Adventure Teaching

I have experience teaching FET students in a variety of settings. I am currently teaching grades 10,11 and 12 at Haven Academy school. As an education coordinator , I also have experience teaching winter (holiday) classes. Your school emphasizes its unique position in qaulity Education, so I think my varied experiences would make me an asset to your program.

Your school also strives to engage students in the larger community. I have lots of experience incorporating community service projects into my classrooms. For example, as a Geograpy teacher, I led grade 10 leaners on plant life, and we volunteered at a local community garden. I would love to find ways to integrate service learning into my lesson plans.

It is my goal to combine my range of experience with my ability to be a compassionate, enthusiastic, intelligent teacher who will make a positive contribution to your school and larger community. I would welcome an interview and hope to hear from you at your earliest convenience.

And nor should they be.

They do their jobs very well in terms of getting you well prepared to leave with a very well-laid out Visa process. They executed in helping me get here almost flawlessly. They can be a little delayed on getting back but that's understandable given the volume of things they have to deal with.

Getting a visa can have a lot of hiccups and they help you deal with them well.

They only thing I found less than necessary was going through the travel agency, who were not so responsive and didn't treat the last minute nature of getting a plane ticket after going through a big visa process urgently enough.

In terms of the school and Hakwon...well...that's another story. This, in my opinion is largely out of AT's specific control. There is A LOT that can make or break your experience. And just like with any job it all comes down to your "management" for lack of a better term.

In my case, I walked into an absolute circus. It was hands down the most stressful 2 weeks of starting a job in my life.

I could write at length as to why. In summery, I was the only native teacher here for 2 weeks and for the grand opening of a Hakwon literally the second I landed. None of this was AT's fault.

The training for the curriculum was also extremely rushed and confusing. Many of the teachers who came together agreed: there needed to have been more time getting settled here and for training.

Believe the rumors, Korea is an EXTREMELY last minute culture.

So all in all, AT did their jobs well.
Hakwons can be a crap shoot and for reasons that are cultural, or totally individual to that school and the people working there.
Public school contracts will always be better than Hakwons (in my and many peoples' opinions). The contracts for Hakwons are pretty intense in terms of "expected teaching hours".

Just know what you're getting into before you decide to do this.

That does't really have anything to do with AT in my opinion. It seems like they were pretty transparent about the whole thing minus a couple of details that may have been important. In my case the fact that my school was brand new, and that one of the original native teachers backed out (well...she didn't back out per se...that's a whole different story I won't get into) making me the only native teacher for the first week of opening and the first week of school which was easily the most stressful working condition I have ever endured.

So...

AT: 9/10
The Korean Side
Apartment: 9/10
Treatment: 9/10
The logistic of their Business: 6/10
Stress from grand opening: 4/10
Oddities I won't delve into: 5/10

Notes: You get sick? Suck it up. I got picked up before school, a shot in my a**, the quickest doctors appointment and pill prescription of my life and I was back in the classroom teaching ON TIME. There are not off days at my location, barring a SEVERE illness.

Also, AT didn't mention this and they need to. Air pollution. It's serious. Don't let anyone convince you it's not. The Korean staff my laugh it off. Utter stupidity to do so.
Get masks and purify your apartment air properly. Look for "Clean Air Ideas Korea" on Facebook for a smart expat community finding cheap ways to deal with this issue in South Korea.

Overall Average: Round up to 8

Adventure Teaching helped me set up my second trip to Korea, after departing for personal matters a couple years prior. They made it smooth and easy with their easy-to-follow checklists, and answered any questions I had in terms of getting back to Korea to teach once again. The last couple weeks were a bit of a rush after a fair amount of radio silence, but because I was prepared to depart at the estimated time we had discussed, I made it from New York to Seoul without any serious personal or monetary conflicts.
I'm enjoying my new job here in Korea, and am happy with the neighborhood AT placed me in. I previously worked a bit outside of Seoul, and stressed during my application process that I wanted to be placed in a particular area I previously fell in love with. AT did their best to find me an opportunity near there, and sure enough, I'm enjoyed where I've settled in!

I applied with my partner and AT was accommodating in getting us placed together. We also go to choose the area we got placed in, which helped to prepare for the trip. We were told to expect a delay in communication between us, AT and the school we were going to be placed with, and as expected there were months of silence. Then a rush of two weeks before the flight to a new continent. We were sent many helpful emails about the culture, food, language right down to what to remember to pack. We were helped throughout the process of getting all our documents in order and sending them to the correct places. Adventure teaching is really helpful but you need to remember that this is YOUR adventure and YOU are in charge of getting your things in order on time etc. AT is a way to make your adventure run smoothly. It is definitely an adventure!

My husband is in the Air Force and was stationed in South Korea. As soon as we found out it was unaccompanied, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I'm a certified teacher in the states, and this program was so helpful in finding me a placement as soon as possible. Not only did they help me find a school to teach in as fast as paper work can go, but they also were able to place me only 2 hours from my husbands Air Force base.