Twinkle (Songdo)

Working at Twinkle Songdo is a decision I regret. You are a total work horse there! When Twin.kle states, escape the ordinary , what they mean is escape the ordinarily fair working conditions you re probably accustomed to working if you happen to be from a nation that has stringent worker s rights and protections. For context, I was a non-fiction teacher there and was slammed with a 30 hour teaching schedule off the bat.

Your time is definitely exploited as is your mental health. The teaching material at Twinkle isn't your ordinary one, so lots of prepping. When I say a lot, I mean it! It is very dense. Between all the lesson planning, marking and administrative tasks you have to conduct, (e.g., monthly homework schedules, daily parent communication via chat, and micromanaging) you feel squeezed. And there are no actual resources that come coupled with the lessons, just the books and maybe some YouTube videos. Also, my '30 minute' lunch break was never really honored as I often had to gulp down my dinner and stress about prepping stuff for the next three-hour class block. Moreover, you get about an hour of paid work time before students show up for class to do all the aforementioned unless you don't because there are weekly meetings that eat into that time. There was no tenable way for me to manage the aforementioned in a qualitative way, which was a requisite of course, without having my personal time taken advantage of.

For context, let me share a vivid memory of how I felt squeezed. In a given day, I had to manage marking extremely LONG stories written by students daily. As a teacher, I was happy to read the written work by our bright students, but what was stressful was having to mark eight students writing in a span of three separate five-minute breaks before the end of the three-hour class. Here s what s interesting though. You don t actually have time to mark them because during class, you have to teach the dense material that is beholden to a strict book schedule and during the breaks, you re constantly bombarded by students trying to guess answers to the daily riddles on the walls for them to collect Class Dojo points, so where was the time for me to mark I still wonder? When I made this point, I never got any meaningful answers other than my time management sucked and that I had to get adjusted.

You WILL be constantly criticized and micromanaged thereafter. I was not privileged to the reasons for the onslaught of criticisms I received, but I worked hard to receive them in a meaningful way. One major criticism I got had to do with how I marked student s writings, but you know the context. However, what became clear over time was the absence of any leadership within the school and the broader Twin.kle network. The managers on site were clearly inexperienced and I understood why as they ve only worked for Twin.kle. Varying perspectives, meeting someone at eye level and leadership were sorely lacking. Lots of groupthink. What was ironic about all of it was the incongruency to which I was praised and criticized by the same individuals. In the end, I attributed the ineffective leadership of those individuals to their youth and inexperience and Twin.kle s culture.

I resigned from Twin.kle on good terms. I came to Korea to not only teach, but have leisure time too. Luckily, I was able to do this as I was on an F visa, which allowed for me to have greater autonomy on where I chose to work in South Korea. Here s my advice. If you re thinking of working at Twin.kle, don t! They may pay a smidgen more than other places, but considering the volume of work and the intensity of the curriculum, it just isn t worth it unless you really want to be challenged. I fell for all the fluff about wonder and the vision of reforming education, but in my experience, the students there are already gifted because they test in and quite stressed by Twin.kle s work load in my opinion.

In summary, Twin.kle is part of the very problem that they aim to cure, so find a school that won t exhaust and overwork you and its students. If you re someone like me who wants to be a good teacher and seeks an engaging and innovative workplace that will stimulate your professional growth, trust me, Twin.kle isn t it albeit appearances.