Vickie
- 2008-03-08
I taught at Kojen in Kaohiung for eighteen months during 2005 and 2006. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. Kojen has a set structure for all its courses that is comprehensive and easy to use, yet still allows teachers to bring their own style, personality and ideas to the classroom. I taught in three of the four brnaches in Kaohsiung and found all of them to have good to excellent facilities. School four is quite lovely with large classrooms, playground and swimming pool. Yes, I heard horror stories about academic directors at some schools, and even occasionally at my own. The thing I noticed is that whilst the school is a business and ultimately, needs to make money to survive, as a foreign teacher, the only expectation of you is that you teach the material provided effectively and in an intersting manner. All of my academic advisors were more than happy to assist when I had difficulty with certain materials or classes. For my entire time at Kojen, I not only maintained my integrity, but felt it grow as I became a more confident and effective teacher. Don't ignore Kojen. It is a good language institute. If you can, talk to current teachers or recently returned teachers about the pros and cons of their branches.
Kojen and Chain Schools in Taiwan, good or bad???
Kojen is a pretty big franchise and like all of these chain schools, it's the luck of the draw in terms of which school you get and therefore, which director and manager you work under. The children's program is huge and organized but doesn't pay as much as other schools. The adult department was once the largest in the country, but is in sharp decline and in danger of extinction due to gross mismanagement and from competition from not better, but just better-looking schools. Half of the schools are quite run down, but the management won't spend a penny to fix them up. Of course, this doesn't really matter if you get enough classes, but schools to avoid are: school 1 on Guling St., School 5 on Nanyang St. (evil director and manager), the school in NanShiJiao in Yongho, and especially school 4 - both the adult school and the children school. The directors are notoriously rotten: the "Dragon Lady" in the kids dept. and Nigel Daley, a very disagreeable type, in the adult department. Fear, intimidation, the stifling of opinion, and classes in return for kissing his ass are all the order of the day there. It's typical of these chains. The management doesn't really pay close attention to how the school's manager/director treat the staff. As long as the money keeps rolling in, who cares? You'd do well to choose another school if you have any kind of integrity, want to teach both adults and kids, or plan on being here for more than a year or so. If you do choose Kojen, choose schools only in Taipei barring the ones listed above.