Mytime

Sister school of Gwangju Foreign school closed

2009-12-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

Robert Holley had two schools, but his school in Chinju has closed. The staff of the school are now working at the Gwangju foreign school, and some of the students have transferred to Gwangju as well.

Gulu Walk

2009-11-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

The Gulu walk is a community event to show how children in Uganda moved en mass to another country at night to avoid being conscripted into a children's army. A former teacher at this Gwangju Foreign school organized the first walk in this country several years ago, and he has left quite a legacy. I'm sure this event could expand if consistant effort is put into it every year.

There is a video on youtube called comastate showing what the students did at the end of their first gulu walk.

The walk is becoming an International event, and has spread from Canada where the idea originated.

I'm sure a lot of good causes could get marches and community support if a few individuals were willing to do a little ground work the way the individuals did for the Gulu Walk.

All it needs now is a catchy song to go with it.

Bungling Lawyers (probably similar to Robert Holley)

2009-09-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

The below excerpts appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune. They were taken from real court records.

Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, in most cases he just passes quietly away and doesn't know anything about it until the next morning?

Q: What happened then ?
A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify me."
Q: Did he kill you?

Was it you or your brother that was killed in the war?

The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?

Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q: Were there any girls?

Were you alone or by yourself?

Q: I show you Exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize that picture?
A: That's me.
Q: Were you present when that picture was taken?

Were you present in court this morning when you were sworn in?

Q: You say that the stairs went down to the basement?
A: Yes.
Q: And these stairs, did they go up also?

Q: Now then, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?

Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are now?
A: I'll be three months on March 12th.
Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was around January 12th?
A: Yes.
Q: What were you doing at that time?

Do you have any children or anything of that kind?

Was that the same nose you broke as a child?

Q: Mrs. Jones, do you believe you are emotionally stable?
A: I used to be.
Q: How many times have you committed suicide?

So, you were gone until you returned?

You don't know what it was, and you didn't know what it looked like, but can you describe it?

Q: Have you lived in this town all your life?
A: Not yet.

A Texas attorney, realizing he was on the verge of unleashing a stupid question, interrupted himself and said, "Your Honor, I'd like to strike the next question."

Q: Do you recall approximately the time that you examined that body of Mr. Huntington at St. Mary's Hospital?
A: It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 5:30 P.M.
Q: And Mr. Huntington was dead at the time, is that correct?
A: No, you idiot, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was performing an autopsy on him!

I'd say all the lawyers involved in the above sessions were members of the West Virginia Bar Association

Another Lawyer Joke

Some last minute requests

A man woke up in a hospital bed and called for his doctor (doctor Lynn). He asked, "Give it to me straight. How long have I got?" The physician replied that he doubted that the man would survive the night. The man then said, "Call for my lawyer"(Mr Holley). When the lawyer arrived, the man asked for his physician to stand on one side of the bed, while the lawyer stood on the other. The man then laid back and closed his eyes. When he remained silent for several minutes, the physician asked what he had in mind. The man replied "Jesus died with a thief on either side. I just thought I'd check out the same way."

All lawyers should be told that they can't take their money to heaven. They should be reminded of this constantly. In the case of Mr Holley, he should realize that a good way to use his extra money to insure reaching the pearly gates, would be to distribute it amongs't the teachers so that their salaries more better reflect the amount of work they do. The angels in heaven would, I am sure, look down smiling, and be quick to pass the word on to St Peter.

Sloppy International schools

2009-08-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

Article from Korea Times

Sloppy International Schools

During a recent administrative inspection of the Seoul Office of Education, Lee Su-jeong, a Seoul Metropolitan Council member representing the Democratic Labor Party, said that some U.S.-owned and other international schools had become ``royal academies" for the children of wealthy Koreans. For instance, she said, 60 percent of students in the Seoul Academy International School were Korean. According to the education office's data, the U.S.-owned school had the highest percentage of Korean students among international schools here ― 101 out of 166 students. Coming next was the French Lycee International Xavier (43.2 percent), followed by the U.S.-owned Asia Pacific International School (36.6 percent), Korea International School (30.8 percent) and Centennial Christian School (27.9 percent). Students who have lived abroad for at least three years are legally allowed to enroll in international schools. However, many international schools will accept anyone willing to pay the exorbitant fees. In fact, there are many students attending these schools who have never lived abroad or who have only been abroad for holidays. Such schools are ``cash-and-grab schools," or greedy schools, and they should be fined and forced to refund the school fees of those students who don't meet the requirements to attend an international school. The school should have the students withdraw and look for education elsewhere. Maybe councilwoman Lee Su-jeong could set up a committee to visit every international school and demand to see the passports of every student for verification of time spent abroad. I'm sure enrollments at a lot of these schools would drop considerably, and some might even be forced to close.

Many international schools have a difficult time recruiting qualified teachers and some parents are not satisfied with some of the school's teachers.``I think the education authority should take more care of this issue,'' said the mother of a student enrolled at an international school in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province (from the Korea Times article in July 2008, headlined ``Korea Sloppy in Overseeing Foreign Schoolteachers"). If these schools paid higher salaries, more qualified teachers would come to Korea. As it is, a lot of international schools pay their teachers a salary comparable to that paid by the average English academy or government-sponsored public school to native speakers ― for doing two to three times the amount of work. Teachers at international schools are involved in various extracurricular activities and participate in a myriad of other activities as well . They also have to make tests , mark tests and meet student's parents in addition to their basic teaching responsibilities. Your basic English academy or government-sponsored public school teacher, among other things, has access to a lot of ESL (English as a Second Language) material online or from other sources, has the freedom to be creative, and is required to maintain a semblance of order in the classroom ― but is not responsible for a student's grade or the student's ability to pass the entrance test to gain admission to a Korean university. Unfortunately, very few good, qualified teachers would ever accept employment away from his or her home country for the low salary that is offered by many of these so-called international schools. Those that do are probably working from a different agenda and have other priorities for coming to Korea.

Many international schools have to accept whomever they can get, and that means they might have to hire recent graduates without any teaching experience. Some of these inexperienced new graduates do very well as teachers, but they usually only stay for a year before moving on to more meaningful employment. That doesn't lead to the teacher continuity that students need, and parents pay enough for tuition and other expenses to rightfully demand that their children be taught continuously by experienced teachers. The law pertaining to international schools requires that their teachers have at least two years of background in education (teaching experience), so those schools that hire new graduates without experience are doing so in defiance of the law. A foreign school in Gwangju, for example, consistently hires teachers without experience from the Princeton in Asia employment agency, and also accepts students who haven't lived abroad for the mandatory three years.

The Korea Times article I mentioned above stated that ``each regional office is not fulfilling it's duty properly, and they don't have the tools to correct any impropriety in international private schools". ``International schools are autonomous," said Kim Hong-sop, a director-general of the Education Ministry. In response, city and provincial education offices point out that the regulations are impractical. ``We have limits in supervising the schools. I don't know how many schools would report properly as we don't provide any subsidies to them as we do to other schools, " said Cho Wan-seok, an official of Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education.Why should receiving a subsidy determine whether a school be inspected to insure that it is providing the right services for their students? Shouldn't all institutions in Korea be policed equally for impropriety by the education department? How can international schools be autonomous, and why don't regional offices have the tools to discipline and penalize delinquent schools? Essentially, international schools have been given free license to charge anything they like for either inadequate or adequate education, and to hire any teacher regardless of his or her background and experience. The writer has taught at Kyungsan University, Uiduk University and international schools in Japan and Korea.
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Reader’s Comments

tsunami Del (128.113.91.66) 08-17-2009 04:12
Reference is made to a school in Gwangju that hires new graduates as teachers from the "Princeton in Asia" recruiting firm in defiance of the law. That only private international school in Gwangju is Robert Holley's "Gwangju Foreign School". That's quite a surprise. I checked the wikipedia site on the school, and it seems as though the statement is correct.
sambeh Del (59.19.124.48) 08-15-2009 17:11
Koreans want to get head with their PALI-PALI mentality. Do you know that the word EFFICIENCY is not in the Korean English dictionary?
sambeh Del (59.19.124.48) 08-15-2009 17:07
The writter should know that everything is done in a hurry! Thus, EFFICIENCY is always compromised..
jimbo1a Del (12.50.229.130) 08-13-2009 23:04
The schools discussed in this article are not true International Schools. To be an International school, under international rules, you need a Board of Governors and a set of rules that clearly identify the qualifications of the students. There are a couple of international schools in Korea that meet the correct criteria. However, most ignore residency requirements just to make money.
7001 Del (220.123.180.234) 08-13-2009 11:03
An incredibly biased article by a writer who insults teachers at international schools, yet the writer formerly taught at international schools! He also states that teachers often leave after only one year; has he considered that teachers only get one year contracts?

The Home Page for the Princeton in Asia Employment Agency.
http://piaweb.princeton.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=0&Itemid=143

Spanish at Gwangju Foreign school

2009-06-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

The foreign language of choice for highschool students in Korea is Chinese. English of course is compulsory. Japanese has quite a following as well. I guess there is a cultural affinity between China and Korea, coupled with the use of Hanja or the Chinese characters used in some Korean texts. Gwangju foreign school interestingly is one of two schools that offer Spanish.

ESL and Gwangju Foreign School

2009-05-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

Sad state of affairs that Robert Holley and his school should continue with their very illegal ESL programe. The requirement of the students for living abroad in an English speaking country has been dropped from 5 years to 3 years. Eligibility now favours foreign schools. Still a student who has had parents spend the money for him or her to live abroad to learn English isn't going to want their child to be learning in an ESL environment when they return.

The school actively pushes it's ESL programe, and there is no letting up from it. Can't believe Mr Robert Holley would so brazenly flout the law. The school has had this stuff going on for years, and he makes one hell of a deal about his legal qualifications, and the membership he has in the Chamber opf commerce. What a hypocrite. The information about the schools ESL programe was on the school news letters which it writes on the school website every month. They were available for everyone to read as well. Now these newsletters are only available to registered readers. All of a sudden they would rather not have there school matters open to the public the way they used to. Apart from the ESL information the school newsletters have nothing of interest to any non school personnel. One can rightfully assume that the Holleys are desperately trying to cover something up. Hide the dirty stinking incriminating evidence that so dissapointingly shows how lacking in integrity they really are.

Mr Robert Holley is of no credit to us waeguks at all. He used to be held up on a pedestal by us foreigeners to show that there was one of us who could cut it here in Korea. What a bitter blow to see the level that he has sunk too.

Tough times because of the exchange rate. Watch out in case you get short changed.

2009-04-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

OK the won is depreciating, and one's Korean paypacket aint worth much in U.S. dollars anymore. The Holleys have to be hurting too, so I'm sure they will look for ways to cut corners either legally or illegally so that they don't lose their investments in the U.S.

The pension should be watched. Some shonkey hogwons make their 4.5%(or whatever it is) deductions from your paycheck for the pension, and pocket it. As an employee of the Holley's who of course aren't that honest I would check to see that they are on the level, and not pocketing the deductions. The pension office in Gwangju is very accomodating, but it might be good to take someone who can speak Korean to help. Don't ask the Holleys, because they will tell you anything. Of course only citizens from Canada, the United states and the few other countries whom have reciprocal agreements with Korea can claim back there deductions and the matching payments of their employer. It wouldn't be that wrong of course if the Holleys didn't take pension deductions from those teachers whom aren't elligible to recieve the pension pay out. By law all employee have to be on the national pension plan, but then this would be breaking the law to help an employee.

The payout from the pension scheme is at least the equivalent of the severance, so the benefitting teachers finish their contract with a decent bonus in their hands

Now one is supposed to leave the country to get their pension back. I think one has to nominate a bank in that persons country , and it gets forwarded. There are ways to have it wired into a bank in Korea. Check DAVES ESL CAFE under the "KOREAN JOB FORUM" section and one can find the advice one needs

Mrs Holley the Pathalogical Lier

2009-03-02T12:30:00.000-08:00

Someone wrote this on the discussion page of a webb site, and I found the reasons given for such a conclusion very interesting. It seems that Korea and Japan are classified as shame based cultures in the sense that the shame from being seen breaking a law far outweighs any guilt that someone from say a western individualised culture might feel from a similar law breaking infraction. Mrs Holley, as the administrator of the Gwangju Foreign School, at times seems to be quite beyond this as she is quite capable of verbalising the most obvious of barefaced lies, but then of course maybe she is so thick in the head as to actually believe that the rest of the teachers and staff cannot see through her asinine B.S.
A lot of administrators have to resort to cunning and lieing to get things done, but most of them have a conscience of sorts and something inside of them wears and tears because of it. It's said that hypochrisy is the "tribute that vice pays to virtue", and a bit of it certainly greases the wheels of social exchange. It also corrodes the well being of those people who are continually forced to make use of it. In the case of Mrs Holley and her husband I'd say there is nothing inside to corrode.
Many Korean institute owners use tactics like "I will turn you into immigration if you don't do this" or " I will put you on a blacklist, because of your decision" or "we can fire you whenever we want" as intimidation tactics to keep their new and very green staff in line. Mrs Holley is quite capable of these and more. At times she has been known to describe so many differing and conflicting scenarios of why she was able to bring to pass certain events that it's beyond a joke. Her husband of course is a Western trained Lawyer, but the union didn't take her out of the weirdness of her culture. It either sucked him in or he was by inclination a part of it anyway. If he was drawn into it, it could be because of the maxim: "you can take a person out of her cultural background, but you cant take the cultural background out of the person". If he wasn't drawn in then maybe destiny played apart in their meeting.
Now I don't for one minute think that all Korean buisness people conduct their affairs by stretching the law i.e. by using subterfuge, lying, and cunning. There are some good honest law abiding people here otherwise the country would have gone to the dogs long ago. Unfortunately I don't thing any of them work in the vicinity of the Gwangju Foreign school in Yangsan Dong.

It's interesting that when Greenspan was in Korea to hand to the Koreans their baleout package of millions of dollars for the IMF fiasco in 1997 (or therabouts) he literally threw it at them in disgust. He had been duly informed by the many U.S. companies whom had been shortchanged in their buisness arrangements with Korean companies. Korea did pay off the IMF loan they borrowed, but I am wondering where they dipped their hands to get the needed funds.

The tactic of "we can fire you whenever we want" can be thrown in the garbage dump completely. Korean law says that a person cannot be kicked out of his position until the end of his or her contract. Should a company try to do this then the Labor Board will step in and guarantee the rights of that person. The performance of the individual concerned is irrelevant. I worked for the public school system with a co-worker who was so bad that the school told him to stay home, and still recieve his pay.

Robert Holley and Politics

2009-01-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

I was looking at his resume on the blog "Kalbijin" owned by another expat who speaks fluent Korean. "Mith" is the blog owners nickname, and he seems to be well disposed to-wards Holley. Anyway Robert Holley has created a political Party. Right now his party is just a name, and not active. If he ever tried to get it moving he would be dearly savaged by the Korean media, and if it did against all the odds get off the ground, it would probably go down as the most corrupt party ever, in the History of Korean politics. A humourous and approximate interpretation of politics is many (poly) blood sucking animals (tics) and I'd say it would adequately describe the machinery of any party of Robert Holley.
Korean politics are personality politics. Candidates don't campaign on the basis of a platform of reforms. They shake as many of their constituents hands as possible and promise them the earth . Holley would probably offer many private schools with high tuition to his constituents , but secretly pocket most of the proceeds. He might also promise to import foreign cars for everyone, but overcharge for them when they arrived. I wouldn't be surprised if he were also to offer many buisness opportunities with very minimal wages to people to build mansions for him and his family.
Roh Tae Woo with his brains in his bum gave his daughter millions of dollars in a huge duffle bag to deposit in Bank accounts in the U.S. There were photographs of one of his aids giving her the bag after the Korean presidential party cleared VIP customs on one of it's official tours. The law caught up with her though, because you just can't open multitudinous accounts in the U.S. and deposit more than $10,000 a shot. Mrs Holley wouldn't know that of course, and would merely do the same thing, and get her name plastered all over the world. The expats in Korea would roll their eyes in their heads again saying. "Oh gee we got another another Korean dingbat".

Good to see that Holley finally paid his dues to the West Virginia bar. Probably shed bitter tears at the expense.

Can't find his name in the American Bar Association. Either he updates his membership or if he isn't a member then he better get it the hell off his resume.

The Holley Bludgers

2008-10-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Holleys put very little of their own money back into the school. They try to get the parents of the students to buy things for the school rather than pay for them themselves. What the school does have in the way of computers, wide screen TVs, gymnasium apparatus and other things came from very generous parents. Now the Holleys drive around in imported U.S. cars, keep accomodation in Utah for when their kids go to college, and move constantly to different maybe more expensive appartments. That sucks to high hell. They are living well on the backs of high paying students, and refuse to provide equipment even though they have more than enough money to do so.

I was checking the school homepage, and was surprised that everybody's email was tied into a school e mail. No private email adresses were permitted. Something like that is goining to raise red flags amongst potential teachers investigating the school, and among the parents of students as well. Parents want their children taught in a normal environment and not one controlled by cretin, retard morons suffering from paranoia.

Robert Holley should be disbarred, if he hasn't been already

2008-06-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a good lawyer friend, and he said that the ethics that lawyers are bound by after graduating from a U.S. university and passing the bar exam are to insure that their legal profession and their buisness dealings are honest and above board. The said lawyers are still bound by the ethics thing no matter what country they happen to be living in, and their behaviour still has to be impeccable regardless of wether the countries laws are a sham or not. The way the Gwangju Foreign school has skirted the legal requirements is a joke, and an embarrasment to the foreign expat community in general, and an example should be made of it's owner to show that we aren't all tarred with the same brush.

His membership of the West Virginia bar has been suspended.

Korea might give Robert Holley more credence as a a new Korean if he allowed his sons to do mandatory time in the either the ROK Army, Navy or Airforce. Not at a desk job either, but as a grunt in the infantry or Naval or Airforce equivalent. The Korean populace who generally see him as someone who swapped citizenship to latch on to the WON rather than for the supposed love of Korea as he claims, might finally be more accepting of him if he ignored the regulations about mixed blood individuals and and let his sons do their military time like everyone else's sons.

Gwangju foreign School and the Pension

2008-05-30T05:13:00.000-07:00

Gwangju foreign school and pension

From another blog

This post is about the Gwangju Foreign school and their handling of the pension from another site.

The school only recently adopted the Korean National Pension, so in a sense the owners of the school have been flouting the law for a good 8 years. Thats not surprising considering their track record. Mrs Holley in a meeting with the staff in September of 2007 tried to explain it away by saying the school was given permission to not have it. Mr Holley who supposedly has a legal background should have been there to support her but wasn't. Now no body gives an institute, or buisness permission to not offer the pension to it's staff, so what she said was rubbuish . The only way a Korean buisness or academy gets exempted is if an alternative plan is used. Of course there wasn't any such alternative plan at Gwangju Foreign school, so Mrs Holley swung a fast one over on unsuspecting teachers who were more concerned about hanging on to their jobs than challenging the issue.

At the meeting Mrs Holley did offer back payments to those who requested it, but no documentation or forms were provided for the teachers to show what the options available really were. In reality the teachers should have taken the owners up on the offer and requested that they paye the 4.5%of all of their previous earnings. Unfortunately for the teachers this was glossed over by Mrs Holley in such a way as to make it appear to be too complicated to consider. Teachers didn't get proper representation to ensure that they got a fair deal, nor were they aware of just what was happening. This was probably what was intended, and is just another exploitation job by unscrupulous owners. Seems to be the grain at a lot of places. A little dissappointing to see this side of the Holleys especially since they profess to be upright church going citizens and pillars of the community.

I also find it incredible that the the other owner Mr Holley who professes to have passed the bar exam for the state of West Virginia should allow his wife to get set up so that she would commit a form of purgery. She blatently lied like she always does, and although no oath was taken she still knowingly, made a very false statement. It's all the more serious because her and her husbands Christian background places a premium on honesty. It's also no credit to Mr Holley as a lawyer that he should run a buisness this way, and if there is a term "shonkey lawyer" then it's certainly appropriate in this situation.

Gwangju Foreign School is in the Black

2008-05-05T07:18:00.000-07:00

Recent posts under the Google :"Gwangju Foreign School"http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2579016 show that the school is actually in the "black" or if my terminology is correct no longer in the "red", and that it has been that way since 2005. Well that's good to hear, especially since the Holleys promote their summer camp on the basis that it's needed to paye the salaries of the teachers and staff. An honest institution payes their staff salary based on normal teaching requirements. Any work done over and beyond that like a camp or extra teaching hours is extra paye. The Holleys are always going on and on about how their school is running at a loss, so man they gotta be the biggest liers under the sun.
The same recent posts show that their other school in Cholla Bukdo is running in the red. I'm wondering if the camp they run in Gwangju is to make money off the backs of the teachers to prop up this other school. If so then that stinks, but by the same token if they would be willing to paye their teachers for working at their camp then they would be showing a little decency. (That would be asking a lot from these cut throat exploiters, but you never know)

By the time one adds in the cost for the meals, the cost for the buses, and other expenses the total cost per student is no different from any other International school.

I mentioned in one of my earlier reports how a female teacher on quitting her two year contract after a year recieved an e mail from the Holleys saying she would be blacklisted from teaching anywhere in Korea. The article in the Joongang daily says that the Holleys were afraid they might lose teachers, and were hoping they wouldn't jump contract. How hilarious. No Institute in their right mind will tolerate a teacher just up and leaving. To imply that Gwangju Foreign school would have bowed to the wishes of teachers wanting to leave for a better school is cracked in the head. The holleys are vicious, dirty, and completely underhand when it comes to their teachers wanting to leave before their contract has expired.

For prospective Gwangju Foreign School teachers

2008-03-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

Most international foreign schools provide free round trips every year to their teacher's home countries. Gwangju foreign school doesn't. A teacher from a regular International school looking for another International school to work at would be advised to give this place a miss. Should a teacher with international school experience accept a position at Gwangju foreign school, he or she would be in for a rude awakening, because the benefits in comparison to one's former International places of emploment would be non existant.
On a positive side the school would be a good starting point for a teacher with no experience, as the Holleys accept teachers without certification. Unfortunately the new visa restrictions require applicants for an E7 visa (foreign school teacher visa) to have at least 5 years experience in their field. That means they will be unable to hire the younger crop of teachers that they usually get from the Princeton Asia Recruitment firm. Certified teachers who have no International experience, but experience in their field might not be averse to the spartan conditions of Gwangju foreign School, but then there are better paying schools looking for certified teachers without international experience anyway

Pay isn't the best at Gwangju foreign school. The school pays the equivalent of your basic Korean English Academy or GEPIC , SMOE teacher who can get by with word search hand outs, one word answer handouts, and by keeping a sense of order. International school teachers like public school teachers do two to three times the amount of work which includes making tests, marking them, meeting the parents etc., etc.,. Now if the school payed what the teachers really deserve, it might just scrape by as a an OK place to work.

Gwangju school and blackmail or extortion

2008-03-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

Mrs Holley constantly uses the threat of having teachers blacklisted should they leave before their contract has finished. That's gotta be one of the lowest tactics one could use to keep people in their place. She can't blacklist anyone because they just up and leave. Gwangju foreign school isn't a big name school, and for one thing there isn't an International school blacklist for stuff like that. There isn't a blacklisting of teachers breaking their contracts in Korea either. The only way any one is blacklisted in Korea is if they stay way over after their visa time has expired, or if they are deported for drugs or any other serious crime. Breaking a contract at Gwangju foreign school is neither a felony nor a misdemeanour. It's nothing, and their isn't a thing the Holleys can do about it. There was a teacher who dared to leave before her contract had expired, and who recieved an e mail from from the Holleys informing her that she was going to be blacklisted for doing so. My God, any organization that has to resort to those kinds of contol tactics to intimidate their teachers, should close it's doors and look for another buisnes.

Glad to see someone else has added information about the Holleys enrolling students whom havent lived abroad for the mandatory 5 years. They are breaking the law left, right and center by doing this, and Mr Holley is a lawyer and an active participant in his church as well. Oh well going to church doesn'r guarantee good beaviour obviously. By law, International Foreign schools are not to enrol anyone unless their passports show that they were residents in another country for at least 5 years.
There are many students at Gwangju foreign school who have never been abroad for periods other than their summer and winter vacations.

Manipulation of teachers by Holleys at Gwangju Foreign school

2008-02-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

The school runs an English camp at the school in the summers. It's not in the teachers contract, but Holley's ask the teachers at the initial interview if they would be willing to work at their English camp. All teachers agree to it of course, because they don't think anything of it at the time. What the Holleys don't conveniently mention is that they will with hold severance if the teacher doesn't do the camp. The teachers learn this later from the other teachers who have been there a little longer. If the camp was in the contract then fair enough, but it's not, so the request by the Holleys at the interview is not really binding. All a teacher has to do at Gwangju foreign school to get severance is teach his or her assigned classes for the duration of their contract, and nothing more. Now the labour board in Gwangju is very willing to step in and mediate to ensure a school honours it's contract, and they would come down hard on the Holleys for with holding severance from someone who refused to do the camp. Unfortunately for the teachers at Gwangju foreign school, and fortunately for the Holleys the teachers are insecure and are afraid to make a stand. It's understandable, because many don't want jeopardize their jobs , and are caught in a limbo of not knowing wether they will win their case or not. I don't know why the Holleys don't put the camp in their contract to legitmize it, so they don't have to resort to subterfuge. Sure beats me. Any way they are aware of the insecurity of the teachers, and for some unknown reason they seem to feel it's better to underhandedly bleed them for as much extra money as possible.

There is one teacher at the school who refused to do the camp. I gathered from talking to him that he had to sign a shorter contract so that the Holleys would not have to pay him severance. Geeze the owners got the place sown up real good to avoid the normal legitimate payements that they should make to their teachers. The teacher may or may not have known what was going on, but anyway he should not have been short changed the way he was, and that to me and anyone else who can see through these manouverings shows what kind of cut throat buisness people actually run the place.

Gwangju Foreign school

2008-02-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

The school has only recently adopted the national pension for it's employees. By law it should have been implemented long ago. National pension offices can be a bit slack at times, and overlook certain buisnesses. Maybe it did this with Gwangju Foreign school. Who knows, but for an Institution that supposedly prides itself as an International school ,the laws of the land with regards to financial advantage for it's emplyees should have been obeyed.
Hogwans and English Institutes always find ways to skirt the law and exploit their employees, but for Gwangju Foreign school to do this is unacceptable. ( otherwise it's nothing but second rate and money grubbing ) We the teachers all had a meeting with Mrs Holley about the national pension plan, and she had the temerity to say that permission was given for the school to not have to offer the National Pension. The only way a buisness can get out of having to offer the national pension is if it has an alternative scheme. The school had no such scheme, so there is no way it could have legally sidestepped it's obligations. Now only a cretin ,retard, brainless dickhead would stand infront of her employees, and brazenly lie about getting her special permission when in fact no such permission to suspend the national pension was ever given.
Stone the crows. It just goes to show how little class the Holley's have. I don't even think they know what the word class means. Totaly lacking in being professional too. More than anything it shows that their priorities are in to making money however which way they can and not in being educators.
A provision is for the employer to match the certain percentage deducted from one's paycheck for the National Pension so that come time for individuals from Canada, the U.S. and a few other countries to leave the country they recieve back all deductions doubled.
In effect it's obvious that the Holley's didn't offer the national pension plan from it's inception, because they were too cheap to make the matching contributions for the pension deductions.
It begs the question of why are they offering the National Pension now. Did President No Mu Young ring them up, and tell them to get on the ball, or are they facing an audit of some kind. It would sure be nice to know.
There is a lot of money those employees from Canada, and the U.S. who had been at the school for over three years could have accumulated if the Holleys had had the National pension. I have worked at a place that had the National pension plan, and my co-workers from Canada recieved lump sum payments of $5000 each for just over 3 years work. They recieved this on top of their severance. It's really low down scum that will deny it's employees the benefits that are theirs by right. Holleys are too busy lining their own pockets to be worried about matters like this that benefit their own emoloyees.
Downside of this shemozzle is "If they can lie about this, what else have they been lying about"

The pension fund is a controversial thing in Korean politics, because of the billions of dollars tied up in it. The government would like to get their hands on the money, and the politician who has the portfollio handling the pension has been critized for not using the proper means to increase the amount of money in the pot so to speak. Apparently he lost some money through an injudicious decision, and has been under scrutiny ever since.This is similar to Japan with the Post office savings. Seems as though the masses of people using the post office for savings exceeds the number of people using banks. Japanese politicians want to get their hand on the money as well, and this issue is a platform of all candidates come election time.

Christopher Paul Neil

2008-02-08T19:58:00.001-08:00

The school owners are a little shifty, and cheap when it comes to money being put back into the school. Conditions for the students could and should be much better for the amount of money the parents have to pay. Every classroom should have a TV, but doesn't. The few TVs that are in the rooms were donated by parents. Parents are called on to donate things which the Holley's should be supplying. The Holleys are very good at crying poverty, and about how their school is always in the red. Point of fact though is that anyone who is going to run a buisness for 8 years in the red has got to be cracked in the head or lying. If they are having financial problems why the hell don't they sell their imported foreign cars.

Students are upbeat and positive like highschool students the world over. They could probably survive anywhere, but I think they all harbour resentment of sorts over the amount of money they have to pay for dilapidated buildings and their very limited playing facilities.

The teachers are excellent, and give their best. The administration though sucks to high hell. Present highschool principal has no clue when it comes to administration. Most people think he has his head up his arse. He was a teacher, but got bumped up to being head adminstrator. Rest of the senior staff tried to help him, but he wanted to go it his way. He subsequently alienated the rest of the staff by ignoring the help offered to him, and is now the butt of jokes from the the rest of the student body and staff.

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The pedophile Christopher Paul Neil was a teacher at Gwangju foreign school for a short time. He behaved no different than any other teacher at the school, nor did he dress different from any other teacher at the school. He was generally liked by both the other teachers and the students. Nothing he did gave anyone an indication of the things he was accused of. Gees. He loved to sing at karaokes, talk and drink. Just a normal guy from all outward appearances. One of the pictures on the interpol site was a dead ringer for him, but the others I dunno. He sure has put Gwangju Foreign School on the map, for what it's worth. The newspapers had already checked the school homepage to confirm that he was staff, so there was no point in the school trying to remove his profile. Other media outlets picked up on this and made a mockery of the school for doing so.
Too bad the other schools in Korea where he taught were mum about him. Would have given everyone more insight into what made him tick
Other reports say he was hung out to dry, because Interpol made a big thing about him and the unswirling of his face. Thai police have stated that there are pedophiles out and about who have commited worse things than he has, but that they had to focus on him because of the media attention and publicity. http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:HpthnFlM570J:www.parisangel.com/BSYS1000eportfolio/BSYS1000word.docx+gwangju+Foreign+school&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=120&gl=us

The school was inundated with News media chasing the story of Christopher Paul Neil, and It was felt necessary to bolt the doors to keep reporters out.
http://www.daylife.com/photo/0dih6tt6ZYdFR/gwangju

The news articles coming from Gwangju Foreign school were quoted as coming from Mrs Myoung. Now there is no Mrs Myoung working for Gwangju Foreign school.Myoung is the maiden name of Mrs Holley and it was she who was doing all the public relations work with the newspapers. Find that strange that she would not use her real name when being quoted. Another Korean duplicity thing.

Summer camp at Gwangju foreign school

2008-02-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

The school is an International school owned by Mr and Mrs Holley. The school runs a summer camp for students from 1st grade in elementry school up to any age in highschool. It's expensive for what the students get in the way of English instruction, and some classes tend to be overloaded. All good English camps limit their class sizes to 10 or 11 students, because ESL teachers can only effectively teach to a limited number of students in a camp setting. Camps which load more than 11-12 students into a class are giving them a poor return for what their parents pay. I have worked in many different camps, and they all refuse to overload classes. The Holleys don't employ this philosophy with their camp. They instead overload classes where they can, even though it's at the expense of the students learning English. Profit is their main concern. I taught at a summer camp at Gwangju foreign school, in a class with 16 students .

The material provided for the teachers and the students is quite poor. The school photocopies useless texts which is often too dificult for the students. All good camps provide good teachers manuals and text books and they allways research the material quite thoroughly. There are some good texts available with relevant teachers guides, and the better camps seem to generally use the same iff not similar texts. The camp at this place will use any material they can get their hands on. Their atittude is that it's effectiveness or inneffectiveness is completely irrelevant, just so long as they get the expensive fees that the many unsuspecting parents are willing to pay.

A good camp for parents from a christian background is the Pharohs camp run by Handong university in Pohang. It's a little more expensive than the Holley's camp, but the students stay in dormitories. The native speaker teachers have a Korean assistant who sometimes attend the classes, but whose role is mainly to assist students during meal times and in the evenings before they sleep. English learning is efficent, because classes don't exceed 11 students. Texts and stationary are provided, and there are a lot of meaningful activities for the students to be involved in. Drama productions are required of all teachers, and there are many other activities that both the teachers and students participate in to-gether. When I was there one teacher managed to train her class to do an excellent mini musical version of "Oliver". The audience of teachers parents and students were awe struck with the quality of the performance. (All a- cappella)

Another good camp for families in the Cholla region is the camp at Gyeongsang National University in Chinju. It runs for 4 weeks, and students stay on campus in the dormitories, but go home on the weekends. Again class size is limited to 11 students at most, and they are streamed i.e. students take tests to ascertain what class they should attend. Assistant Korean teachers are at the camp to help with the class work, and the the sleeping arrangements for the students. They are also a go between when there are language communication problems. The expat teachers at this camp are heavily involved in all the students activities. Drama productions are required by all classes, and they are performed on stage for the whole student and teacher audience. There are other activities such as sports competitions, sing along nights, and science projects. Telephone No 82-55-751-5141/ 6245- Fax : 82-55-751-6160

Changshin college in Masan runs a camp similar to the Kyungsan national university camp. Most of the students attending the camp live localy, but arrangements are made for others coming from out of town to slep in the college dormitories. This camp is modelled on the Gyeongsang national university in Chinju. A staff member at the college was a former teacher at the university in .Telephone Numbers 055 2503000, 2501277,2501280

YBM Sisa also runs an excellent camp two week camp in the summers and winters.

The teachers at these camps are come from all over the English speaking world. Some are already in Korea, and others come from their home countries on a vacation and to work while they travel. A special working visa is required by immigration, but it's easily obtained.

The Holley's camp isn't cheap, and is probably more expensive than the above camps.

All teachers working at camps are paid a considerable amount of money, and they earn it. Teachers at Holleys camp don't get a penny, and they work as hard if not harder than the teachers at any of the other camps. Holleys make enough money from their camps, and the fact that they aren't willing to give token payment to their teachers is because they would rather syphon off the profits for their own luxuries. It's also symptomatic of the fact that they haven't upgraded the facilities at the school since it's inception.

Teachers should be paid at least the equivalent of $2000 for their time and duties at the camp.