Cultural Confusion

I began a new job as a Language Arts curriculum designer for a small private tutoring school about a month ago. I have thrown myself into the job to the neglect of housework and homework to try and impress my new bosses.
It's a very interesting situation in which I find myself--the President and CEO are a husband and wife team who are Korean. The President/CEO (the husband) speaks and understands very limited English but apparently reads it fairly well. The CEO (the wife) understands a fair amount of English but is not proficient. The director is also Korean but has lived in the US for many years. And is coincidentally married to one of the chaplains who belongs to DH's BFF's battalion (wasn't that a lot of possessive nouns). My counterpart for Math is Korean-American, born here and raised here but spent two years teaching in Korea.
It's amazing how despite my various accomplishments thus far and a few accolades at that, it wasn't until three Asians told me that I was smart that I actually felt smart! I know--I'm a cultural stereotyping fanatic--but as an immigrant I feel I have a right to use that status however I feel fit!
Anyway, it is definitely a challenge being the only nonKorean speaking member of the team. Not only that, there are definite cultural barriers presenting themselves.
I originally interviewed just for a teaching position but based on my education they felt I could be used even sooner as the curriculum developer. Mind you, this is new territory for me. My Masters is in Teaching (or soon will be) not curriculum development.
But I have ingenuity and several human references at my disposal so I just got on with it.
The last month has been arduous to say the least. There has been a lot of wishy-washiness on my boss' part and they have not clearly defined to me or my counterpart what they want in the way of the curriculum--how loose or how specific. Furthermore, they have not been very clear about how many teachers they are hiring. As of right now, they can fit about 30 students in the center at a time, which is a tight fit so I'm not really sure why they are holding so many interviews and looking at so many teachers. I realize they want a 3rd-12th grade program but that doesn't leave too much time in the day to cater math and English to all those levels.
Anyway, they also are under the impression that they can hire teachers less than three weeks before the program is to start and give them a loose curriculum and have them design their lesson plans with little to no paid prep time. I've tried to explain to them that in America, teachers who work in the summer want to supplement their income not do more work that they would be doing during the school year (9 weeks of lesson plans with no paid prep in about a week). I explained that they will either have poor quality lessons or teachers who do not stay long. They, unfortunately, are still working on the Asian work mentality that teachers will want to work that hard for them and will be willing to put in the extra effort. HA! The hiring freeze is over and most districts have rescinded their pink slips, not that many teachers are unemployed afterall.
What's more, they have it in their minds that they are hiring teachers who can teach several grades. Which teachers can--a multi subject license means you can teach elementary and a single subject means you can basically teach 5-12 in that domain. However, if you've been teaching 3rd grade for a few years, you probably won't have any 4th or 5th grade lessons prepared or resources for those grades. They think they're hiring such highly qualified teachers, which they may, but that still doesn't change the fact that they may not be fully prepared to teach all these grades. Plus many of the teachers' resources may be owned by the school district that they teach for and are not their personal resources to transfer to an independent school. That's falling on deaf ears!
Furthermore, the CEO/President apparently has more than 15 years experience in Korea but hasn't demonstrated a minute's knowledge of teaching. Nevermind the fact that I'm ABT (all but thesis for my Masters), apparently I haven't learned anything thus far. If he has so much damn experience then why the hell am I reinventing the wheel?! Telling me to go off and design 10 grades worth of curriculum in three weeks is nuts! Especially with no specific guidance. They keep referring to how things are done in Korea but have produced no framework from which to work. And quite frankly, that's nice but we're in America now! This school may cater to Asian students but if it wants them to succeed in American schools, they have to assimilate a bit more. And apparently the CEO/President's sister runs a school like this in Irvine, so why not let me and my counterpart see their curriculum so we know what the goal is?! Apparently, the wheel is supposed to be oblong not circular anymore!
One of the biggest areas of contention is how to run the book club which is basically turning into a reading comprehension class rather than a real book club. But apparently, in Korea, they get books from the US that are book club editions with the questions preprinted in them. Fantastic! It's not like I've never seen those before. But I'd already come up with the book club reading list for each grade and they wanted me to find out if the list came in those editions. That's over 55 books to google! Ah, N.O. How about they give me the list of books sent to Korea? Or at least let me know which publisher it is! But hey if they want to pay me those hours to google it, fine. But wait, they don't!
They promised me 20+ for this phase and now that I'm consistently billing them over 20 they don't like it. They have no concept of how much work my counterpart and I have! Instead of hiring an assistant they are paying us to do copying and binder stuffing but get annoyed when we bill that. I'm sorry but if I were in an office rather than my house, I wouldn't clock out then stuff binders then clock back in. That crap is work and I'm working to get paid.
What's more, it's a 30 minute commute each way and I go in three days a week. Most of the time the meetings have been at least an hour or more. But lately, several have been only 15 minutes! That doesn't even cover my gas!
Things are coming to a head and not progressing very well. I may have inadvertently worked myself out of a job. While they keep complimenting my work and seem very impressed by its quality, I think they want someone a little more compliant and someone who won't bill them as much (they better drop the work load or find someone who isn't American--I know, I know...). We'll see tomorrow if I still have a job...
Please let me keep this just long enough to find another one! It's always easier to find a job when you already have one. So please let me keep this one just a little bit longer!
If nothing else, this just added to my teacher work sample and shows that I am a jack of all trades...
Cross you finger, your eyes, your toes, and whatever else. Say a prayer, do a rain dance, chant a little ditty...Just wish me luck tomorrow!