Tardiness, more than anything, is the key factor. I’ve seen a guy turn up reeking of booze, and he still managed to hold onto his job.
A school didn’t like his YouTube vids after the kids started imitating his “gangster Japanese persona” from one of videos. He was removed from the school immediately. He had worked at another school prior. No issues.
Fired for taking paid leave. High Court overturned the dismissal and awarded 8.75m in backpay. Returned to work. That was me.
Seen teachers fired for tardiness. Cannot be late, it’s a sin.
Seen teachers fired for made up reasons because they dared to form a union. Obviously union busting. Usually ends up with a cash settlement.
Heard of some other behaviour that ought to get someone fired but they get away with it. Being late or unionising are the worst offences it seems.
One awful teacher got “fired” in a very sneaky way. The manager pretended to close the little school, and then quietly reopened it minus the teacher. We were all happy to see her gone, frankly. No one could stand her – she was abrasive and combative, and she terrified the kids. The manager knew that formally firing her would just lead to more headaches, so she did it by stealth. I thought it was an elegant solution.
Yes, stealing students from a school. He worked for an eikaiwa and would sometimes convince students to stop paying the schools and take lessons with him privately at local cafes.
Several times.
Usually it was a self-imposed thing:
One didn’t pay rent for all of Covid (so never) and they became a liability. The excuse: “People in my country don’t have to pay rent because of Covid.”
One tried to date a student.
One took a bunch of unauthorized time off (during class hours).
One got deported after a bunch of car accidents. (New Zealander so I’m certain it wasn’t driving in the right side that caused it). Then they got their license revoked and refused to cycle, bus, or walk to work.
Then there was one who lost their job through pure circumstance. They went home right before Covid and were never able to come back. So they got replaced after a year.
When I worked for interac, there were three guys that got fired within a month. One for making his female JTE super uncomfortable (sexual harassment), one for taking up skirt vids of JHS students (from schools other than his but still ew) and one for trying to get the SHS girls from his school to come to places/events he’d be at the weekend.
Knew an Elementary school ALT who went up behind a girl student and “hugged” her. He wasn’t fired but he wasn’t allowed back at schools. Had to work at the BOE until his contract was up.
Was a while ago, after I left already, so the details might not be 100% accurate, but a group of teachers got a flat tire at night in the middle of nowhere in Ehime while returning from a group trip, jumped a garage fence, and stole a tire. Never left money or a note
Several more, from the university world
* being an awful teacher, basically: contract not renewed * bringing kids to class: fired * affair with student: pressured into resigning * faking credentials: fired * drug offenses in another country: fired * not teaching: cut to 1 *koma* on year; not offered work the following year
I have seen a teacher going through liver failure (he smelled like death), ignore whole classes, exhibit scary behaviour, and the owner and manager chalked it up to ‘he’s depressed’. He literally only got let go when his liver failure got so bad that the other teachers (me mainly) were like.. “send him home before he dies on you.”
Apparently he had been a hardcore alcoholic and quit just before coming over. He told us all he wasn’t drinking, but when they had to pick him up to take him to the doctor his apartment was littered with beer cans.
His scary behaviours were absolutely frightening. I went to cover one of his classes and he was in the break room, staring at a wall from inches away, not speaking to anyone. I was told he’d been there for at least twenty minutes. He also would make kids repeat the same word about twenty times. He also cut himself and bled all over the paperwork. AND, when he would write notes they were… Not natural. Like couldn’t follow lines or even spaces. Hard to explain. But freaky.
He went back to Canada and had to be in the hospital for a good long while.
I’ve never seen an English teacher get fired. I’ve seen several get strongly invited to quit.
Seen both. Fired for throwing an item at a student. Granted that’s something you should never do but to be honest. At that school with like no rules and the kids acting unruly with Japanese staff doing nothing I can understand that the frustration just hit peak level. Not saying it’s okay but I do have a certain understanding as to why she finally snapped.
2. Not renewed because of “reasons”. No idea why. Just company bullshit. The layout office or union or whatever got involved after that
Not fired-fired but I knew a lady who didn’t get re-contracted because she was pregnant.
Myself. Not renewed for “not doing enough” I always had my classes prepped almost a month in advance (and then slightly changed them everyday) had to keep a record on test scores, reading times, send email lesson reports to the parents everyday, my boss would constantly be outside mu door spying on me and nitpicking and criticizing absolutely everything I did (even tho she would fucking be speaking on the phone with parents during her lessons lol and never did any of the things she was constantly badgering me about) etc at a shitty family owned Eikaiwa with less than 300 students (and 4 employees). They expected me to work my ass off for 250K and no Shakai Hoken after taking my holidays away due to covid (they closed the school a couple of times, made us quarantine and took those days off from our holidays), threatened me to lose my job if I went to my home country for xmas, constantly micro-managed my personal time off, made us work over-time during xmas and halloween to make individual gift bags for the kids etc so I stopped being so hardworking and spent maybe an hour a day browsing the internet instead of working extra (mind you I already had ALL my lesson plans done and cleaning done) so yeah, I didn’t get renewed and I didn’t know how bad I had it until I changed to my new job where they actually make me feel like I’m doing good and give me constructive criticism and also praise and also make me feel so much more appreciated, so I’m glad they didn’t renew me.
At a school I worked at a teacher was fired for asking a student out, a first year highschool student!
Yes. 4+ years with the company, was caught stealing money and “company time”.
Another fired for playing video games during work hours (in class). Another for screaming at kids and intimidating them. Another for slandering coworkers and company to the competition. Another for skipping lessons. Another for throwing a table.
I guess it happens a lot in my company.
Yep. ALT I worked with sexually assaulted a JHS student.
My friend lost his teaching job for being a YouTube content creator.
Many many years ago, my contact wasn’t renewed with a large eikaiwa chain due to a lack of sales. The students LOVED me, but because I wasn’t great at selling extra materials that were way over priced, my contract wasn’t renewed. They also waited until the last minute to let me know. They kept stringing me along and held the contract over my head.
That’s when I said fuck it. I’ll make my own school! And did.
Most often they just don’t get their contracts renewed. The reason could be all sorts of things that make a “bad employee”. The school staff didn’t like them, the managers didn’t like them, students didn’t like them, not following school or company policies etc.
Sometimes the ALT company just lost contracts and had nowhere to send the ALT or the ALT didn’t want to move to where they had a spot.
The people I know who were fired mid contract messed up bad. They got arrested (drunk driving, smoking the devil’s lettuce, assault) or they were chronically late/no-shows and of course your garden variety sexual predators.
Plenty of folks rage quit too. One guy got into it with the staff and went home. Was a no show for days. Finally the area manager was able to get into the apartment and it was wall to wall beer cans, garbage, vomit etc. and the teacher was no where to be seen. She was actually relieved because she’d been dreading finding a body. He called later about his final paycheck.
The teacher in my school didn’t get the contract renewed. He literally didn’t anything. All he did was set the cd that reads what’s written in the textbook in the player and read his own book till the chime ring. He didn’t even answer the questions from students saying “Sorry I don’t get what you mean” and he didn’t understand Japanese at all so students really couldn’t talk to him.
Doing literally *nothing* won’t get you fired, so you have to try very hard and be a special kind of idiot to be fired as an English teacher.
Every one that does though, you can be damn well sure they deserved it.
Actually to be honest they probably deserved it months/years before they actually eventually got fired!
JTEs at junior and senior high schools? Sure.
Failure to nurture students, keep up with assessment, erratic behaviour. Then they’re relieved of duties (everybody else covering their classes) until the end of the academic year. Most show themselves out by resigning.
Some can’t cope no matter how well prepared they are. Teaching is tough anywhere on the planet.
The teacher who punched a cop, wore really inappropriate clothing to school, didn’t show up to work for three straight days, and got a black eye from a fight with a gangster didn’t get fired. “They just do such a good job in the classroom!” was the reason, but I know that wasn’t really the case.
But the teacher who kept their unwashed clothing in garbage bags on the floor, didn’t wear deodorant or shower, showed up late often, and threw away their empty beer cans at school did.
I almost got fired, my offense was leaving class (without asking permission to do so) to cry in the bathroom, even though in that class I just stood in the corner and did nothing and said nothing, as told. The senka teacher was a raging narcissist who refused to let me participate in her class, would undermine my lessons by intentionally confusing the kids, and gave me such a severe silent treatment that I found myself crying in the bathroom during her classes. Thank GOD the BoE stuck up for me, they were aware that she was a horrible person.
I also knew someone who lost his contract (direct hire) over his “influencers” presence. Parents complained about him and the school took the parents’ side. Felt a bit bad for him.
My former boss did all this to me (slander, etc etc) and got away Scot free due to me not being able to afford a lawyer. Police even said that even if it’s untrue, I would be prosecuted because a Japanese person was involved. Can’t get into anymore details but I spent around 7 years of my life, depressed and having PTSD. Couldnt interact with new people
Nova fired an openly psychotic guy after he started to have conversations with his dead father and started to reek from not bathing. That was the only firing I knew of.
A girl I graduated with was working in a really liberal urban area and said the N-word multiple times on camera during class. She got fired mid-year.
I have fired four teachers at my school. One came into work drunk, one repeatedly did not show up for work (not even a phone call), one was totally irresponsible around children letting them do dangerous things class and the last was trying to date students. I have also hired a few teachers that only stayed with me for a couple of months because of medical reasons or finding much better jobs. For the most part I have worked with really great people. I am lucky.
Too friendly with students. Made the old guard jealous.
I’ve seen a teacher fired for kicking a desk and a kid… I also saw another teacher get shamed in front of the school for kicking a desk. I’ve also seen teachers not get their contract renewed just because there weren’t enough students. Or are you talking about foreign English teachers? In that case, never seen one fired outright, but did know one who had to write an apology letter due to disobeying a no-travel order (years before corona)… his contract wasn’t renewed even tho he begged for it
Witnessed 2, both cases JET. And this was in a city where the BoE by default gave everyone the full 5-year contracts if there were no major issues.
First guy was a Nikkei Japanese and suspected to be on the spectrum. His first two years were pretty okay, but in his third and fourth year he started getting worse. For starters, he would assume that because he was Nikkei, he was being held to the same standard as the other Japanese teachers, which couldn’t be further from the truth. He started staying late at work, sometimes as late as 8pm because he felt obligated to.
He was also an athletic guy and was crazy about marathons, and during lunch would serve himself lunch enough for 2-3 people. He would also go around making inappropriate comments to females, among other things, and was finally let go after his fourth year. He was pretty transparent about his displeasure with the decision at the farewell party.
Second guy sexually assaulted a mutual friend of a bunch of ALTs in his first month here, and after months of being in jail, he was finally sent home.
He had an alternative look (split tongue, piercings, long hair). He was a bit of a freak outside of work but kept it professional at school. Tied hair back, took out earrings etc. but it didnt matter. He wasn’t fired but wasn’t renewed for a second year. Nice guy though.
35 comments
Tardiness, more than anything, is the key factor. I’ve seen a guy turn up reeking of booze, and he still managed to hold onto his job.
A school didn’t like his YouTube vids after the kids started imitating his “gangster Japanese persona” from one of videos. He was removed from the school immediately. He had worked at another school prior. No issues.
Fired for taking paid leave. High Court overturned the dismissal and awarded 8.75m in backpay. Returned to work. That was me.
Seen teachers fired for tardiness. Cannot be late, it’s a sin.
Seen teachers fired for made up reasons because they dared to form a union. Obviously union busting. Usually ends up with a cash settlement.
Heard of some other behaviour that ought to get someone fired but they get away with it. Being late or unionising are the worst offences it seems.
One awful teacher got “fired” in a very sneaky way. The manager pretended to close the little school, and then quietly reopened it minus the teacher. We were all happy to see her gone, frankly. No one could stand her – she was abrasive and combative, and she terrified the kids. The manager knew that formally firing her would just lead to more headaches, so she did it by stealth. I thought it was an elegant solution.
Yes, stealing students from a school. He worked for an eikaiwa and would sometimes convince students to stop paying the schools and take lessons with him privately at local cafes.
Several times.
Usually it was a self-imposed thing:
One didn’t pay rent for all of Covid (so never) and they became a liability. The excuse: “People in my country don’t have to pay rent because of Covid.”
One tried to date a student.
One took a bunch of unauthorized time off (during class hours).
One got deported after a bunch of car accidents. (New Zealander so I’m certain it wasn’t driving in the right side that caused it). Then they got their license revoked and refused to cycle, bus, or walk to work.
Then there was one who lost their job through pure circumstance. They went home right before Covid and were never able to come back. So they got replaced after a year.
When I worked for interac, there were three guys that got fired within a month. One for making his female JTE super uncomfortable (sexual harassment), one for taking up skirt vids of JHS students (from schools other than his but still ew) and one for trying to get the SHS girls from his school to come to places/events he’d be at the weekend.
Knew an Elementary school ALT who went up behind a girl student and “hugged” her. He wasn’t fired but he wasn’t allowed back at schools. Had to work at the BOE until his contract was up.
Was a while ago, after I left already, so the details might not be 100% accurate, but a group of teachers got a flat tire at night in the middle of nowhere in Ehime while returning from a group trip, jumped a garage fence, and stole a tire. Never left money or a note
Several more, from the university world
* being an awful teacher, basically: contract not renewed
* bringing kids to class: fired
* affair with student: pressured into resigning
* faking credentials: fired
* drug offenses in another country: fired
* not teaching: cut to 1 *koma* on year; not offered work the following year
I have seen a teacher going through liver failure (he smelled like death), ignore whole classes, exhibit scary behaviour, and the owner and manager chalked it up to ‘he’s depressed’. He literally only got let go when his liver failure got so bad that the other teachers (me mainly) were like.. “send him home before he dies on you.”
Apparently he had been a hardcore alcoholic and quit just before coming over. He told us all he wasn’t drinking, but when they had to pick him up to take him to the doctor his apartment was littered with beer cans.
His scary behaviours were absolutely frightening. I went to cover one of his classes and he was in the break room, staring at a wall from inches away, not speaking to anyone. I was told he’d been there for at least twenty minutes. He also would make kids repeat the same word about twenty times. He also cut himself and bled all over the paperwork. AND, when he would write notes they were… Not natural. Like couldn’t follow lines or even spaces. Hard to explain. But freaky.
He went back to Canada and had to be in the hospital for a good long while.
I’ve never seen an English teacher get fired. I’ve seen several get strongly invited to quit.
Seen both.
Fired for throwing an item at a student.
Granted that’s something you should never do but to be honest. At that school with like no rules and the kids acting unruly with Japanese staff doing nothing I can understand that the frustration just hit peak level. Not saying it’s okay but I do have a certain understanding as to why she finally snapped.
2. Not renewed because of “reasons”. No idea why. Just company bullshit. The layout office or union or whatever got involved after that
Not fired-fired but I knew a lady who didn’t get re-contracted because she was pregnant.
Myself. Not renewed for “not doing enough” I always had my classes prepped almost a month in advance (and then slightly changed them everyday) had to keep a record on test scores, reading times, send email lesson reports to the parents everyday, my boss would constantly be outside mu door spying on me and nitpicking and criticizing absolutely everything I did (even tho she would fucking be speaking on the phone with parents during her lessons lol and never did any of the things she was constantly badgering me about) etc at a shitty family owned Eikaiwa with less than 300 students (and 4 employees). They expected me to work my ass off for 250K and no Shakai Hoken after taking my holidays away due to covid (they closed the school a couple of times, made us quarantine and took those days off from our holidays), threatened me to lose my job if I went to my home country for xmas, constantly micro-managed my personal time off, made us work over-time during xmas and halloween to make individual gift bags for the kids etc so I stopped being so hardworking and spent maybe an hour a day browsing the internet instead of working extra (mind you I already had ALL my lesson plans done and cleaning done) so yeah, I didn’t get renewed and I didn’t know how bad I had it until I changed to my new job where they actually make me feel like I’m doing good and give me constructive criticism and also praise and also make me feel so much more appreciated, so I’m glad they didn’t renew me.
At a school I worked at a teacher was fired for asking a student out, a first year highschool student!
Yes. 4+ years with the company, was caught stealing money and “company time”.
Another fired for playing video games during work hours (in class). Another for screaming at kids and intimidating them. Another for slandering coworkers and company to the competition. Another for skipping lessons. Another for throwing a table.
I guess it happens a lot in my company.
Yep. ALT I worked with sexually assaulted a JHS student.
My friend lost his teaching job for being a YouTube content creator.
Many many years ago, my contact wasn’t renewed with a large eikaiwa chain due to a lack of sales. The students LOVED me, but because I wasn’t great at selling extra materials that were way over priced, my contract wasn’t renewed. They also waited until the last minute to let me know. They kept stringing me along and held the contract over my head.
That’s when I said fuck it. I’ll make my own school! And did.
Most often they just don’t get their contracts renewed. The reason could be all sorts of things that make a “bad employee”. The school staff didn’t like them, the managers didn’t like them, students didn’t like them, not following school or company policies etc.
Sometimes the ALT company just lost contracts and had nowhere to send the ALT or the ALT didn’t want to move to where they had a spot.
The people I know who were fired mid contract messed up bad. They got arrested (drunk driving, smoking the devil’s lettuce, assault) or they were chronically late/no-shows and of course your garden variety sexual predators.
Plenty of folks rage quit too. One guy got into it with the staff and went home. Was a no show for days. Finally the area manager was able to get into the apartment and it was wall to wall beer cans, garbage, vomit etc. and the teacher was no where to be seen. She was actually relieved because she’d been dreading finding a body. He called later about his final paycheck.
The teacher in my school didn’t get the contract renewed. He literally didn’t anything. All he did was set the cd that reads what’s written in the textbook in the player and read his own book till the chime ring. He didn’t even answer the questions from students saying “Sorry I don’t get what you mean” and he didn’t understand Japanese at all so students really couldn’t talk to him.
Doing literally *nothing* won’t get you fired, so you have to try very hard and be a special kind of idiot to be fired as an English teacher.
Every one that does though, you can be damn well sure they deserved it.
Actually to be honest they probably deserved it months/years before they actually eventually got fired!
JTEs at junior and senior high schools? Sure.
Failure to nurture students, keep up with assessment, erratic behaviour. Then they’re relieved of duties (everybody else covering their classes) until the end of the academic year. Most show themselves out by resigning.
Some can’t cope no matter how well prepared they are. Teaching is tough anywhere on the planet.
The teacher who punched a cop, wore really inappropriate clothing to school, didn’t show up to work for three straight days, and got a black eye from a fight with a gangster didn’t get fired. “They just do such a good job in the classroom!” was the reason, but I know that wasn’t really the case.
But the teacher who kept their unwashed clothing in garbage bags on the floor, didn’t wear deodorant or shower, showed up late often, and threw away their empty beer cans at school did.
I almost got fired, my offense was leaving class (without asking permission to do so) to cry in the bathroom, even though in that class I just stood in the corner and did nothing and said nothing, as told. The senka teacher was a raging narcissist who refused to let me participate in her class, would undermine my lessons by intentionally confusing the kids, and gave me such a severe silent treatment that I found myself crying in the bathroom during her classes. Thank GOD the BoE stuck up for me, they were aware that she was a horrible person.
I also knew someone who lost his contract (direct hire) over his “influencers” presence. Parents complained about him and the school took the parents’ side. Felt a bit bad for him.
My former boss did all this to me (slander, etc etc) and got away Scot free due to me not being able to afford a lawyer. Police even said that even if it’s untrue, I would be prosecuted because a Japanese person was involved. Can’t get into anymore details but I spent around 7 years of my life, depressed and having PTSD. Couldnt interact with new people
Nova fired an openly psychotic guy after he started to have conversations with his dead father and started to reek from not bathing. That was the only firing I knew of.
A girl I graduated with was working in a really liberal urban area and said the N-word multiple times on camera during class. She got fired mid-year.
I have fired four teachers at my school. One came into work drunk, one repeatedly did not show up for work (not even a phone call), one was totally irresponsible around children letting them do dangerous things class and the last was trying to date students.
I have also hired a few teachers that only stayed with me for a couple of months because of medical reasons or finding much better jobs. For the most part I have worked with really great people. I am lucky.
Too friendly with students. Made the old guard jealous.
I’ve seen a teacher fired for kicking a desk and a kid… I also saw another teacher get shamed in front of the school for kicking a desk. I’ve also seen teachers not get their contract renewed just because there weren’t enough students. Or are you talking about foreign English teachers? In that case, never seen one fired outright, but did know one who had to write an apology letter due to disobeying a no-travel order (years before corona)… his contract wasn’t renewed even tho he begged for it
Witnessed 2, both cases JET. And this was in a city where the BoE by default gave everyone the full 5-year contracts if there were no major issues.
First guy was a Nikkei Japanese and suspected to be on the spectrum. His first two years were pretty okay, but in his third and fourth year he started getting worse. For starters, he would assume that because he was Nikkei, he was being held to the same standard as the other Japanese teachers, which couldn’t be further from the truth. He started staying late at work, sometimes as late as 8pm because he felt obligated to.
He was also an athletic guy and was crazy about marathons, and during lunch would serve himself lunch enough for 2-3 people. He would also go around making inappropriate comments to females, among other things, and was finally let go after his fourth year. He was pretty transparent about his displeasure with the decision at the farewell party.
Second guy sexually assaulted a mutual friend of a bunch of ALTs in his first month here, and after months of being in jail, he was finally sent home.
He had an alternative look (split tongue, piercings, long hair). He was a bit of a freak outside of work but kept it professional at school. Tied hair back, took out earrings etc. but it didnt matter. He wasn’t fired but wasn’t renewed for a second year. Nice guy though.