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Topia English Zone

8 October 2008 2,147 views 7 Comments

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Name: Topia English Zone

If you currently work at this school, or know about this school, please give it a rating and write a review! Your comments are valuable to everyone, including future teachers who may follow your footsteps. When writing a review please be candid but at the same time offer balance, so that we can learn strengths as well as weaknesses. We all thank you for your insight in advance!

7 Comments »

  • steven said:

    worked there (miasamgeori) in 2002-2003 (total 13 months). owners nice enough and basically treated me well, (but). apartment was good (recruiter fought to have us upgraded from a hovel). had to wash clothes in tub until owner bought washer, which was about a month in to the contract. then, i had to share it with the other taechers who brought their laundry over on sunday. then we raised hell, and we all got one. same deal with furniture. still think there was some hanky panky with regards to pension and tax, but can’t be sure. would love to find out. the guy screwed me on airfare by just depositing money to my account….a trifle. he complained because he purchased a 2-way to save money, but i worked for 13 months and the ticket had not been extended, so he tried to make up for his gaffe by saying it was my fault. i fought it, went to head office with him (2 hours of listening to koreans bicker). he said later that they agreed to pay 1/3, he would pay 1/3 and i would. found out from the inside that was a lie. they said he goofed and should pay but it wasn’t their problem. so he lied. for 250 bucks, he lied. i worked my butt off, brought students in, and he thanks me like that. he was the hogwan owner’s assoc area prez, and i heard thru the grapevine that at a meeting he chaired, about 70% of what they discussed was how to screw the foreigners….tax, pension, airfare, 5 months dismissal (screw the recruiter) 11 months dismissal (save the airfare), yada yada. and they wonder why people don’t want to come here!

    [Reply]

    # 11 October 2008 at 7:16 pm
  • YUJ said:

    I don’t necessarily know it’s English zone
    but I attended the FLH part of the company
    and they teach pretty well and the curriculum is just fine

    [Reply]

    # 15 October 2008 at 3:29 pm
  • Philip Ols said:

    I worked at the Noble Building Campus from July 2002 to June 2003 and I only have good thing to said about my experience there. In fact I intend to go back eventually.
    I would defenatly suggest it to any one.

    [Reply]

    # 4 April 2009 at 7:24 am
  • Michelle said:

    I worked for Topia EZ in Junggye for one year, and I had a great experience. I loved the curriculum and the students, and when I return to Korea, I fully intend to resign with this school.

    [Reply]

    # 2 June 2009 at 12:09 am
  • Shayna said:

    The Noble City Campuses in Jungye downsized because the hagwons are hurting due to the swine flu. My job was saved, luckily. They fired 5 foreigners, most of them far into their contracts so they didn’t have to pay pensions and airfare. One guy was fired with 3 weeks to go. They transfered many other teachers. Although the majority of them had the campus in their contract they told them they did not have to honor the contract. Basicly, you have to spend all your time covering yourself so you don’t get fired/transfered to some small town and get your students to get high test scores without actually teaching them. Your contracts do not matter at Topia. They will make up some reason to not honor it at the end. The amount of work you have to do for checking and preparing homework is not a good use of class time. At Topia they believe it’s about about making money–not teaching students. They constantly watch every move you make and judge you and they don’t praise you.

    [Reply]

    # 6 November 2009 at 2:53 am
  • Some guy who worked at Topia for one year said:

    I would highly recommend NOT working at Topia. Not just the Junggye branch, but any Topia branch. Here’s why:
    I worked at the Topia Junggye branch for one year in 2008-2009. The ONLY positive things were: they paid us on time, I got my severance without any hassle, and they bought me my return air ticket home without any hassle. That’s about it, though. Oh, and yes the location of the Junggye branch is great. Close to the mountains, great for hiking, etc.
    Aside from those, Topia is currently in a period of mass chaos. While I was there, they fired 4 people for reasons that were both immoral and most likely illegal. Since I’ve left, I heard from friends who are still there that about 6 people have been fired. They also are switching people around to different branches around the Seoul area and have closed down two floors (8 and 9) at the Junggye branch.
    Almost all of these firings were NOT the fault of the teachers, but rather due to poor business practices on the part of incompetent Korean businessmen (i.e. Hagwon owners and directors). Profits have been declining at Topia recently and rather than downsizing people in a professional way (i.e. providing a small severance package to teachers who traveled halfway around the world to work for them), the Korean management fired them with little or no reason to avoid having to pay out any sort of compensation to the foreigners. This is a very Asian thing to do (”saving face”). They don’t want to admit they screwed up, so they make up excuses and fire people to put the blame on someone else.

    Topia also received an investment a few years ago the Carlyle Group (yes, the same Carlyle group involved with the Bush family). For a while, the owners were probably on cloud nine, just rolling in their $20 million investment. Due to the recent economic crisis, however, I heard rumors that the Carlyle Group has decided to either reduce their investment or just cancel it altogether. Therefore, Topia may now be in a dire financial state, having to rely strictly on income from its customers (i.e. parents). Much of the above mentioned chaos may be due to their current rocky economic situation. Just a warning.

    [Reply]

    # 14 December 2009 at 1:57 am
  • Michael said:

    Very, very disapointed with the low integrity of the Topia Junggye Campus.

    THE GOOD AND KINDA GOOD
    - pays on time (except for housing deposits, pensions and illegal and immoral pro rating for part months). everyone who completes their 12 months seems to get their return ticket and severance pay
    - large apartments (some need renovating) close to work with good amenities
    - clear and easy to follow lesson structure
    - students are usually well behaved compared to in the west
    - occasional opportunities to earn some additional money (but nowhere near the amounts summer camps in the public sector will pay)
    - Korean co-teachers and almost always helpful and nice
    – employs large numbers of foreigners so you can tap into their experience and knowledge of Seoul
    - manson went home. two of the other foreign corodinators are at least able to have a go at showing you how to teach effectively enough to survive the 12 months

    THE BAD AND THE APPALLING
    - company repeatedly breaks their own contract when it favors them and disadvantages you. if you try the same trick they will fire you, count on it
    - the company cannot be trusted, promises and information means nothing. the company will do backflips, revoke benefits, contradict itself and out and out lie in order to do what it wants. it is an example of the worst kind of antiqudated korean management practices. it doesn’t matter how well you do your job or how hard or how long you have worked there for, they will screw you regardless. regularly.
    – you will teach 27-30 classes a week (go teach public if you don’t want to grind out class after class) and will receive virtually no holidays outside of national days, for example Christmas is a 1-day break. i could go on but in general between in-class and out-class duties expect your workload to be double that of a public school teacher
    - if you want to cash in your airline ticket they will only give you bottom dollar for it
    - they break the law by not paying the pension. despite having been exposed at least 3 times and made to pay, they still try to get away with it because the National Pension Service doesn’t punish them.
    - if they fire you or you leave or even if you finish your contract, expect often as little as 24 hours notice to move out. not nice when you are thousands of miles from home in a foreign country

    The sad thing is that the poor decisions made by Junggye management in order to save them a few dollars is costing them far more in the long run. Their reputation is mud, good teachers will not want to work there, those first-time teachers who take the job because they (as we all did) know nothing about the Korean job market. will not stay and will not extend. This means increased attrition and more inexperienced teachers who are less productive, less effective and cause issues with parents who are the academy’s customers as well as more flight costs and resource drain through training and administration. Word will continue to get out about how bad Topia is, they will then struggle to recruit – and without foreign teachers they will be in deep shit.

    [Reply]

    # 23 January 2010 at 3:28 am

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