls for entire floor w/ no hot water!

No sick days and absolutely no personal days

Work on red days, vacation days are pre-selected by the academy.

Arbitrary weekly schedule that sometimes starts on Wed., Thurs., or Fri.

There are other problems that cannot be enumerated for the sake of brevity and to follow the guidelines of this community. It's a shame because most of the problems are because of one person who cannot be identified here.

TL;DR: It's a classic hagwon that [redacted]. Will never make a decision that benefits the teachers. Relationships with staff members can deteriorate at the drop of a hat and will make working conditions much worse until you inevitably burn out and follow the lead of most of their NETs and leave this place after 1-2 years.

This job is way more trouble than it's worth. They boast paying a high salary, but for the area in Seoul it's a very wealthy district and you can find better elsewhere. The work itself is tedious and often nonsensical. You'll find yourself asking why they do things a certain way and often there is no good answer. There is a running joke among the teachers that if there is a more practical way of doing something, they will never adopt that way of things because "that would make too much sense."

Teachers are required to input daily grades and comments for every single student every day. While they do have auto-filled options, you will be looked down upon if you use those. Additionally, fully custom midterm and final reports are written for each student. If you are found to be re-using phrases too often, again, they will look down on you for that. There are also monthly essays that need fully custom feedback for each student. Each teacher can have anywhere from 60-80 students at one time.

Breaks are not guaranteed every day, many teachers have at least one day of their week where they skip eating a meal. They get by on this because there are technically 5 or 10 minute breaks between classes.

[redacted] [redacted] If your coworkers are sick, you may be asked to cover their class (forfeiting a break you would have otherwise had).

Trying to follow the rules for posting here, but xxxxxxx is one of the bigger problems. Things may not be obvious at first, but if you end up on their bad side, they come to visit you more frequently. Conversations will go in circles and have no clear point. I know teachers that were some of the most professional and smart people I know that would leave conversations with management feeling like their intelligence was insulted.

Additionally, different xxxxxx often give different instructions. If you have an issue with a student you are encouraged to bring it up, but one xxxxxxx might tell you to do one thing when another will say that's a bad idea and don't do that. There is a real lack of communication between the xxxxxxx team which leaves teachers feeling directionless and confused.

TLDR:

While I would say this job MIGHT be okay as a first time teaching job, I am not really sure. I believe they don't really want first time teachers. They do not offer airline costs if you are coming from out of the country (which is a standard from any decent hagwon or company). The teachers are easy to get along with and the kids are the best part of this job. They tend to be clever and capable of holding conversations. However, I would also not recommend to anyone with any actual education degree or experience. The teachers who come in with such things are often scrutinized WAY more. I would also discourage working here for a prolonged period of time. Curriculum changes basically every semester, making it virtually impossible to reuse any of the material you created in previous semesters, so the job will not get much easier over time.