Awful, avoid! - Anonymous employee Chadwick School Employee Review

The reason for high staff turnover here is NOT that it is a "new school." It's because it's a poorly run school that stresses out diligent people, but gives a free pass to slackers who don't rock the boat. There are some good people doing a good job here, but they're not in control of the school. Getting ahead here is more about being part of the right clique than about job performance. The school is now entering its sixth year so the "new school" excuse is wearing thin, and the school is under the control of the much older home school in Palos Verdes, California. ("One school, two campuses" is the motto and a selling point here.) The home campus of Chadwick School has been in existence for around 80 years, so again there is no excuse for the many "start-up issues" and in fact most of the confusion about mission and organization comes from the home school. Apart from high faculty turnover, this Incheon school has already had high and frequent turnover in positions at every level from top to bottom of the personnel ladder. Given the compensation packages have been quite good, and these are expensive modern facilities, what's with the high turnover? Many people leave here ASAP because of the frustrating disorganization, confusion and interference that makes it hard to do your job well without stress and exhaustion. The petty personality politics don't help either. The school lectures employees on "breaking contract" early but has done the same thing to employees, at times with little to no justification. It's a long way back from Korea to wherever you came from if they do that to you, and they know it and use it as a threat. HR standards here are in chaos. There is not very much meaningful supervisory observation of your work, but plenty of judgment. The threat (and the reality) of negative references are used to punish and pressure employees, regardless of evidence, with no oversight or recourse to an established appeal process for this kind of abuse. Even if you get good feedback during the year, on the record, you risk such treatment if for any reason you get into disagreements with supervisors (including over raising real concerns for the school's welfare). The Peter Principle is rampant here and you'll run a major risk of leaving with toxic career setbacks like horrible references and reviews, based on nothing objective. Even when the compensation was better here, the long-term career risk was not worth it. Typical goof-ups here include attempting to create an AP-based high school, then having to switch back to an IB-based curriculum and run the two different systems at the same time during the switch-over period (because the school "forgot" they had a contract with the local government to be an international school!) The program lurches around, you scramble and get tripped up, then the same thing happens again. It's like Groundhog Day with the constant snafus undermining your hard work. The vast majority of the students here are not native speakers of English, but the home-base school in California has no ESL policy and claims to have no students in that category, even though it's in the greater Los Angeles area! Why a totally non-ESOL school thought it was qualified to run a school in a foreign country, where the vast majority of students are not native English speakers, is an obvious question. Could the large amount of money flowing back from Korea to the home school be the motive? The Songdo city location is a boondock by Korean standards, scorching hot in summer and way below freezing in winter. Air quality here is terrible at times, so that the school itself tells students and employees not to go outdoors during breaks. That's not the school's fault, but do they warn you about it clearly when you interview? If not, ask or verify the pollution situation for yourself (easy to research online). Basically I would not recommend this workplace to anyone who cares about their career or their quality of life in general.